The venom of a brown snake transforms as it gets older, Queensland's "venom doctor" has found.
University of Queensland associate professor Bryan Fry and his team found the venom of young brown snakes targetted the nervous system of its prey compared to adult brown snakes, whose venom attacked its prey's circulatory system.
Associate Professor Fry said the variation in venom was likely due to the change of prey from reptile to mammal as the snake got older.
"Logically because the prey type is so different, there should be a difference in the venom and that is exactly what we found," he said.
"The babies have a neurotoxic venom while the adults have that action on the blood (blood clotting) that is just so devastating, that is just so characteristic of brown snake and venomation."
The research was published in the journal Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology.
In looking at the effects of adult brown snake venom on blood samples, Associate Professor Fry also discovered another blood clotting component that was considered the "missing matter" in brown snake envenomation.
"With the (adult) brown snakes, the envenomation proceeds at such an incredible rate it couldn't be explained by just the activities we knew of, which was the ability to convert prothrombin into thrombin which then in turns creates the blood clot," he said.
"That action alone couldn't explain it, so we looked at effects on the blood,
"Brown snake venom is significantly efficient at activating another blood clotting component, Factor VII, which then contributes dramatically to the effect on the blood.
"This is the sort of the missing dark matter of brown snake envenomation."
Associate Professor Fry said the next step in his team's research would be to determine whether snake bite treatment would have to vary with the age of brown snakes, which are found across mainland Australia and considered extremely venomous.
"The babies have just the neurotoxins, they lack entirely the blood acting toxins of the adult," he said.
"The adults, their venom is dominated by the blood acting toxins but there still are some of those neurotoxins in there.
"It may be that the antivenom has enough antibodies against the neurotoxins in order to neutralise the babies as well, but that is the next step we want to test."
Snake bite treatments have had a colourful history in Queensland, with various deadly concoctions created and treatments applied prior to the development of anti-venom, Associate Professor Fry said.
"The development of actual, efficient anti-venoms, the first one in Australia was in the 1950s and that was tiger snakes but that was borrowing on from technology developed in Europe," he said.
"Prior to that there were all sorts of chemicals like strychnine or ammonia, all sorts of things we know that just simply don't work.
"Desperate times, desperate measures, it was a combination of ignorance and superstition."
From the late 1890s through to the early 1900s, police were required to report all instances of snake-bite along with the treatment adopted and result, which was considered of "great public utility".
A 1910 police report from Constable John Emeric Vidal Miller, stationed at Seymour River, provides an example of such recording.
Constable Miller wrote he had heard crying from a shrub near the police station and found a 13-year-old boy called James who told the officer he had been bitten by a black snake while trying to catch a horse.
Constable Miller tied a handkerchief around the child's leg, above the bite, and proceeded to treat the bite with ammonia, a hazardous chemical.
"I afterwards mixed three drops of liquid Ammonia, in a teacupful of water, and dosed the boy with it, a teaspoonful at a time about every minute and in the meantime, a buggy was procured and I conveyed the boy to Ingham Hospital, nine miles from here to the nearest doctor," he wrote.
"I continued the Ammonia treatment all the way and the boy did not become sleepy till treated at the hospital."
The boy luckily survived and was discharged two days later. The report was forwarded on to the Police Commissioner with a suggestion "the treatment adopted in this case might be of interest to the Health Department".
Associate Professor Fry said the development of anti-venoms, based on immunising horses, had pushed snake bite treatment into the modern era, however there were always exceptions to the rule.
"Somehow in the US in the '80s, the use of electricity seemed to come into favour," he said.
"The whole 'logic' was that it would neutralise the venom protein, which doesn't make sense because venom protein is no different to ordinary body proteins.
"They were using stun-guns and things like that on snakes...that aren't likely to kill anyway so therefore people are likely to survive despite the treatment."
