Maybe he's your long lost brother or something, lol.. He said he has a web site. You and him should meet each other and fight Austin and Steve.. and if you manage to get Steve on the floor... I'll bite him...

Hey Mr. Keiichi... is it true that the Boomslang has solid fangs? I always heard it did, but Mr. Jim Harrison told that they have hollow fangs. I had always heard they had solid fangs, which are designed to make a pair of puncture wounds for the venom (within the saliva) to enter into.

The Boomslang's fangs are hollow, as are most of the Opisthoglyphs.

The grooved tooth is only used in the most primitive of venomous species, such as the Boomslang, Mussuranna, Mangrove, the Cat-Eyed snakes and other opistholglyphs.

Remember that venom is specially adapted saliva. It is not saliva in the literal sense. Venom is processed in the venom glands, saliva in the salivary glands. There is no mutual structure shared by the two systems.

This message was edited by Keiichi on Jan 01 2005.

I see. Thanks for the explanation. Its an honor to be able to talk to people like you Keiichi and Jim Harrison. Here's what Jim Harrison also told me when I asked him the same question...

"Most venomous colubrids have fangs that are shaped kind of like a piece of celery. To me, that is like being hollowed out- they have a groove that the venom flows down into the prey. The fangs are not solid like the other teeth, which are not grooved at all. Not all venomous colubrids have grooved fangs- one example is the keelback, which just has enlarged teeth in the rear of the mouth that are not grooved. However, keelbacks have caused fatalities. Dr. Bryan Fry is currently doing a lot of research on colubrid venoms. You might be interested in his website:
www.venomdoc.com
Jim Harrison"

That's an excellent way of describing it.

This is another case where the terminology can be a bit misleading. When herpetologists refer to a fang, they are referring to a tooth that has a venom-conducting channel. A solid fang is one in which the channel is completely enclosed, such as the viperid and elapid fangs. A hollow fang is one in which the channel is open, usually on the rear surface of the tooth. This structure is less efficient that the solid fang, since the venom cannot be injected under pressure but must run (in most cases trickle) down the open channel into the wound.

When a herpetologist refers to a tooth, we generally are referring to a standard dental digit, used primarily for gripping and swallowing.

Hence, all teeth would be considered solid, with all fangs considered hollow. The distinction in fangs is whether or not the venom-conducting channel is open or closed.

I understand now. The fact that they are called hollow fangs are because they basically just have grooves on them, but to me they seem more solid. I would feel it more appropriate to say the Boomslang has solid fangs with grooves on them. What I called "hollow" were the fangs of the Elapids and Vipers where they are enclosed (like a straw). I just didn't know the simple fact that rear fanged snakes had grooves on their teeth. I always thought they were just solid straight rear fangs that the venom flows down to the very tip where they enter the puncture wound. I understand now why they are called "hollow" fangs. I was just confused when you and Jim said they were hollow.. because several months ago I watched a program made by National Geographic and the narrator said "The fangs of the Boomslang are solid," so I didn't understand, but this discussion makes it all more sense now.

This message was edited by EC DUB YA Fan on Jan 01 2005.

Yeah, it has! Thanks alot, Mr. Keiichi

Is it true that you shouldn't mix fire belly newts and fire belly toads? Because some websites say you can, and some can't. They have sort of the same habitat, and I don't want buy a new tank. What should I do?

Hey Keiichi... I watched The Crocodile Hunter today and he was in Africa and he handled a Burrowing Asp... I never thought he would have handled one before and I believe in a convo we had recently you said you wanted to see him handle that species.... the snake kept poking and drilling him in the hand with its tail... as if the tip of its tail had a prick.

I said I wanted to see him handle a stiletto viper.

"Burrowing asp" is a common name. The only actual species name that uses the word burrowing is the "Burrowing Python."

Can you give me a bit more detail about what he was handling?

He called it a "Burrowing Asp." I think it was the Stiletto Snake. It was a small black snake... I believe the ventral scales were white. The same one Mark O' Shea handled when he was bitten.

It sounds like you're describing a stiletto viper, but I don't see how he could have handled it for any length of time without being bitten. Unless it was good ol' fool's luck. . . .

I wish I could get a picture of it... I'll try and look. The episode was titled "Dangerous Africans." He used a stick when handling it... holding it by the tail while supporting the snake with a twig he found... which was smart since he didn't just use his hands when handling it like he almost always does. In this episode he also handled a Black Mamba... that snake he tail-handled and it was so long it was probably about eight or nine feet. Another five or six feet and I wondered how he would handle that. The Stiletto Snake wasn't very "jittery" at all.. it was very placid and didn't seem to try to bite him. However, it was poking Steve with its tail, which had a thorny tip on it. He did just refer to it as a "Burrowing Asp." He probably should have called it a "Bibron's Burrowing Asp" to be more precise.

This message was edited by EC DUB YA Fan on Jan 08 2005.

It's really hard to say. The physical description you give matches, but the behavior pattern doesn't. Stiletto's are extremely nervous and very aggressive.

Handling the snake by the tail and using a stick to keep the body from doubling back sounds like it would work. I'm just not convinced about how safe it would be considering the quickness of the stiletto.

We'll probably never know unless I happen to blunder across the episode.

I know we discussed about tail-handling snakes without supporting the snake's body and for this reason he should always use a stick like he did with the supposed Stiletto Snake. I did a bit of searching on google and I found some sites that identified the Stiletto also being called a Southern Burrowing Asp... but I was going by how it looked, plus considering I saw the footage on Mark's bite so the snake Steve handled looked exactly like the one that Mark was bitten by. Whenever Steve uses a stick/twig he always breaks it off a branch... I think thats a bit destructive on the environment and so I wish he just carried around a snake hook.

As I recall, Mark was bitten in the attempt to pick up the stiletto. He tried to get it behind the head but ended up grabbing it mid-body. It doubled back to bite him.

It may in fact be the same snake. At least Steve showed some ingenuity, if not a lot of common sense, in how he handled it.