A completely removed venom gland will NOT grow back or regenerate. But, botched procedures, where there is enough of the gland left can heal and still produce quite toxic venom. If you scroll down a bit on this link (down to just below "Figure 12"), you'll see some more information on this. http://www.venomousreptiles.org/articles/55
Yeah you are right Axe. It was not the gland removal devenomoid procedure that can reverse itself, it is the ligating the ducts devenomoid procedure that can reverse itself. My bad.
I saw on TV that there is a procedure that can devenom the snake Humanely but I forget what it was called
Surgically removing glands, fangs, and whatever else you want is, if done right, can be painless and possible. Its just like neutering a dog or de-clawing a kitten. I don’t support either but if it is done right, the animal can feel nothing. Most of the implications involved in post-surgery are mental and behavioral in nature. A dog with out his nut sack won’t feel like a dog. A cat with out his claws won’t feel like a cat. The definition of “feel” in this particular case is seen thought their change in behavior. The above is true for snakes (or any animal). A cobra with out its venom may feel defenseless which can result in a complete 180 in behavior. It’s no longer the same cobra. Whether it is cruel or not is an entirely different issue. You can define it to be cruel either because you are completely against such surgery & recognize that the animal is no longer the same animal it was prior to, or you can define cruel because 99% of the time the procedures are done incorrectly. You can take this a step further and relate the argument to abortion. People should just pound their heads against a concrete wall because these debates never go anywhere. 99% of the time the arguments are passion-based anyway with only a small percent actually understanding wtf is going on.
Exactly. A cobra that instinctively knows that it can attack prey, hit it with one bite, then back off & wait, then go back to it to consume is going to get EXTREMELY confused (and possible even a lil scared) when they're biting and biting and biting, and the prey doesn't die. With something like a jumbo rat, all it's going to do is piss off the rat, and cause the rat to chew the hell out of the snake. Also, hots that have been voided will still produce fully hott offspring. It's not a risk worth taking. If you can't keep a hot as-is, you shouldn't keep them at all. I've worked with a lot of hots kept by others. I know I don't have the discipline to keep hots myself, I KNOW I'd get tagged, dealing with them at home on a regular basis (I'd just end up being too relaxed around them at home, which you really can't afford to be). But, I'm responsible enough to admit this, and know that keeping them myself would be a bad idea. When I'm working with them with others, at a location other than my own home, I'm just in a different mental state (which is no different to anybody else being in a different frame of mind when they're at home vs. school, vs. work, vs. wherever).
