Envenomation

[1] Many kinds of animals, including mammals (e.g., the northern short-tailed shrew, Blarina brevicauda), reptiles (e.g., the king cobra),[2] spiders (e.g., black widows),[3] insects (e.g., wasps), and fish (e.g., stone fish) employ venom for hunting and for self-defense.

In particular, snakebite envenoming is considered a neglected tropical disease resulting in >100,000 deaths and maiming >400,000 people per year.

Venom in the saliva of the Gila monster and some other reptiles enters prey through bites of grooved teeth.

More commonly animals have specialized organs such as hollow teeth (fangs) and tubular stingers that penetrate the prey's skin, whereupon muscles attached to the attacker's venom reservoir squirt venom deep within the victim's body tissue.

[7] The need to quickly neutralize a target during a defensive strikes explains these higher venom quantities.

Juvenile Rattlesnakes were experimentally shown to have the ability to adapt the volume of venom they expelled based on prey size.

[citation needed] Diagnosing snake envenomation is a crucial step in determining which antivenom is to be applied.