Venomous Animals and Insects May Save Your Life

Venom: Nature’s Killer (PBS.org)

You’ll excuse me this week. I’ve had EB take off a week while I hunted down a worthy site of the week. And this site of the week was picked because I’m a big fan of the PBS series entitled “NOVA”.

Working with EB has caused me to develop a fascination with venom. She’s a venomous as a rattler.

Seriously — I learned from this show that one of the most toxic venoms in the world comes from a snail. That’s right – a cone snail. If you pick up a cone snail with your bare hand and they poke you with their needle — you’re dead. There’s enough venom in one drop of cone snail venom to kill three to four adult humans.

This stuff fascinates me. I’m sorry. Bear with me.

Did you know that some blood pressure medicines are made from venom? Did you know that some medicines that enable heart surgeons to implant stents come from venom? Did you know there’s a pain killer they’re making from venom that is 10,000 times more powerful than morphine? I’m going to get some of that stuff as soon as it hits the market — that will make EB’s stings a lot less painful.

This site of the week is more a video of the week. If you’re as curious about how things work as I am — you’ll love spending 40+ minutes watching this show. You’ll learn a lot too. Did you know that venom is a protein — a protein that’s only slightly altered from the proteins that enable us to function. It’s true.

Here’s a bit of the dialog from Venom: Nature’s Killer:

“Where did venom come from? How did the killing delivery systems evolve? What happens inside the body of a venom victim? Now, investigators are fanning out in search of the world’s most venomous animals and sampling their deadly wares, in a surprising quest, not just to find out how they kill us, but how they can save us, too.

It’s an urgent and dangerous mission to understand Venom: Nature’s Killer, right now on this NOVA/National Geographic special.

In the natural world, death has a thousand faces, and when we think of deadly predators, we usually think strength, speed, size and power. But what if you’re a humbler predator, still driven by the need for fresh meat, but without the benefit of even arms or legs? You’re small and crushable? You’re slow as a snail or fragile as a blob?

You’ll have to resort to subtler things like chemical warfare, venom. There are snakes that can take down an elephant with a single bite, spiders that can rot your skin, snails that can kill you in hours and jellyfish that kill in minutes. And then, there are the people who love them:…”

You’ll love this show — I guarantee it!

Visit http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/venom-natural-killer.html  and click the green “Watch This Program” button on the page.