Snakes are sneaky-even questions about them can wiggle right out of your grasp.

Technically, it's the inland taipan—but other snakes are more dangerous. Snakes are sneaky-even questions about them can wiggle right out of your grasp.

"If you're playing Trivial Pursuit, the answer is the inland taipan," quips Kate Jackson, a biologist at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington.When Arocha Musa of Kampala, Uganda, wrote in asking, "What makes the cobra the most dangerous snake?" we quickly realized two things: Cobras aren't considered the most dangerous snake, and finding out which is poses a challenge

That's because the inland taipan has both the most toxic venom and injects the most venom when it bites. A native of Australia that's also called the "fierce snake," the inland taipan packs enough venom to kill a hundred men in one bite, according to the Australia Zoo.

The Australia Venom Research Unit keeps a list of the 25 snakes with the lowest LD50-which are thus the most toxic. The top five are the inland taipan, the eastern brown snake, the coastal taipan, the tiger snake, and the black tiger snake.

Snakes are sneaky-even questions about them can wiggle right out of your grasp

How Toxic? It Depends

Real life isn't so simple. Both Jackson and Steven Seifert, director of the New Mexico Poison and Drug Information Center, emphasize that there are many other circumstances beyond potency that make a snake dangerous, such as the availability of health care and antivenom following a snakebite.

As Seifert puts it, "The most venomous snake is the one that bites you."

According to the Global Snakebite Initiative, snake bites cause about 125,000 deaths a year worldwide. People get bit more often when they're working outside or must be in places where contact with snakes is unavoidable, Seifert noted.