Question: How many types of venom are there?

Adam Hargreaves answered on 21 Jun 2017:

Hi SidRai,
That’s a really good question and I’m a bit stumped of how to answer it to be honest!
There are a lot of animals which use venom, including snakes, spiders, scorpions, fish, jellyfish, octopus, marine snails, sea anemones, centipedes, bees and wasps, ants, some lizards, some moles and shrews…the list goes on! From that perspective there’s a lot already.
Added onto that, each species within those groups will probably have its own unique venom, so for snakes there’s about 600 species of venomous snakes, so 600 types of venom.
Added onto THAT, venom within one species can also vary a lot, female and male snakes can have different venoms, baby or adult snakes can have different venoms…so the variation can be massive.
Having said that, if we classify venom based on what it does, then really we can narrow it down to 2 types, which are haemotoxic (affects the blood system) or neurotoxic (affects the nervous system), and in general we can apply that to all venomous animals. Hope that answers your question!