Poisonous vs. Venomous

Sometimes while walking through Carolina Wildlife, I see a lot of visitors point to our copperhead or rattlesnake and say “that’s a poisonous one.” Mistakenly, that is an untrue statement.A few blog posts ago, I stated that “all raptors are birds of prey, but not all birds of prey are raptors.” Well, I got another one for you, “all venom is a poison, but not all poisons are a venom.”An animal that injects a toxin into you is venomous while if you touch or ingest a toxin that makes you sick, you are poisoned.Some mushrooms, plants or amphibians are poisonous while some reptiles, spiders,fish,insects and even mammals  are venomous. One of our animals, the King snake can eat venomous snakes without being poisoned because they need to be injected instead of ingested.An example of a mammal that is venomous is the platypus and a few shrews.These toxins can affect blood,tissue cells and  nerves.

Photo courtesy of Wiki alpl

2 responses to Poisonous vs. Venomous

  1. Ross Warren says:

    Hello, I’m researching snake bite photos for a new National Geographic series airing this September. I’m interested in the hemotoxic snake bite photo (from a Copperhead?) Do you know who shot the photo and how I could license it for broadcast? Thanks, Ross

  2. Jill says:

    Can you tell me which photo it is and where?
    The one that is attached to this post(orange hazard) was in Wiki.

Leave a Reply