Rebuttal to: Surgically enhanced venomous snakes. Venom glands out, silicone implants in! The creation of perfect exhibition snakes in the post HIH era. Raymond Hoser 488 Park Road, Park Orchards,Victoria, 3114, Australia. From the abstract section of Mr. Raymond Hoser, paper Mr.Hoser states: Silicone implants are effective at masking the finished procedure in large mature snakes with sizeable venom glands and where removal of them may result in a noticeable thinning of the head. Where as this may be true, in so much as it mask the obvious concave area which formerly was the location of the Duvorneys gland, it also may mask a missed duvorneys gland that was missed during this procedure. This was the case in a Papuan Black Snake. As cited below! Port Saint Lucie Florida, Papuan Black Snake “Pseudechis papuanus” surgery performed by “Richard Ritchie” and returned to a seller upon receipt the seller offered the animal a Live mouse which the snake bit and killed, having suspicions of it being venomous a Large rat was offered and the snake again bit and killed the rat. After these to incidents Raymond Hunter a trained venom extraction laboratory technician performed a venom extraction on the animals with Scott Bice present and venom was confirmed. From: MYTHS AND CORRECTIONS of Mr Hoser, paper Mr. Hoser states: From a practical point of view, snake venom is of no discernable benefit in terms of digesting food. This is evidenced by the fact that pre-killed food is digested just as easily (and raidly) as food killed by snake venom. In other words any breakdown of tissues of prey by venom is of insignificant benefit in terms of aiding digestion, or being essential to it. Claims to the contrary have no substantive basis. Clearly Mr. Hoser has never done any research in to this subject and is placing his hypothesis only on the limited knowledge he has had with elapids and a few encounters with vipers. Had Mr Hoser done his research he would have discovered that several publication had been done on this subject and several are ongoing with results lending to the need of venom in digestion, as cited below. Rodriguez-Robles and Thomas 1992 Reichert 1936 Thomas and Pough 1979 From: WHO SHOULD PERFORM VENOMOID SURGERY ON SNAKES and all following parts until “The venom glands re-grow and hence a "voided" snake can still kill…not so” of Mr.Hoser paper. Will be addressed in the simple paragraph below. I will add only this Legalities in most Nations should be followed and as most Nations require operation be performed by Licensed Veterinarians any person doing so without the proper licensing is in violation of their respective countries laws. Mr. Hoser appears to condone such illegal activities from the wording of his paper. From: The venom glands re-grow and hence a "voided" snake can still kill…not so, of Mr.Hoser paper. Mr.Hoser states: This argument is total nonsense. Not withstanding this, it has gained enormous currency being promoted continually in such forums as "kingsnake.com". Bryan Fry, a newcomer to herpetology, who markets himself as "the venomdoc" (having recently acquired a PhD from a Qld University) is another who has pushed this theory and/or variants of this. Besides the re-growing theory, is a related idea that an improperly performed operation can result in envonomation. That is stupid point, but one which is continually used to attack the concept of venomoid snakes. Or like saying because one person can't keep a reptile alive in captivity, no one can. It's akin to saying that an attempt to remove a human's big toe, won't stop them from speaking. Here's some hard data that absolutely refutes the uninformed theories of Bryan Fry and others. On 11 April 2005, I "tested" all venomoid snakes at my facility for venom. The simplest way was to acquire a live mouse-sized rat. All venomoid snakes were forced to bite into it's body. This included 9 very large Tiger Snakes, 5 Copperheads, 2 Collett's Snakes, 4 Death Adders, 2 Eastern Brown Snakes and Three Red-bellied Black Snakes (well over 20 snakes). In many cases the snakes were hungry, refused to let go of the rodent and they "pumped" their fangs intensively. The rodent was left alone for three hours being still alive and well. It was then euthanazed and fed to a venomoid Death Adder that I had been forced to use forceps to make it release it's earlier grip. Of the snakes tested, all but 7 had been "voided" over a year earlier and none had regenerated any venom delivering capacity or shown any helth defects arising from their non-venomous state. 5 tested snakes (4 Copperheads and an Eastern Brown Snake) had only been "voided" 14 days earlier, all had eaten the day after their operation/s and none showed any trace of venom when tested 14 days later. (In the case of those snakes, all had already effectively totally healed from the operation). Again Mr. Hoser apparently had done NO research on this subject as evidence of exactly this nature does exist and is very well documented as cited below 1) Liverpool England, Monocle Cobra “Naja kaothia” long term captive animal that bit a handler and did in fact inject venom which required medical treatment including Anti-Venom 2) Miami Florida, Monocle Cobra “Naja kaouthia” long term captive animal that bit a handler and did in fact inject venom which required medical treatment including Anti-Venom , Confirmed by Venom1 “ Miami Anti-Venom Bank” Also reported in Reptiles Magazine. 3) Holland, Gaboon Viper “Bitis gaboonica” Captive born animal who had its ducts removed bit a handler and did in fact inject venom which required medical treatment including Anti-Venom. 4) Port Saint Lucie Florida, Papuan Black Snake “Pseudechis papuanus” surgery performed by “Richard Ritchie” and returned to a seller upon receipt the seller offered the animal a Live mouse which the snake bit and killed, having suspicions of it being venomous a Large rat was offered and the snake again bit and killed the rat. After these to incidents Raymond Hunter a trained venom extraction laboratory technician performed a venom extraction on the animals with Scott Bice present and venom was confirmed. 5) In late 1986-87 Brian Blazer(currently Blazer's Educational Animal) Recieved 3 King Cobras(O. Hannah) 12-14' in length. All three specimens had venomoid surgeries conducted a few weeks prior.(Conducted by Dr. Funk) Apparently the deal fell through and Brian asked if I Ray Goushaw of Herpetological Breeding Research would take one off his hands. Specimens were split between Brian, Soco Gardens and myself. About three months later Brian called me in a panic. During a routine cage cleaning the king he was keeping had unexpectedly rushed him. Since he had a roll of paper towels in his hand he simply blocked the strike attempt. To his horror the paper towel roll filled with a yellow liquid. It was quickly confirmed that ALL THREE specimens were producing venom to some degree. All details can be confirmed upon request. In closing, Mr. Hoser has the ability to twist and turn and spin a good story but when confronted with a request for scientific or medical documentation has yet to provide any credible resources or information from accredited or licensed facilities or physicians! The conclusion to this is he performed the operations illegally and did not follow the legal prescribed guidelines for surgery. Mr.Hoser has also failed miserably in follow through research on other statements he has made as noted above.

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