Comments by "bruzote" (@bruzote) on "Why Do Venomous Animals Live In Warm Climates?" video.

  1. I suspect it also has to do with hunting technique. If you're venomous, you're probably a hunter. A hunter in cold climates can't afford to envenom and wait for the death of its prey. It needs to pursue, kill, and eat. If the prey gets away, the predator might not find another prey soon.
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  2. I think you've got it backwards. Do you think wolves have all winter to wait for a prey to do die? They need to eat frequently to stay alive. Same with other predators in the cold. They need fuel, they don't have to be lazy ambush predators using venom.
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  3. I have my suspicions that the issue is also one of metabolism and seasonal survival. Larger animals that survive the winter without hibernation must be hunters. Sitting around as an ambush predator doesn't work well in winter. If you're not using ambush, venom is not too important - you're pursuing your meal and need to get a good handle on it to get venom into it.. If you can pursue and take it down, though, you don't need venom! You already have the ability to kill. What about smaller predators, like insects? Well, two things. Larger insects survive in warmer temperatures. That seems purely seasonal driven. It's harder to become a deadly "venomous" spider or scorpion when your dose is irrelevant. I wonder if you normalize dose sizes inversely to latitude, the density of envenoming predators gets closer to an even spread across latitudes.
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