Black Mamba

The body is grey to olive; the black is the mouth lining, displayed in threat. It is the fastest snake measured, moving at up to sixteen kilometres an hour over short distances with the head and forebody raised, which is a retreat speed far more often than an attack speed. The reputation for aggression is mostly the reputation of a nervous, extremely quick animal that has been cornered and has run out of options.

The venom is a rapid neurotoxin, and untreated bites are close to uniformly fatal — but the deaths that occur are overwhelmingly a failure of logistics rather than of medicine. Polyvalent antivenom works; the problems are supply gaps across rural sub-Saharan Africa, cold-chain storage, cost, and distance to a clinic that stocks it. Snakebite was not added to the WHO's list of neglected tropical diseases until 2017.