Yeah, the mamba is one bad dude. Most often, if he gets a good bite on you, you may last 30 minutes. Very few folks, even after getting almost immediate attention with an anti-venom serum, will survive the ordeal.

I'll tell you a true quick story about snake handlers and bites. My grandfather on my dad's side owned a civil engineering firm that often did U.S. Coastal and Geodetic Survey work for the Government. My dad, in his later teens, often worked for his father in doing this work along Florida's coastal and river areas. Another young man who worked alongside with my dad for a while was named Ross Allen. Ross went on to become a very famous herpetologist. My dad told me that he witnessed Ross Allen stick his hand in a cage and purposefully let a rattlesnake strike him. He said that Ross was convinced the only way to build up immunity to bites was to go through this process. Keep in mind that this was way before all of the anti-venom serum work that followed....work that Ross had a big role in.


Many years later, Ross Allen operated his institute from the Silver Springs facility near Ocala, Florida. I was there one day and watched him put on his show wherein he milked the venom from a variety of highly poisonous snakes. After the show, I was able to meet him and I asked him if he remembered my dad. He said he sure did and that they had enjoyed some pretty wild times together when they were around civilization. I asked him about dad's story of him letting the snake bite him. He said that he indeed had done that...more than once.

I understand that before he retired, he had been bitten by various kinds of snakes over 50 times. I can personally attest that his hands were very knarled in appearqnce because of his experiences.