Desert Museum Annual Members Meeting - Presentation

Fight or Flight: Birds of Prey Encounters with Venomous Wildlife

A red-tailed hawk descends from flight and lands on a rattlesnake. A juvenile caracara tries out a bark scorpion for breakfast. An elderly owl collapses on the ground, shaking from what appears to be nerve poisoning. In nature, birds of prey tangle with venomous creatures all the time, and often the outcome is fatal. But what happens when the bird is one of the Desert Museum’s ambassador animals, or a participant in Raptor Free Flight? Join us for a presentation on how the museum’s staff and veterinarians work with antivenom experts to provide our birds with the most up-to-date care, and how our successes are helping to improve veterinary care around the world.

Dr. Leslie Boyer, founder of the University of Arizona’s VIPER Institute, is a graduate of Harvard Medical School and a board-certified toxicologist. She has been named a “Local Legend” by the American Medical Women’s Association and the US National Library of Medicine and a “Hero of Rare Disease” by the US FDA, and she has won research awards from the Wilderness Medical Society, the Arizona Bioindustry Association, the American College of Medical Toxicology, and the Mexican Association of Directors of Applied Research and Technology. Antivenoms that she has helped to develop benefit humans and animals with venom injury in North and South America, Europe, the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa.