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Top 10 Animals After Dark: Fer-de-lance
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#8 - When Fer-de-lance Strike

By Jessika Toothman

The fer-de-lance is a species of snake known for the deadliness of its venom, not to mention the disfiguring scars their survivors often sport. Although not the largest of snakes, fer-de-lance aren't a predator you'd care to come across on a midnight stroll.

Part of a group of snakes known as pit vipers, fer-de-lance have two small pit-shaped sensory organs located between their eyes and nostrils that can sense temperature with amazing precision, allowing them to hunt with dead-on accuracy during even the darkest nights. Killer night vision and great camouflage make the fer-de-lance a force to be reckoned with.

Fer-de-lance bites are extraordinarily painful and can be fatal. The venom starts to work almost instantaneously; it ravages the victim's circulatory system, rots away the flesh, and causes acute internal swelling so severe that sometimes the skin needs to be completely cut away to ease the pressure.

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