TIL of Kevin Budden, who caught a deadly taipan by hand and hitchhiked to town still holding the snake. He lost his grip and was bitten, but bagged the snake and made the driver promise to get it t...
TIL of Kevin Budden, who caught a deadly taipan by hand and hitchhiked to town still holding the snake. He lost his grip and was bitten, but bagged the snake and made the driver promise to get it t...
Your title gets cut off for me, so:
While attempting to bag the snake, Budden was bitten on his left thumb but was successful in placing the captured snake in a bag. Extracting a promise from the truck driver that he would get the snake to someone who would transport it south to researchers, Budden was taken for medical treatment. Not having any antivenom for taipans, Budden was given tiger snake antivenom. Although that helped counter the coagulating effect of taipan venom, it did not overcome the second effect of the taipan venom which paralyses the nervous system. Though doctors were initially hopeful he would recover, he died the following afternoon.
Was curious whether the snake made it to the research facility and here’s a continuation:
Budden's captured snake was sent alive to the Commonwealth Research Laboratories in Melbourne, where its venom was successfully milked by zoologist David Fleay, who was at that time the director of Healesville Sanctuary. Venom from the captured taipan was instrumental in researching and developing an antivenom, which became available in 1955, and saved the life of an 11-year-old Cairns boy before the year was over.