I spent a Monday morning at Reptile Gardens in Rapid City. It can be a strange place to walk into for those unacquainted with reptile zoos: giant tortoises the size of coffee tables, a hallway of glass tanks full of critters you would very much rather not encounter in the wild, and education tidbits throughout ("Red touches yellow, kill a fellow; Red touches black, friend of Jack"). What I did not know before going in — and what surprised me the most — is that a diverse and significant stockpile of snake antivenom quietly sits in my own backyard.
The World's Largest Reptile Zoo
Reptile Gardens is certified by Guinness as the world's largest reptile zoo, housing more than 225 species of reptiles, amphibians, and related animals across its enclosures. A meaningful fraction of that collection is venomous. You can walk past cobras, mambas, rattlesnakes, cottonmouths, copperheads, and a rotating cast of other serpents that would make for a very bad afternoon if they got out.
The Antivenom Vault
Reptile Gardens maintains a substantial antivenom inventory for its venomous species — across the various species that means dozens of distinct antivenoms, most of which are not stocked by hospitals, and many of which are not manufactured in the United States.
Obtaining and maintaining them is neither simple nor cheap. Because many exotic antivenoms are not licensed for routine use in the United States, importing them requires an FDA Investigational New Drug process — often a Biological IND (BB-IND) — to permit emergency use. On top of that, antivenoms have expiration dates, cold-chain storage requirements, and some products costing thousands of dollars per vial — with a serious bite potentially requiring many vials. Keeping a working inventory across dozens of species is a genuinely expensive, genuinely bureaucratic operation that a facility known for tourists petting tortoises maintains year after year.
It also turns out to be a resource beyond Reptile Gardens' own animals. On occasion, they will ship antivenom to hospitals elsewhere in the country when a zookeeper or private keeper of venomous snakes is bitten by an exotic snake that the local hospital has no way of treating. Sometimes those exotic snakes were kept legally. Sometimes they were not. In their nearly eighty-year history, Reptile Gardens has never had to use its own antivenom for a bite on-site — an impressive safety record — but the stash has been used to help treat bites elsewhere.
Rattlesnakes are the venomous snake most residents of the Black Hills are likely to encounter, and hospitals that treat local pit-viper bites generally have access to CroFab. But if you managed to get bitten by something more exotic — the kind of thing that would ordinarily be a very bad problem in South Dakota — there is a reasonable chance the vial that saves you started its day just outside Rapid City.
Snakes in Dermatology
Snakes have influenced medicine since its inception — the Rod of Asclepius, the single-serpent staff, remains the traditional symbol of medicine, and the two-snake caduceus of Hermes was later borrowed for medical use in some U.S. contexts. Dermatology is no exception. Two terms are worth highlighting. The first is serpiginous, from the Latin serpere (to creep). We use it to describe rashes and lesions that spread in a wavy, snake-like path across the skin — cutaneous larva migrans is the classic example, but the term applies to any advancing, curving border.
The second is ophiasis, from the Greek ophis (snake), which names a specific pattern of alopecia areata (autoimmune hair loss) in which the bald patch forms a band along the temporal and occipital hairline — essentially a curving ribbon of hair loss that wraps around the back of the scalp. The Roman physician Celsus is often credited with early descriptions of this pattern, back in the first century, and the name has stuck for two thousand years. It is often more difficult to treat than the classic round patch of alopecia areata, so recognizing the pattern has clinical implications.
Ophiophobes Beware
Snakes have been captivating humans since our earliest days, and the fascination — half wonder, half genuine terror — still shows up in the crowds that flock to Reptile Gardens on a summer day. Snakes call upon an ancient instinct that conjures up powerful emotions. Something I fully appreciated while staring at a lethal black mamba only a few inches from my face.
Disclaimer: This article is general educational content, not medical advice. If you are bitten by any snake, seek immediate medical evaluation.
References
Reptile Gardens. Antivenin vs. Antivenom. Accessed August 2026.
Guinness World Records. Meet the snakes, tortoises and other animals at the largest reptile zoo. 2017.