The fer-de-lance: a slithery and dangerous snake

The fer-de-lance is a type of pit viper that is very dangerous. In fact, it is one of the deadliest snakes in the world: even one bite and you could be dead. Its habitat ranges from Mexico, Columbia, Ecuador, and Venezuela and the West Indies. This snake is not to be messed with as it can kill you quickly in 5-6 hours. After getting bitten, you would first feel pain and tenderness at the place of the bite, and you would be able to see the two bite marks from the monster’s fangs, then after a few minutes the bite site would rapidly swell up and the site would be red and bruised. Then blisters would form and your tissue would turn black because it is DYING, then it starts to swell up even more onto your entire limb or even your thorax. Although you can’t see it, the venom disrupts blood clotting, leading to you bleeding out, or it will clot your blood going to your heart and you might die that way. Your heart rate will rise and your blood pressure will go down a lot and you might have really bad chest pain. Following that, your muscles will weaken and breathing will be a difficulty.  Your tissue will turn black…

… due to it not receiving enough blood.

Vipers are a in a family of snakes that can be found in Europe, Asia, the Americas, and some parts of Africa. The family of vipers is called the viperidae. They have venomous fangs able to easily kill their prey. There are three subfamilies in the viperidae family: the azemiopinae (Fea’s vipers, located in Southeast Asia, the viperinae (pitless vipers, found in Africa and Europe) and our killers, crotalinae (pit vipers). These names come from the Latin language. 

The crotailinae are also known as the pit vipers and pit adders. They are a subfamily made up of vipers that can be found in only Asia and the Americas. Even though pit vipers are venomous, and like every other viper they have a heat sensing pit organ in between their eyes and nostril, which gives them the name pit viper instead of viper:

The crotalinae family is the only venomous viperid in the Americas. Included here are the rattlesnakes, lanceheads, and the Asian Pit vipers. 

The fer-de-lance, a deadly venomous creature, has many animals on its menu it likes to hunt for. Depending on how old the Bothrops asper is, it sometimes changes its diet like humans (you know, babies eat mother’s milk and full grown adults chow on burgers). Younger fer-de-lances usually prey on cold blooded animals like reptiles. The more mature and old snakes mostly prey on warm blooded animals. Even though they mainly prey on either cold blooded or warm blooded prey they are known to also eat the other animals with either warm or cold blood. While snakes have a digestive systems they also benefit from secondary ingestion, meaning that they digest the food of the animal they just ate. The secondary ingestion usually contains beetles and insect remains. Fer-de-lances also scavenge for dead frogs and rodents. But finally, and most horribly, they are also reported to sometimes eat each other.

The fer-de-lance has a few species with some that have different colors from each other.

The Martinique is about 2 meters long and camouflages with trees looking like branches. The bothrops Caribbaeus from St Lucia is also about the same length with dark brown colors that lets it camouflage with the ground.

The Bothrops Atrox is native to South America and has similar colors to the Bothrops Caribbaeus.

The bothrops asper is from Central America and its scales look like leaves and branches. The bothrops insularis’s color is different from the other fer-de-lance species with a white color is stands out from the forest making it easy to spot.

You can find the bothrups asper sometimes around rivers or small bodies of water chilling under the sun while still being camouflaged in plants or leaves. They are a very nocturnal and solitary species, meaning they spend lots of their time sleeping during the day and preying on rats and mice nearby at night. When a predator spots them, they coil up into a S-shape as a defensive position. Younger snakes use what is called caudal luring: using their tale to mimic a worm or a plant to attract their prey. Only males have colored tips on their tail so it will be easier to make their prey believe it’s not a snake and it’s just some food.

The fer-de-lance was discovered in 1758, by Bernard-Germain-Étienne de La Ville-sur-Illon, comte de Lacépède, a French naturalist. Though he never met Linneaus, it is clear that the taxonomical processes Linneaus discovered were used by Étienne. The species of fer-de-lance he discovered was the bothops lanceolatus which used to be called the coluber atrox. Fer-de-lance translated to French means “iron of the lance”, and it got that name many years after in 1830. The name changed from the Coluber atrox to the Bothrops Atrox because the understanding of the specific group of pit vipers underwent a challenge. 

Carl Linnaeus mainly gave two names to which the first one showed the genus and the other being on the real name like the bothrups. This is binomial nomenclature.

While the fer-de-lance is a common name, it’s important to remember that Linnaeus named the species Coluber atrox. The name “fer-de-lance,” meaning “iron of the lance” in French, is a collective term for several species within the genus Bothrops. 

The fer-de-Llnce’s venom can cause critical damage to your body including these symptoms: very bad pain, swelling, bruising, blistering on your skin, nausea, numbness, vomiting, tissue necrosis meaning the tissue starts losing blood in it and starts becoming black, more symptoms include internal bleeding land, and organ damage.

Linnaeus was very popular and contributed a tremendous amount to our understanding of the world around us by classifying plants and animals, publishing works, such as the Systema Naturae, and was a very sought-after university professor and lecturer. In  fact, in his later years, many of the leading lights of Europe gave him amazing props: “With the exception of William Shakespeare and Baruch Spinoza, I know no one among the no longer living who has influenced me more strongly,” said the great Wolfgang Goethe. He is known as the founder of modern ecology.

In 2016 a 15 year old girl who got bit by the fer-de-lance. She suffered from a stroke and paralysis and needed physical and speech therapy. Many other people who got bit like a man from Costa Rica suffered from kidney damage and other symptoms who ended up getting an antivenom from a zoo in Seattle which was very far away. After getting bit Audrey delt with a stroke and also paralysis, but she still was able to recover from it after multiple sessions of therapy and returned to water polo. A person who got bit in the foot by a fer-de-lance still has a severe limp and foot damage after 7 years.

The fer-de-lance’s venom is considered highly toxic and can cause severe symptoms, including pain, swelling, bruising, blistering, nausea, numbness, vomiting, tissue necrosis, internal bleeding, and organ damage.