Black mamba venom is 'better painkiller' than morphine (2012)

I would much rather tend a field of poppies than a mamba snake ranch. Poppies hardly ever run away from thunderstorms.

On one side, this is an incredible medical advancement and opens the door to a lot of other developments, but on the other side if my doctor said I was getting injected with snake venom...

Can’t feel pain if you’re dead.

I really hope this goes somewhere. I've been left on the curbside with a caduceus up my backside because of self-righteousness, paranoia and hysterics. If an analgesic can be created without committing the atrocity of inadvertently imparting a synthetic sense of wellbeing too, much suffering would end. Just don't poison it with acetaminophen! Maybe I'll abandon my unfruitful hunt for opium lettuce and raise snakes instead.

FTA: They admit to being completely baffled about why the mamba would produce it.

I would guess it keeps their target calm. A panicking prey is more likely to injure the snake than one that dies before it realizes it got seriously bitten.