April 20, 2010 • 23 mins
Sure, venom could kill you -- but it could also cure you. The medicinal use of venom dates back thousands of years and continues to the present day. Tune in as Allison and Robert break down the science behind venom and medicine in this podcast.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to stuff from the science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Wow, Hey, this is Alson I don't know,
the science senator at how stuff works dot com. And
this is Robert Lamb, science writer at how stuff works
dot com. Alison, you know the old saying spoonful of
(00:24):
sugar makes the medicine go down? I do? I do?
Is that Mary Poppins? Um? I think so? Um. Mary
Poppins said that famously, And the whole idea is because
the medicine is so horrible, just taste so yucky that
you've got to have a massive amount of sugar to
get a child to take it. The child will choose
death over the yucky taste. So you've got to have
an appropriate amount of sweetness to cancel it out. Right, Well,
(00:45):
you know you can get the drugs right now and
choose your flavoring. Well yeah, yeah, but but great flavoring.
It's still pretty fat. That's still that's like basically they're
still doing the same thing. They're giving you the spoonful
of sugar or awful great flavoring whatever to mask the
odiousness of the medicine, and it tends not to really
mask it. It's like like if you ever had your
teeth polished and they use that the stuff that's it's
not mint flavored, but it's like cherry flavored, So it
(01:07):
ends up not being it's not really cherry. It's just
kind of a slightly it's even more yucky for trying
to be something it's not. You know, yes, yes, but
this leads to question, um, how much sugar If it's
one spoonful of sugar to counteract the medicine, how much
sugar would you need if the cure for your sickness was, say,
a snake bite or a sting from some sort of
(01:31):
venomous spider. Quite a lot of sugar, right, so it seems. Yeah,
so that's what we're talking about today. That's our roundabout
in to to the use of venoms as and the
virtues of venom. Actually, I think the venom really gets
a bad rap, namely because when we think of venom,
we think of horrible pain. Yeah, we think of you know,
getting bit by like an inland taipe in a snake
(01:53):
whose venom is supposedly one of the most toxic in
the world. Inside this, you know, terrible agonizing death in
America matter of minutes. Yeah, or any Just do a
Google image search and you'll see all number of horrible black,
gaping wounds and people with you know, limbs swollen up
like like giant balloons. Yeah, so venom, as you guys know,
it comes with a built in delivery system. It's not
(02:14):
just um a defensive mechanism. It tends to be used
as an offensive mechanism. You know, you think of a
snake and it has the venom, will it needs the
means to deliver it, so the fangs or how whatever
means it chooses. And so, aside from these agonizing deaths
that induces, venom is actually pretty cool And there's a
lot of interesting therapeutic research that's going on out there
(02:35):
in science labs right now. And why are they doing this?
Why is whenom so promising? Well, because it's full stuff
like proteins that can manage pain and treat illnesses. So
Robert and I thought we'd do a little survey of
some of the research that's going on with the world's
venomous creatures. And of course I'm kicking off with snakes.
I think I will definitely say that I've had a
(02:55):
turnaround with my feeling for snakes, they're just amazingly, amazingly
cool organisms. We did a whole series of articles um
for an Animal Planet show called Wild Vecon in which
we examine the therapeutic benefits of venom, snake venom in particular,
and it's pretty amazing. So let's do a quicker view
of some of the key components found in different snake venoms.
(03:18):
Some of the stuff that just may kill you or
cause you great pain. You have stuff like cytotoxins, and
what a citotoxin is gonna do. They're gonna cause cell death. Basically,
there's actually beginning the digestion process for the snake like
grattlesnakes for example, of cytotoxins, and then use stuff like
hemotoxins and this is this gets the blood involves and
you can cause blood clots and basically decimate the blood vessels. Um.
(03:41):
So a gaboon viper they have have these, isn't it?
Or a motorcycle I'm picturing like a fancy Japanese motorcycle.
Well it's also a snake, yes, yes it is. And
then you use stuff like neurotoxins and this is going
to affect the praise nervous system and do stuff like
nerve impulses and make the prey become paralyzed or um
(04:04):
it could just make the nervous system collapse. So a
cobra and a sea snake might have these elements. So
how is science interested in using UH venom? Any guesses, Well,
the cell death um aspect would definitely lend itself well
to fighting cancer or destroying any kind of cells that
(04:24):
need to get got. And that is true. And also
cobra venom contains a pretty powerful anti coagulants and these
anti coagulants are used as a blood thinner and humans.
And there's a company that actually manufactures a drub called Exanta,
and they've tested extensively in clinical trials UH with like
thousands and thousands of volunteers, and the European Union has
(04:47):
approved this particular drug derive from cobra venom for preventing
clots after surgery. So it's pretty cool. It's a long
way from the cobra, you know, and it's habitat um.
I have a cool use for a cobra than them
as Well's there if if you go to Thailand, you
you may occasionally see in a bar you'll see like
a fancy bottle of this amber liquid that has a
(05:10):
whole cobra in it. And this is a rice whiskey
that has been uh that that has been infused with
with a dead cobra, all right, and they drink it
over there apparently is like it's a very manly thank
if you I didn't, I think it's technically illegal. Um,
and I wasn't. There's so much to be floored by
over there without seeking out potentially deadly in toxicanst but
(05:33):
it's it's also apparently seen as an aphrodisiac. And there's
actually a really good review of it online at spirits
review dot com where he describes it quote as a
as a quote an interesting, if potentially neurotoxic whiskey unquote,
and he describes the taste as quote fishy hot taste,
almost like drinking peanut oil and alcohol with notes of
(05:55):
gen singh uh. And apparently it creates this this kind
of like tingling effect all over and this numbing um.
So potentially very dangerous with very little application. But if
you ever go to Thailand and you try it, be
sure to let us know don't do not try it,
(06:15):
because we're talking about it for legal purposes, but if
you have tried it, please please email us. Yeah, so
cobra venom is pretty popular in scientific circles because it's
also being uh investigated to see how it affects MS
or a multiple sclerosis. Uh. And you guys know that's
the chronic disease of your central nervous system. So in
patients with MS, the immune system is attacking the nerve
(06:38):
cells and it's stripping off these um protective insulating sheets
on the nerve cells. So cobra toxin, however, is suppressing
the immune system and animals with the disease. In fact,
early research has been sur promising that they have clinical
trials going on now to study the effects of cobra
toxin human patients with MS, which pretty neat. They've also
(06:59):
used as snake foundom to figure out ways to anesthetize
patients during surgery. Really disguise the limit when it comes
to snake venom. I mean, it just contains so many
different elements that could be used for potential therapeutic purposes.
But it takes a long way to go from a
raw talx into an FDA proof drug, So we'll see.
I mean, this is definitely an area to watch. It's
(07:19):
also interesting and that as as is the case with
with a lot of these venoms we're talking about, um,
older traditional forms of medicine. We're using these thousands of
years ago. Take ancient Indian ara vedic medicine. Um. They
and I found this really interesting. They collect the venom
like nowadays. You've probably seen a footage where they take
the snake and they stick its things over a glass
(07:42):
and kind of like squeeze themselves a little beaker full
of venom. Um. But apparently they take the snake, force
it to sink its things into a piece of fruit,
and the fruit would absorb the venom and then you
would ingest the fruit. Uh, if you needed to be
treated for like liver dysfunctions or eye disease or or
you know, various stuff, various illnesses. So what do you
(08:04):
what do you have on wasps and bees? Oh? Well, um,
wasp and bees. Wasp I find particularly fascinating. Uh you
write an article about right? Um? Well yeah, I actually
wrote how wasps work as well. That was one of
my earlier articles here at the site. So you're a
well of wasp knowledge. I really gore to respect them
like a lot of people are like, oh, wasp, and
(08:24):
they're like, oh, but they love bees, like oh, you know, God,
let me buy some chapstick with a bee on it
and let me dress my child like a bee for Halloween.
But wasps, it's just kill on site. The wasp are
really amazing. I mean there, I could go on a
whole tangent. But like, you know, you think you have
too many poisono spiders around your house? Are you're afraid
of like brown, reclusive and whatever? Get dirt dabbers because
dirt dabbers. Um, you know, the little the ones that
(08:46):
build their little nests out of mud. I think they're
called different things in different regions. But those guys eat
spiders like crazy. They'll like bring them back for their young.
Why did they bring them? Bring spiders back for their
young is key to why there's a lot of possibility
for their for their venom. Yeah, now, wasp, whether you're
talking about wasps or bees and bees or just um,
(09:08):
the bees evolved from from wasp. Okay, only the females
have stingers, and that's because the stinger is an ovipositor.
This is an egg laying organ that only and only
the females have it. The purpose of the ovapositor is
to lay eggs inside of another organism, so it's it's
you know, it's sharp, it sticks into another creature's body.
(09:29):
And the venom. The purpose of the venom would be
too incapacitate the prey, but also to um to make
changes in it to where it can be used as
a living nursery for the growing young, which will eventually
um consume it from the inside out. So interesting, yeah,
So to facilitate this, the venom inflix such symptoms as
(09:52):
developmental arrest, growth alteration, immune response suppression, paralysis, and behavior modification.
So it's a there's a there's a it's a complicated UM,
you know, toxin, there's a there's a lot of different
things that can go on in these in these venoms,
and that means there's a lot of potential to apply
these two UH and and turn them into into medicines
(10:12):
that we can use. UM. There's been a fair amount
of recent buzz over the mapping of the parasitic wasp genome,
for it's a species called Nessonium, and UH researchers think
that this holds a lot of potential in creating new medicines.
In some cases it might we might be able to
find particular venoms that we can actually use. But then
sometimes researchers can use these as leads where we observe
(10:35):
the the changes that a particular venom causes, and then
we can try and create something that replicates those effects.
That that's really fascinating. And as far as bees goes,
there's a whole since again everyone loves bees, but wasps
or dirty creatures. There are people that that are just
crazy about be curatives. It's they call it um apitherapy,
(10:57):
and this is an alternative medicine you. But there are
people that just are like, oh, you're sick, here, have
some b wax, have some honey, have some have some here,
just let some be sting and it's gonna be fine. Um.
They're they're really sold on the idea. But Western medicine
is still kind of feeling it out. Are their studies investigating, Yeah, yeah,
(11:19):
there are studies. It's a it's just the scientists are
not as sold on it as the as the alternative
medicine crowd um. And then there's rachmans and spiders um,
the ones that the wasp don't catch and fill what
they're young. Take scorpions for instance, most of the you know,
most people probably think of these is just the things
(11:40):
that you don't want in your shoes, right Like in
Mexico alone, I think each year a hundred thousand people
suffer from scorpion stings UM and uh, you know, and
then it can be pretty bad news. You can cause delirium,
intensive pain, et cetera. But Harvard researchers UM experimented with
giving my nice calatoxin from scorpion venom and they observed
(12:04):
eight less jawbone loss in the rats. Okay, now this
is this is how this this works. The calatoxin blocks
a protein that plays a major role in inflammation, and
when it's blocked, it also decreases the activity of a
protein UM that plays a role in stimulating bone eating
um Osteo class. So they think it could it could
(12:24):
have a lot of potential to you know, help help
fight things like um, you know, opteoporosis, etcetera. Right, so
all these elderly women who are you know, hopping up
on calcium venoms might instead be scorpion scorpion or two
you can wear them like like broaches, you know, UM
and this is this is a really amazing radioactive scorpion venom,
(12:45):
which I sounds like a set up for a comic
book hero. But and I think maybe is like the
scorpion you know comic books, right, No, no, you don't
know com but no, I think the scorpion is anyway,
But this has nothing to do with that. The venom
of the yellow Israeli scorpion shows preferential attachment too, glioma
(13:05):
tumor cells in the brain or spine. All right, So
scientists have figured out that they can attach a radio
radioactive iodine to an artificial version of this venom. So
the artificial version of this venom then attaches to the
tumor cell, and since it's got a little backpack of radiation,
the radiation kills the cell. So it's kind of used
(13:27):
it like a kind of like a trojan horse kind
of deal. Very cool. Yeah, so let's get to the water.
Then let's do it. List at the water, what do
you got? Jellyfish? Jellyfish and fish in the water. You're
gonna find venomous jellyfish and you know, plain old fish.
In fact, one pretty interesting fact I came across when
we're doing this venom research was that there are more
venomous fish than snakes, according to this two thousand six
(13:50):
study published in the Journal of Heredity. Well, that makes
sense because the the oceans are really the most just,
i mean, just the roughest area to try and cut
out an evolutionary ray Niche did you do it? Well?
So one of the species that they mentioned is the
lion fish. Didn't you do a blog post about their
line fishline fish is a really horrible invasive species in
the um in the Atlantic waters um. It's just most
(14:14):
of most of the native species aren't used to handling
the venom that these guys carry in their spine. They're
beautiful fish, and that's one of the reasons that they're
when they're like three different reasons, there are a big problem,
and one of them is that people get them for
their saltwater aquariums and then they end up losing them
or dumping them, et cetera. And now down the toilet. Yeah, yeah,
that's not good. So the animal in the water that
(14:36):
really captured my interest was this box jellyfish. Have ever
heard of a box jellyfish? No? Is it cute shaped?
Because I'm picturing a cube? No, it's roughly like the
size of a peanut, and it has one of the
most toxic venoms in the world. And one of the
species is called the molo kinney. And how did it
get its name, Well from a US tourist who was
(14:58):
killed by one in two thousand two. Up a gentleman
by the name of Robert King who is presumably mining
his own business and swimming off the coast of Australia
and Wemmo. He was stung by one of these boxed jellyfish,
the molochini, and he died. And it wasn't just any death,
but that when when you get a sting from one
of these organisms, that can lead to symptoms like you know,
(15:18):
shooting pains in your muscles and chests. You get some
muscle cramps in your arms, you get severe pain in
the back and in your kidneys, a burning sensation of
the skin, and face headaches. Oh and this is my
favorite one, um, as far as one of these can
be a favorite. A psychological phenomena like the feeling of
impending death does a lot of work for just one
(15:39):
venom by a peanut sized jellyfish. So it's gotten so
bad and people are so afraid of getting stung by
these particular jellyfish that Aussee lifeguards sometimes were penny hose. No,
I'm not kidding. The Australian lifeguards sometimes we're panyos on
their arms and legs to prevent the jellies from staying.
I guess because I just hate that. I mean, they
(16:03):
should feel comfortable wearing the pantyhouse anyway, they shouldn't have
to feel like they need to make an excuse about
crazy della fish. But now, really it really actually prevents
being stung. This is some of the lore that's out there,
and people do actually do it. Do they wear the
stocking over their head too, right, so they can do
a bank after you know, I'm gonna go swimming, put
on my pantios and then I'm gonna pull my stocking
over my head and go to a bank heist. I
(16:24):
don't know. So they've been studying this box jelly fish.
You figure out a product that could protect bathers from
being stung other than wearing pantyhose. Of course, researchers are
also the king to to find out like how venoms
have evolved in box jellies, and they're developing anti venoms
for the stings, because these are a serious problem in
Australian waters. It just seems like everything in Australia's poisonous,
except for maybe the kangaroos and the quals, but they
(16:46):
probably they're probably packing a stinger somewhere. We just haven't
noticed it yet. Right, that snake I haven't mentioned at
the beginning, the most toxic snake in the world, also
the native of Australia. I don't know how you guys
do it. As tell me about frogs, oh, frogs, um Well,
traditional Chinese medicine has incocorporated the frogs for thousands of years,
(17:08):
and modern Western medicine is just kind of catching up
with all this. So here are just a few frogs
that we think have some potential. There's the giant leaf frog.
This giant leaf frog, not leap frog. Not leap frog.
That's that's the different thing entirely. But it has peptides,
and it's the venom that can reduce blood pressure by
(17:29):
in small doses under lab conditions, So don't don't go
buying them on eBay and then sticking them to your body.
The same frog also produces a peptide that stops blood
from clotting, and they think this might be useful to
fight deep vein thrombosis. This is the condition that you're
supposed to be wary of if you're taking any long
flights in like economy. Oh yeah, that's why you're supposed
(17:52):
to walk around. Yeah, And this is also why if
you've taken any long flights recently and you notice the
stewardess is handing out frogs at the end of the flight,
that's what this is about. Um all right. Then there's
the African running frog, and this one actually doesn't have
any medical significance significance, but since it uses a venom
to kill insects for prey, they think it might be
(18:15):
useful in um in like coating crops to keep pests away.
And also the wasps that I entered and mentioned earlier,
the the parasitic wasps, They think that would also might
have a lot of potential as a pesticide enemy uses pesticide.
Interesting back to frogs, though, there's the Australian tree frog,
(18:36):
which is shown some um some success in the fighting
conditions of that are resistant to antibiotics, and this is
because the venom um embeds in the membrane of the
bacteria and burst the cell and they can't really become
immune to that. And then there's the North American pond
(18:56):
frog and they found the molecules in this particular have
been a stimulate or inhibit the growth of cancer tumors.
So there's some research going into that and seeing what
applications that might have in fighting cancer. So it seems
like frogs in in addition to coding your you know,
poisoned darts to a shoot out of your blowguns, you know,
they have a lot of medical possibilities as well. Yeah,
(19:19):
it definitely seems that there's a lot of venom research
that could be used for therapeutic purposes for people with
heart problems, I mean that keeps on coming up, and
people with blood pressure and uh and I don't think
they've really looked into this, but I think energy drinks
could be a big, big area of development. You know,
the one called venom, I think there's one. There's one
called venom, but I didn't look it up, so I
don't know. But it actually has like scorpion venom or
(19:42):
but you could have the you could have a whole line,
like each one has a different cartoon animal on it.
Like one has a wasp and then there's like a scorpion.
It's like it's like using its close to like lift weights,
you know, marketed towards each one could be a specific
animal marketed towards it a particular like extreme sport or
high energy, macho caffeine kind of a thing. All right,
(20:02):
So let's go from frogs to our last animal, and
our last animals a mammal, the platypus. We've covered reptiles, spiders, jellyfish, snakes, frogs,
but what about mammals. I don't I don't tend to
think of venomous mammals to you know, and like a
venomous ape. Yeah, I love the idea of enomous eate.
But I completely made it up. And that's the thing.
(20:25):
The platypus really sounds like a made up animal. It
really does. In fact, they thought it was made up.
There was a platypus that was sent to the Brits
um a while a while back, you know, eons ago,
and the Brits didn't believe that it was and so they,
you know, they thought it was like, yeah, they thought
it was a fake animal. Because apparently Chinese folks have
(20:45):
been known to do this. They made up an animal
called an Eastern mermaid. Yeah, it was like the monkey
and the fish parts, right, so they thought that this
platypus was a similar thing. Yeah, kind of Coney Island
freak show kind of stuff. Well, so platypuss guys probably
remember it's it's the duck build furry creature. It's this
weird combo of a bird and a reptile and a mammal,
(21:06):
but it actually is a mammal. They're like these odd
balls of the animal kingdom. But the most interesting thing is, well,
one of the most interesting things in platypus lore is
that the males have these venomous spurs on the back
of each of their hind legs. My females have the
spurs too, but they fall off before adulthood. The only
thing that researchers can think of for the for the
(21:26):
spurs is that they're they're used when males are duking
it out for a mate. So nobody's died from a
platypus poisoning per se. In fact, we have an article
of that same name. Could a platypus poison me? By
by Christen Conger. I believe you should check it up.
So there are no known human fatalities, but surely some
dogs have dined. And in case you're thinking that platypus
(21:48):
venom is is, you know nothing in the venom kingdom.
In humans, the pain caused by platypus venom isn't relieved
by morphine, so that's pretty pretty scruciating. So Assie researchers
again comes down to Australia. They're looking into how platypus
venom could be used for pain management. There's also a
lot of pain management themes going through this venom applications.
(22:09):
They're also really interested in the platypus just generally because
it's the oldest surviving branch of all mammals living today
and they in addition they've they've undertaken a draft genome
analysis of the duck build platypus. So far, we've seen
platypus venom show positive results in reducing great amounts of
pain and that's about it. So it seems like platypus
(22:30):
venom researches is wide open if any of you guys
are looking for an area research to get to get
going in, and it sounds like a place to go
with Australia for any of these venom research places. Just
make sure you don't get a run in your pantyhouse. Sorry,
that could be the last mistake you make. So if
you've been bitten by a venomous animal or used one
of the medicines we mentioned, or drank the cobra drink
(22:50):
in Thailand, yes do do email us if you've actually
consumed that beverage because I'm very interested here at tales. Yeah,
send us an email at science stuff at how stuff
works dot com. Or you can check out some of
our related content like do jellyfish have the deadliest venom
in the world? Or Christian Congress fine article that we
just mentioned on the Platypus, or visit the blogs. That's
(23:11):
all we got. Thanks for listening. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.
Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
the house stuff works dot com home page
Welcome to stuff from the science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Wow, Hey, this is Alson I don't know,
the science senator at how stuff works dot com. And
this is Robert Lamb, science writer at how stuff works
dot com. Alison, you know the old saying spoonful of
(00:24):
sugar makes the medicine go down? I do? I do?
Is that Mary Poppins? Um? I think so? Um. Mary
Poppins said that famously, And the whole idea is because
the medicine is so horrible, just taste so yucky that
you've got to have a massive amount of sugar to
get a child to take it. The child will choose
death over the yucky taste. So you've got to have
an appropriate amount of sweetness to cancel it out. Right, Well,
(00:45):
you know you can get the drugs right now and
choose your flavoring. Well yeah, yeah, but but great flavoring.
It's still pretty fat. That's still that's like basically they're
still doing the same thing. They're giving you the spoonful
of sugar or awful great flavoring whatever to mask the
odiousness of the medicine, and it tends not to really
mask it. It's like like if you ever had your
teeth polished and they use that the stuff that's it's
not mint flavored, but it's like cherry flavored, So it
(01:07):
ends up not being it's not really cherry. It's just
kind of a slightly it's even more yucky for trying
to be something it's not. You know, yes, yes, but
this leads to question, um, how much sugar If it's
one spoonful of sugar to counteract the medicine, how much
sugar would you need if the cure for your sickness was, say,
a snake bite or a sting from some sort of
(01:31):
venomous spider. Quite a lot of sugar, right, so it seems. Yeah,
so that's what we're talking about today. That's our roundabout
in to to the use of venoms as and the
virtues of venom. Actually, I think the venom really gets
a bad rap, namely because when we think of venom,
we think of horrible pain. Yeah, we think of you know,
getting bit by like an inland taipe in a snake
(01:53):
whose venom is supposedly one of the most toxic in
the world. Inside this, you know, terrible agonizing death in
America matter of minutes. Yeah, or any Just do a
Google image search and you'll see all number of horrible black,
gaping wounds and people with you know, limbs swollen up
like like giant balloons. Yeah, so venom, as you guys know,
it comes with a built in delivery system. It's not
(02:14):
just um a defensive mechanism. It tends to be used
as an offensive mechanism. You know, you think of a
snake and it has the venom, will it needs the
means to deliver it, so the fangs or how whatever
means it chooses. And so, aside from these agonizing deaths
that induces, venom is actually pretty cool And there's a
lot of interesting therapeutic research that's going on out there
(02:35):
in science labs right now. And why are they doing this?
Why is whenom so promising? Well, because it's full stuff
like proteins that can manage pain and treat illnesses. So
Robert and I thought we'd do a little survey of
some of the research that's going on with the world's
venomous creatures. And of course I'm kicking off with snakes.
I think I will definitely say that I've had a
(02:55):
turnaround with my feeling for snakes, they're just amazingly, amazingly
cool organisms. We did a whole series of articles um
for an Animal Planet show called Wild Vecon in which
we examine the therapeutic benefits of venom, snake venom in particular,
and it's pretty amazing. So let's do a quicker view
of some of the key components found in different snake venoms.
(03:18):
Some of the stuff that just may kill you or
cause you great pain. You have stuff like cytotoxins, and
what a citotoxin is gonna do. They're gonna cause cell death. Basically,
there's actually beginning the digestion process for the snake like
grattlesnakes for example, of cytotoxins, and then use stuff like
hemotoxins and this is this gets the blood involves and
you can cause blood clots and basically decimate the blood vessels. Um.
(03:41):
So a gaboon viper they have have these, isn't it?
Or a motorcycle I'm picturing like a fancy Japanese motorcycle.
Well it's also a snake, yes, yes it is. And
then you use stuff like neurotoxins and this is going
to affect the praise nervous system and do stuff like
nerve impulses and make the prey become paralyzed or um
(04:04):
it could just make the nervous system collapse. So a
cobra and a sea snake might have these elements. So
how is science interested in using UH venom? Any guesses, Well,
the cell death um aspect would definitely lend itself well
to fighting cancer or destroying any kind of cells that
(04:24):
need to get got. And that is true. And also
cobra venom contains a pretty powerful anti coagulants and these
anti coagulants are used as a blood thinner and humans.
And there's a company that actually manufactures a drub called Exanta,
and they've tested extensively in clinical trials UH with like
thousands and thousands of volunteers, and the European Union has
(04:47):
approved this particular drug derive from cobra venom for preventing
clots after surgery. So it's pretty cool. It's a long
way from the cobra, you know, and it's habitat um.
I have a cool use for a cobra than them
as Well's there if if you go to Thailand, you
you may occasionally see in a bar you'll see like
a fancy bottle of this amber liquid that has a
(05:10):
whole cobra in it. And this is a rice whiskey
that has been uh that that has been infused with
with a dead cobra, all right, and they drink it
over there apparently is like it's a very manly thank
if you I didn't, I think it's technically illegal. Um,
and I wasn't. There's so much to be floored by
over there without seeking out potentially deadly in toxicanst but
(05:33):
it's it's also apparently seen as an aphrodisiac. And there's
actually a really good review of it online at spirits
review dot com where he describes it quote as a
as a quote an interesting, if potentially neurotoxic whiskey unquote,
and he describes the taste as quote fishy hot taste,
almost like drinking peanut oil and alcohol with notes of
(05:55):
gen singh uh. And apparently it creates this this kind
of like tingling effect all over and this numbing um.
So potentially very dangerous with very little application. But if
you ever go to Thailand and you try it, be
sure to let us know don't do not try it,
(06:15):
because we're talking about it for legal purposes, but if
you have tried it, please please email us. Yeah, so
cobra venom is pretty popular in scientific circles because it's
also being uh investigated to see how it affects MS
or a multiple sclerosis. Uh. And you guys know that's
the chronic disease of your central nervous system. So in
patients with MS, the immune system is attacking the nerve
(06:38):
cells and it's stripping off these um protective insulating sheets
on the nerve cells. So cobra toxin, however, is suppressing
the immune system and animals with the disease. In fact,
early research has been sur promising that they have clinical
trials going on now to study the effects of cobra
toxin human patients with MS, which pretty neat. They've also
(06:59):
used as snake foundom to figure out ways to anesthetize
patients during surgery. Really disguise the limit when it comes
to snake venom. I mean, it just contains so many
different elements that could be used for potential therapeutic purposes.
But it takes a long way to go from a
raw talx into an FDA proof drug, So we'll see.
I mean, this is definitely an area to watch. It's
(07:19):
also interesting and that as as is the case with
with a lot of these venoms we're talking about, um,
older traditional forms of medicine. We're using these thousands of
years ago. Take ancient Indian ara vedic medicine. Um. They
and I found this really interesting. They collect the venom
like nowadays. You've probably seen a footage where they take
the snake and they stick its things over a glass
(07:42):
and kind of like squeeze themselves a little beaker full
of venom. Um. But apparently they take the snake, force
it to sink its things into a piece of fruit,
and the fruit would absorb the venom and then you
would ingest the fruit. Uh, if you needed to be
treated for like liver dysfunctions or eye disease or or
you know, various stuff, various illnesses. So what do you
(08:04):
what do you have on wasps and bees? Oh? Well, um,
wasp and bees. Wasp I find particularly fascinating. Uh you
write an article about right? Um? Well yeah, I actually
wrote how wasps work as well. That was one of
my earlier articles here at the site. So you're a
well of wasp knowledge. I really gore to respect them
like a lot of people are like, oh, wasp, and
(08:24):
they're like, oh, but they love bees, like oh, you know, God,
let me buy some chapstick with a bee on it
and let me dress my child like a bee for Halloween.
But wasps, it's just kill on site. The wasp are
really amazing. I mean there, I could go on a
whole tangent. But like, you know, you think you have
too many poisono spiders around your house? Are you're afraid
of like brown, reclusive and whatever? Get dirt dabbers because
dirt dabbers. Um, you know, the little the ones that
(08:46):
build their little nests out of mud. I think they're
called different things in different regions. But those guys eat
spiders like crazy. They'll like bring them back for their young.
Why did they bring them? Bring spiders back for their
young is key to why there's a lot of possibility
for their for their venom. Yeah, now, wasp, whether you're
talking about wasps or bees and bees or just um,
(09:08):
the bees evolved from from wasp. Okay, only the females
have stingers, and that's because the stinger is an ovipositor.
This is an egg laying organ that only and only
the females have it. The purpose of the ovapositor is
to lay eggs inside of another organism, so it's it's
you know, it's sharp, it sticks into another creature's body.
(09:29):
And the venom. The purpose of the venom would be
too incapacitate the prey, but also to um to make
changes in it to where it can be used as
a living nursery for the growing young, which will eventually
um consume it from the inside out. So interesting, yeah,
So to facilitate this, the venom inflix such symptoms as
(09:52):
developmental arrest, growth alteration, immune response suppression, paralysis, and behavior modification.
So it's a there's a there's a it's a complicated UM,
you know, toxin, there's a there's a lot of different
things that can go on in these in these venoms,
and that means there's a lot of potential to apply
these two UH and and turn them into into medicines
(10:12):
that we can use. UM. There's been a fair amount
of recent buzz over the mapping of the parasitic wasp genome,
for it's a species called Nessonium, and UH researchers think
that this holds a lot of potential in creating new medicines.
In some cases it might we might be able to
find particular venoms that we can actually use. But then
sometimes researchers can use these as leads where we observe
(10:35):
the the changes that a particular venom causes, and then
we can try and create something that replicates those effects.
That that's really fascinating. And as far as bees goes,
there's a whole since again everyone loves bees, but wasps
or dirty creatures. There are people that that are just
crazy about be curatives. It's they call it um apitherapy,
(10:57):
and this is an alternative medicine you. But there are
people that just are like, oh, you're sick, here, have
some b wax, have some honey, have some have some here,
just let some be sting and it's gonna be fine. Um.
They're they're really sold on the idea. But Western medicine
is still kind of feeling it out. Are their studies investigating, Yeah, yeah,
(11:19):
there are studies. It's a it's just the scientists are
not as sold on it as the as the alternative
medicine crowd um. And then there's rachmans and spiders um,
the ones that the wasp don't catch and fill what
they're young. Take scorpions for instance, most of the you know,
most people probably think of these is just the things
(11:40):
that you don't want in your shoes, right Like in
Mexico alone, I think each year a hundred thousand people
suffer from scorpion stings UM and uh, you know, and
then it can be pretty bad news. You can cause delirium,
intensive pain, et cetera. But Harvard researchers UM experimented with
giving my nice calatoxin from scorpion venom and they observed
(12:04):
eight less jawbone loss in the rats. Okay, now this
is this is how this this works. The calatoxin blocks
a protein that plays a major role in inflammation, and
when it's blocked, it also decreases the activity of a
protein UM that plays a role in stimulating bone eating
um Osteo class. So they think it could it could
(12:24):
have a lot of potential to you know, help help
fight things like um, you know, opteoporosis, etcetera. Right, so
all these elderly women who are you know, hopping up
on calcium venoms might instead be scorpion scorpion or two
you can wear them like like broaches, you know, UM
and this is this is a really amazing radioactive scorpion venom,
(12:45):
which I sounds like a set up for a comic
book hero. But and I think maybe is like the
scorpion you know comic books, right, No, no, you don't
know com but no, I think the scorpion is anyway,
But this has nothing to do with that. The venom
of the yellow Israeli scorpion shows preferential attachment too, glioma
(13:05):
tumor cells in the brain or spine. All right, So
scientists have figured out that they can attach a radio
radioactive iodine to an artificial version of this venom. So
the artificial version of this venom then attaches to the
tumor cell, and since it's got a little backpack of radiation,
the radiation kills the cell. So it's kind of used
(13:27):
it like a kind of like a trojan horse kind
of deal. Very cool. Yeah, so let's get to the water.
Then let's do it. List at the water, what do
you got? Jellyfish? Jellyfish and fish in the water. You're
gonna find venomous jellyfish and you know, plain old fish.
In fact, one pretty interesting fact I came across when
we're doing this venom research was that there are more
venomous fish than snakes, according to this two thousand six
(13:50):
study published in the Journal of Heredity. Well, that makes
sense because the the oceans are really the most just,
i mean, just the roughest area to try and cut
out an evolutionary ray Niche did you do it? Well?
So one of the species that they mentioned is the
lion fish. Didn't you do a blog post about their
line fishline fish is a really horrible invasive species in
the um in the Atlantic waters um. It's just most
(14:14):
of most of the native species aren't used to handling
the venom that these guys carry in their spine. They're
beautiful fish, and that's one of the reasons that they're
when they're like three different reasons, there are a big problem,
and one of them is that people get them for
their saltwater aquariums and then they end up losing them
or dumping them, et cetera. And now down the toilet. Yeah, yeah,
that's not good. So the animal in the water that
(14:36):
really captured my interest was this box jellyfish. Have ever
heard of a box jellyfish? No? Is it cute shaped?
Because I'm picturing a cube? No, it's roughly like the
size of a peanut, and it has one of the
most toxic venoms in the world. And one of the
species is called the molo kinney. And how did it
get its name, Well from a US tourist who was
(14:58):
killed by one in two thousand two. Up a gentleman
by the name of Robert King who is presumably mining
his own business and swimming off the coast of Australia
and Wemmo. He was stung by one of these boxed jellyfish,
the molochini, and he died. And it wasn't just any death,
but that when when you get a sting from one
of these organisms, that can lead to symptoms like you know,
(15:18):
shooting pains in your muscles and chests. You get some
muscle cramps in your arms, you get severe pain in
the back and in your kidneys, a burning sensation of
the skin, and face headaches. Oh and this is my
favorite one, um, as far as one of these can
be a favorite. A psychological phenomena like the feeling of
impending death does a lot of work for just one
(15:39):
venom by a peanut sized jellyfish. So it's gotten so
bad and people are so afraid of getting stung by
these particular jellyfish that Aussee lifeguards sometimes were penny hose. No,
I'm not kidding. The Australian lifeguards sometimes we're panyos on
their arms and legs to prevent the jellies from staying.
I guess because I just hate that. I mean, they
(16:03):
should feel comfortable wearing the pantyhouse anyway, they shouldn't have
to feel like they need to make an excuse about
crazy della fish. But now, really it really actually prevents
being stung. This is some of the lore that's out there,
and people do actually do it. Do they wear the
stocking over their head too, right, so they can do
a bank after you know, I'm gonna go swimming, put
on my pantios and then I'm gonna pull my stocking
over my head and go to a bank heist. I
(16:24):
don't know. So they've been studying this box jelly fish.
You figure out a product that could protect bathers from
being stung other than wearing pantyhose. Of course, researchers are
also the king to to find out like how venoms
have evolved in box jellies, and they're developing anti venoms
for the stings, because these are a serious problem in
Australian waters. It just seems like everything in Australia's poisonous,
except for maybe the kangaroos and the quals, but they
(16:46):
probably they're probably packing a stinger somewhere. We just haven't
noticed it yet. Right, that snake I haven't mentioned at
the beginning, the most toxic snake in the world, also
the native of Australia. I don't know how you guys
do it. As tell me about frogs, oh, frogs, um Well,
traditional Chinese medicine has incocorporated the frogs for thousands of years,
(17:08):
and modern Western medicine is just kind of catching up
with all this. So here are just a few frogs
that we think have some potential. There's the giant leaf frog.
This giant leaf frog, not leap frog. Not leap frog.
That's that's the different thing entirely. But it has peptides,
and it's the venom that can reduce blood pressure by
(17:29):
in small doses under lab conditions, So don't don't go
buying them on eBay and then sticking them to your body.
The same frog also produces a peptide that stops blood
from clotting, and they think this might be useful to
fight deep vein thrombosis. This is the condition that you're
supposed to be wary of if you're taking any long
flights in like economy. Oh yeah, that's why you're supposed
(17:52):
to walk around. Yeah, And this is also why if
you've taken any long flights recently and you notice the
stewardess is handing out frogs at the end of the flight,
that's what this is about. Um all right. Then there's
the African running frog, and this one actually doesn't have
any medical significance significance, but since it uses a venom
to kill insects for prey, they think it might be
(18:15):
useful in um in like coating crops to keep pests away.
And also the wasps that I entered and mentioned earlier,
the the parasitic wasps, They think that would also might
have a lot of potential as a pesticide enemy uses pesticide.
Interesting back to frogs, though, there's the Australian tree frog,
(18:36):
which is shown some um some success in the fighting
conditions of that are resistant to antibiotics, and this is
because the venom um embeds in the membrane of the
bacteria and burst the cell and they can't really become
immune to that. And then there's the North American pond
(18:56):
frog and they found the molecules in this particular have
been a stimulate or inhibit the growth of cancer tumors.
So there's some research going into that and seeing what
applications that might have in fighting cancer. So it seems
like frogs in in addition to coding your you know,
poisoned darts to a shoot out of your blowguns, you know,
they have a lot of medical possibilities as well. Yeah,
(19:19):
it definitely seems that there's a lot of venom research
that could be used for therapeutic purposes for people with
heart problems, I mean that keeps on coming up, and
people with blood pressure and uh and I don't think
they've really looked into this, but I think energy drinks
could be a big, big area of development. You know,
the one called venom, I think there's one. There's one
called venom, but I didn't look it up, so I
don't know. But it actually has like scorpion venom or
(19:42):
but you could have the you could have a whole line,
like each one has a different cartoon animal on it.
Like one has a wasp and then there's like a scorpion.
It's like it's like using its close to like lift weights,
you know, marketed towards each one could be a specific
animal marketed towards it a particular like extreme sport or
high energy, macho caffeine kind of a thing. All right,
(20:02):
So let's go from frogs to our last animal, and
our last animals a mammal, the platypus. We've covered reptiles, spiders, jellyfish, snakes, frogs,
but what about mammals. I don't I don't tend to
think of venomous mammals to you know, and like a
venomous ape. Yeah, I love the idea of enomous eate.
But I completely made it up. And that's the thing.
(20:25):
The platypus really sounds like a made up animal. It
really does. In fact, they thought it was made up.
There was a platypus that was sent to the Brits
um a while a while back, you know, eons ago,
and the Brits didn't believe that it was and so they,
you know, they thought it was like, yeah, they thought
it was a fake animal. Because apparently Chinese folks have
(20:45):
been known to do this. They made up an animal
called an Eastern mermaid. Yeah, it was like the monkey
and the fish parts, right, so they thought that this
platypus was a similar thing. Yeah, kind of Coney Island
freak show kind of stuff. Well, so platypuss guys probably
remember it's it's the duck build furry creature. It's this
weird combo of a bird and a reptile and a mammal,
(21:06):
but it actually is a mammal. They're like these odd
balls of the animal kingdom. But the most interesting thing is, well,
one of the most interesting things in platypus lore is
that the males have these venomous spurs on the back
of each of their hind legs. My females have the
spurs too, but they fall off before adulthood. The only
thing that researchers can think of for the for the
(21:26):
spurs is that they're they're used when males are duking
it out for a mate. So nobody's died from a
platypus poisoning per se. In fact, we have an article
of that same name. Could a platypus poison me? By
by Christen Conger. I believe you should check it up.
So there are no known human fatalities, but surely some
dogs have dined. And in case you're thinking that platypus
(21:48):
venom is is, you know nothing in the venom kingdom.
In humans, the pain caused by platypus venom isn't relieved
by morphine, so that's pretty pretty scruciating. So Assie researchers
again comes down to Australia. They're looking into how platypus
venom could be used for pain management. There's also a
lot of pain management themes going through this venom applications.
(22:09):
They're also really interested in the platypus just generally because
it's the oldest surviving branch of all mammals living today
and they in addition they've they've undertaken a draft genome
analysis of the duck build platypus. So far, we've seen
platypus venom show positive results in reducing great amounts of
pain and that's about it. So it seems like platypus
(22:30):
venom researches is wide open if any of you guys
are looking for an area research to get to get
going in, and it sounds like a place to go
with Australia for any of these venom research places. Just
make sure you don't get a run in your pantyhouse. Sorry,
that could be the last mistake you make. So if
you've been bitten by a venomous animal or used one
of the medicines we mentioned, or drank the cobra drink
(22:50):
in Thailand, yes do do email us if you've actually
consumed that beverage because I'm very interested here at tales. Yeah,
send us an email at science stuff at how stuff
works dot com. Or you can check out some of
our related content like do jellyfish have the deadliest venom
in the world? Or Christian Congress fine article that we
just mentioned on the Platypus, or visit the blogs. That's
(23:11):
all we got. Thanks for listening. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.
Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
the house stuff works dot com home page
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