The venom of sea snakes belongs to the strongest animal poison. The venom of the hook-billed sea snake is twice as toxic as cobra venom and 80 times as toxic as sodium cyanide. The composition of sea snake venom is neurotoxic similar to cobra venom, but strangely, its venom mainly damages the voluntary muscles, not the nervous system.

Sea snakes bite without pain, and their toxic attacks have a incubation period. After being bitten by sea snakes, there are no obvious symptoms of poisoning within 30 minutes or even 3 hours. However, this is very dangerous and easy to make people numb.

There are about 50 species of sea snakes in the world, and they are closely related to cobra, all of which are highly poisonous snakes. Most sea snakes in the world gather in the waters between northern Oceania and South Asian peninsulas. A few kinds of sea snakes, such as the long-snouted sea snake, the blue-gray sea snake, the ringed sea snake and the blue-ringed sea snake, are also often seen in temperate waters.

Predatory characteristics

Sea snakes are selective about food, and the feeding habits of many sea snakes are related to their body shape. Some sea snakes are thick and big, but their necks are thin and long, and their heads are surprisingly small. Almost all of these sea snakes feed on burrowing eels.

Their small heads and slender necks can easily penetrate into the holes of eels, while their heavy bodies are conducive to maintaining stability. They have small fangs in their mouths, which can inject venom that paralyzes eels, and then calmly drag unconscious eels out of the holes and swallow them into their stomachs.

Sea snakes prey on sea eels. Someone once filmed the whole process of a sea snake swallowing sea eels with a camera: the sea snake bit the sea eels almost as long as itself and swallowed them slowly until it was completely swallowed, and its body was stretched and deformed, making it almost impossible to swim. Some sea snakes feed on fish eggs. These sea snakes have small teeth and few fangs and poisonous glands.