Here is a fact you have probably repeated with total confidence at a campfire: baby rattlesnakes are more dangerous than adults because they can’t control their venom and “dump it all” in one bite. Here is the correction: that is completely false, and researchers at Loma Linda University just proved it with actual venom milkings.
Adult rattlesnakes produced an average of 120 milligrams of venom per milking. Juveniles produced less than 15 milligrams. The babies are not secretly more lethal. They are, in fact, working with a fraction of the ammunition. The myth apparently didn’t even exist before the late 1960s, at which point it got into newspapers and never left, eventually infecting the brains of 53% of surveyed Southern California students and, more alarmingly, 73% of emergency responders and health professionals.
So a rumor with no scientific basis outcompeted actual toxinology for over half a century, largely because it made a better story than the truth. The truth, notably, still involves a venomous snake biting you, which remains bad regardless of the snake’s age.
Consider this your one dose of real information for the week. Use it to correct someone smugly, then immediately go check every category on this website for the exact opposite of what we just did.
All of this actually happened. ScienceDaily confirmed it.