An image of a death adder and an inset image of a hand with snake bite marks.

Main image: Ken/Adobe Stock

Main image: Ken/Adobe Stock

How a near-fatal snake bite sparked a partnership of discovery and education

By Chris Clarke

An image of Chris Hay wrangling a King Cobra in Indonesia.

Chris Hay wrangles a King Cobra in Indonesia. Image: CNZdenek

Chris Hay wrangles a King Cobra in Indonesia. Image: CNZdenek

Without treatment, Chris Hay knew he had minutes to live. The metre-long death adder had struck him hard, its long fangs piercing the skin at the base of his thumb. 

He had tried to move his hand away from its reared head in time, but the predator’s reflexes were too quick. 

The then 21-year-old looked down at the blood flowing from his wound and adrenaline took over. 

Within seconds, the venom had made its way into Mr Hay’s bloodstream, then the toxins began to slowly shut down his bodily functions. 

At first it felt like extreme tiredness. He had difficulty keeping his eyes open, and with every passing second, he began to lose control in his muscles. 

By the time his legs had failed, Mr Hay was on a stretcher in emergency at a Melbourne hospital. He could no longer feel his face. Convulsions shortly followed. 

Chris Hay wrangles a King Cobra in Indonesia. Image: CNZdenek

“I started to vomit uncontrollably, but because I couldn’t form my lips to spit, I had no way to spit the vomit out, so it started flowing back down my windpipe into my lungs,” Mr Hay said.  

“I remember thrashing around on the bed with seven or eight medical staff holding me down, telling me to be calm.  

“I went to take a breath and there was nothing there. I couldn’t breathe and moments after that I lost consciousness.” 

Mr Hay had been at his parents’ house in Melbourne, trying to remove old scales from the face of one their more aggressive pet snakes. But she slipped free and struck. 

Shortly thereafter, he drifted into a three-day coma and experienced what medical experts call ‘locked-in syndrome’.  

He wasn’t physically conscious. He couldn’t move or speak, but his mind was active and he could hear everything in the room. 

“I actually thought I was dead, but I realised that if I’m thinking to myself and talking to myself in my head then I can’t be dead,” Mr Hay said. 

“It was quite a bizarre experience. You’re essentially locked inside your own body. 

“I always tell people now that if they visit someone in a coma, then speak to them because they can hear you.” 

During the first 24 hours, doctors gave Mr Hay every last drop of death adder anti-venom in Victoria, but it didn’t work. A breakthrough finally came when another vial was flown overnight from Sydney. He said that final dose saved his life. 

The death adder is among the world’s most venomous snakes. Prior to anti-venom, envenomations were fatal 50 per cent of the time. 

The bite Mr Hay received in 1996 was one of the worst ever recorded, and his ordeal put him in touch with UQ’s world-renowned venom expert Associate Professor Bryan Fry

The pair investigated Mr Hay’s bite and it set him on a course to meet his future wife, UQ Postdoctoral Research Fellow Dr Christina Zdenek

In 2017, Associate Professor Fry asked Mr Hay to teach Dr Zdenek the pipette method of retrieving snake venom. The specialist technique involves the narrow tip of a pipette being carefully placed over the snake’s fangs. Sparks soon flew. 

Today, the couple is bound by a love of some the world’s most deadly creatures. They keep more than 20 venomous and non-venomous snakes in their home as pets and research assistants, and even spent their honeymoon capturing and photographing rattlesnakes in Arizona. 

But the bond they share runs much deeper. In 2018, while working in a lab at Beaudesert, near Brisbane, Dr Zdenek was also bitten by one of the world’s most venomous snakes. 

“I was hoping to go my whole life without getting done by a snake and I thought it was possible,” she laughed.  

“I was bitten by a Dugite, a highly venomous type of brown snake, the one responsible for the most snakebite deaths in Western Australia.  

“Fortunately, I saw it coming. I had bad angles in this small room and multiple people were in there with me. I was getting my hands on the snake’s head and I could sense it was going wrong.  

“It came up and nicked me with one fang. I was fortunate that I got a very low dose compared to the capacity it had to give.” 

Ironically, the Dugite was one of Chris’ pets and Christina soon realised how lucky she was. 

“I dodged a bullet. It was only 24 hours in hospital,” she said. 

“It could’ve gone really bad. People die from brown snake bites, sometimes within the hour.  

“The stakes are high. The brown snake genus has the quickest clotting venom in the world.” 

Dr Christina Zdenek with a scrub python. Image: Thomas Hunt 

An image of Dr Christina Zdenek wearing a head torch at night and holding a scrub python.

Clotting is what makes Australian snakes so deadly, and it has led to some incredible discoveries at UQ. 

While some snakes, like the cobra, cause necrosis with their venom, brown snakes and taipans turn human blood into jelly. Then, once the venom is fully diluted in the blood, it has the opposite effect. It uses up the blood-clotting proteins and enzymes, preventing the victim’s blood from being able to clot. Uncontrollable bleeding follows.  

“You literally need to intercept that venom with anti-venom before it makes its way into the bloodstream,” Mr Hay said. 

“I’ve never been bitten by either of those two types of snakes, and they’re probably the only two that I would be deeply concerned about if it happened.” 

Watch the video to understand what some snake venoms do to blood.

After a long association with UQ as an Honorary Research Fellow, Mr Hay currently works as a wildlife manager on a pipeline project in remote Western Australia, rescuing and rehoming animals. 

Dr Zdenek manages Venom Evolution Lab in UQ's School of Biological Sciences. When she’s not handling the world’s most deadly creatures, she also studies birds. Recently, her 50th research paper was published, which discussed a new method of locating palm cockatoo nest hollows in the wild

The conservation of Australian animals is another passion the couple shares.

16 July marks World Snake Day, and the couple believes there is still much to be learnt about Australia’s native fauna, including its venom. 

This mindset took Mr Hay on a journey of discovery in 2003, when he and Associate Professor Fry set out to challenge the potency of Australia’s curl snake. 

Mr Hay had long suspected the curl snake was dangerously venomous, but the literature at that time suggested the animal was only mildly so. 

After collecting samples across Australia, Mr Hay and Associate Professor Fry were able to successfully challenge the previous findings.  

An image of Chris Hay with UQ Associate Professor Bryan Fry with a yellow-lipped sea krait off Penida Island, Indonesia.

Chris Hay with UQ Associate Professor Bryan Fry with a yellow-lipped sea krait off Penida Island, Indonesia. Image: supplied

Chris Hay with UQ Associate Professor Bryan Fry with a yellow-lipped sea krait off Penida Island, Indonesia. Image: supplied

A year later, they saw the proof right before their eyes when one of the crew members on a documentary shoot was bitten by one and failed to seek help. The man collapsed on the floor of their hotel and needed to be resuscitated and rushed to hospital. 

It is this sort of work that drives Mr Hay and Dr Zdenek alike. 

“I’d like to continue to educate the public about snakes and to bridge that gap with people’s snake fear, bringing some evidence into that thought process,” Dr Zdenek said. 

“From a venom perspective, I’d like to explore how venoms can help people ameliorate that acute conflict we all have.” 

An image of Dr Christina Zdenek holding a snake

Dr Christina Zdenek will offer a new and surprising perspective on the reputation of Australia’s highly venomous snakes at TEDxUQ 2022: Challengers. Changemakers. Champions. on Saturday 13 August.