Poisonous Snakes of the World

By U.S. Department of the Navy

Great book on the poisonous snakes from around the world. Many excellent photographs and descriptions of habitat, and what to look for. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 048626629X
• ISBN13: 9780486266299
• Release Date: January 1991
• Publisher: Dover Pubns
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 11.0" x 0.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Useful poisonous/venomous snake guide

Disregard the reviewers commenting that this book should have been named "Venomous Snakes of the World" as opposed to "Poisonous Snakes of the World." Herpetologists and other scientists like to distinguish between a poison and venom. In general, poisonous substances are viewed as things that need to be ingested, inhaled or otherwise contacted in some way, while venoms are proteinaceous poisons typically injected by a bite or sting. Would not a spitting cobra have to be called a poisonous snake if it spit venom in your eye, the venom entered your blood stream via the capillaries in your eye and killed you? You would have been poisoned by a venom, not envenomated by a bite or sting, right? So all venoms are potential poisons but not all poisons are venoms! In any case, this book may be old but it still has useful information and it was designed for the purpose of training and assisting in military operations. It has 8 color plates with real images and colored paintings. There are other black and white photos, keys to genera, maps for large geographic regions and each species entry has a brief section of identification, distribution and remarks. There are some line drawings of some species' head scutes/scales (dorasal, ventral and some lateral). This book certainly delivers for it's intended purpose.