Venomous bites have the potential to be life-threatening and must be taken seriously until proven otherwise, either through a positive ID of the animal being non-venomous, or confirming that the attack was a ‘dry bite’.

Dry bites are bites by venomous animals where no venom was released (i.e. a bite without envenomation). It’s actually quite common in some species. For example, 80% of the time, Australian eastern brown snakes (Pseudonaja textilis) inflict dry bites ^[1]. By comparison taipans inflict dry bites only 5% of the time ^[2]

In practice, determining whether or not the bite was a dry-bite is extremely challenging. That’s why we always treat bites as venomous in the bush just in case.

Read through the following posts for more specific information on venomous critter bites and how to manage them.