Snakes vs Octopi (featuring Dr. Matt Giorgianni)

How does an animal end up with something like venom? I mean, I can see how it would be great to have something like venom to kill your prey, but could the evolutionary process through which venom is developed to be dangerous to you as well? Like, I'm notoriously clumsy, but I can't be the only one out there who's bitten their cheeks or their lips while they're eating. What if a snake accidentally bit itself? How do you keep

Hi.

I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and I've never been bitten by a snake.

Hello. I'm Kelly Wainer Smith. I study parasites and space and for a whiler. Actually I thought it was going to be a herpetologist. I've been bitten by snakes a bunch of times, and I love them.

You love being bitten by snakes or you love snakes despite being bitten.

I love snakes despite being bit And I've never been bitten by anything dangerous that I worried about, but man, I love snakes.

Tell us a story about how you got bitten by snakes. Were you going for a hike and one jumped down in front of you? Were you wrestling a python in the Amazon? What happened?

I was working in a snake lab. Actually it was more of like a herpetology lab. We had all kinds of cool stuff in there, and I was feeding the animals over Christmas break and I it was my fault. I was not really paying attention. Because I was showing the snakes to some of my friends and I had put my hand in some rat water because I'm just really a disgusting human being.

Wait, rat water is what exactly? That's rat flavored water. That's water for the rats. What is it?

Well, you know you got to thaw out rats before you feed them to the giant boas. And so I had just finished thawing out a rat.

It's rat juice.

It's rat juice. And I had put my hand quickly into the container with the boa and I really should have very like, you know, slowly done it, but but I was talking to someone not really paying attention. The boa went for the rat and got my hand because all my fault, and it let it let go right away, and then it you know, backed off and was like, oh my gosh. You know, it was like apologizing in its own way. And anyway, I went to the doctor just to be like, oh, do you have to worry

How big a snake are we talking here? If it can eat a whole rat, then it could probably eat your hand, right, Like, this is a big snake.

I mean, so boas can't like, you know, chew off your hand and separated from the rest of your body. That's not how they roll. They like swallow things whole.

But they could like ingest your hand and then ingest your arm and just like gradually you could end up with like a boa arm. Right.

It didn't have that kind of personality. We didn't have like hyper aggressive snakes. They were all very docile snakes in this lab.

But this is a big snake we're talking.

Anyway, Yes, yeah, it was a big w Wow.

Wow, Kylie got bitten by a big snake. I did not know that. That's incredible.

It was a very nice snake and it was one hundred percent my fault. I was not being careful. But anyway, yes, I've been bitten by snakes big and small, and I love them all. And when the rat snake gets into our coup, we very gently move it to another location. And yes, snake's the best.

Yeah, I'm a fan of snakes the way i'm a fan of spiders, you know, like spiders eat mosquitoes, snakes eat rats. Like it's all part of the evolutionary war that's going on outside all the time.

Yeah. When after we removed the rat snake from our coup, rats became a problem in the coop and that was way worse than the rat snake. I should have left the rat snake there, but I relocated it. And then I was like, I should have left the rat snake there, like it was the rent that it was. You know, it was eating like an egg every few days or something, and I should have let it do that in return for it rat control services.

It's a pretty good deal.

It was a pretty good deal, and I didn't realize it.

Yeah, all right, Well today is a very sneaky episode of Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe, all inspired by a question we got from a listener.

And this is an amazing question. This is a real head scratcher. We got lucky because Daniel has a friend who could answer it. But before we get to that, let's go ahead and listen to the question.

Here it is for rattlesnake, but an octopus, But it's venom have any effect? Some toxins like fly spray are very specific as to what animals they harm, and rattlesnakes probably only care about what they can do to vertebrates. Are venom of snakes immune to their own venom? Does this give them resistance to the venom of other snake species? Do snakes if I try to envenom other snakes?

So many great questions, and one of the things I love about science is knowing people who study so many different weird things. Say if you send me a super weird question and might just go, oh, I actually know a person who's dedicated their lives to understanding this particular question about the universe or snakes.

I mean, I feel like that's one of the amazing things about grad school is you get thrown in with so many different kinds of people, and then twenty years later you could be like, I know someone who studies snake venom making as answer a question about whether a rattlesnake could kill an octopus if it'd beit it, I know.

The guy exactly. But before we heard from the guy who might know the answer. We thought, what are the extraordinaries think about this extraordinary question? So Kelly sent this question to the list and here's what people had to say.

I would say that there has to be some effect, but maybe not the one we are expecting. But wait, how would the two creatures find themselves in such a situation.

I don't think the bite of a rattlesnake would have any effect on an octopus. Octopuses have their own incon venom, so I think a rattlesnake's bite might herd or stay octopus, but I don't think it would have any deliterious effect.

Rattlesnake venom is not species specific.

I would guess that octopus biology is not so diversently farm from typical prey that there is no effect.

It seems plausible that rattlesnake venom can kill an octopus, because venoms can be effective across very different animal types. A blue ring octopus can kill a human, for example.

I suspect it may depend on the species of rattlesnake and the species of octopus.

I would think that the octopus don't they have some sort of neurological isolation between tentacles. Maybe that would allow it to kind of minimize or neutralize the neurolithic effects of a toxin.

They are species that evolved in very different environments, and the octopus is not unusual prey to the rattlesnake.

I don't know.

May not work poison, would not work an octopus because snake poison is formulated by nature to only work on land mammals. Possibly would kill an octopus, but heathery getting together or I'm not sure the hell of a blonde dit what? I didn't know octopus has had any venom at all, so that's spectacular. Now as to anza and honesty, I actually.

Have no clue.

If a rattlesnake then an octopus, its venom would be devastating to the octopus. Also, I don't know how the rattlesnake would get its scuba regulator back in its mouth with no hands.

It probably would not enjoy it at all, but I don't know if it would kill it.

Can a rattlesnake transfer is vendom to the octopus, I don't think so, but who knows. The octopus could then transfer his or her back into him. But octopus like a blue ring octopus for example.

Uh so, for example, a venomous snake might be more venomous to one type of mammal than another. But what I have no idea about an octopus.

Yes, but we need a bigger collider. Oh wait the other one.

Uh it depends now.

I don't want to be too negative, but there were a lot of people who were like, well, this premise is unrealistic, and I have to wonder, are you all not fun to watch science fiction movies with because we asked you to suspend your disbelief for this one.

That's true, and we probably are not making our audience better at watching science fiction movies by teaching them all this science, right, we're probably making them into the well actually people watching those movies.

On the other hand, I did laugh out loud at a lot of these answers.

These are great. These are great, So thank you everybody for speculating. If you would like to be part of this segment for a future episode, don't be shy. We would love to add your voice to the chorus. Questions at Danielankelly dot org will get you on.

The list, all right, So, without further ado let's bring the guy on the show to answer this amazing question.

So then it's my great pleasure to introduce to the podcast my friend, my colleague, Matt Georgiani. He is an evolutionary biologist and a research scientist at the University of Maryland. He's also a long standing adjunct faculty member at the Whites And Research Institute, where he's best known for his pioneering work regarding hot dogs and marshmallows. True story, what.

What is that?

What?

You all are colleagues on his work at the whites And Research Institute.

Yeah, that's the work I'm most proud of by far.

It's your enduring legacy. Whenever we mention you, Hazel goes, wait, is that the marshmallow hot dog guy? And we go Yes, that's exactly that guy, because they have burned into their memory. One time when we were all on vacation together, I think was it in North Carolina and we had hot dogs and Matt was like, hmmm, I'm gonna put marshmallows a hot dog, and it blew their little minds.

Well, the key was the giant marshmallow and then tunneling a hole for the hot dog. So it was a marshmallow bun to a hot dog.

Right, amazing?

Yes, incredible?

Was this a bonfire?

No bonfire is required for this amount.

Of creedy A normal So wow, WHOA.

Now you see the kind of out of the box thinking that Matt is capable of, which is why we thought it would be great for him to come to the podcast and answer all of our out of the box questions.

Well, I'm kind of amazed that a teenager would focus on the hot dogs and marshmallows thing when you had someone at the house who studies snake venom, which seems way more epic than marshmallows and weenies. But let's dig into a little bit more. We've got a bit of a picture now of what kind of a person Matt is. He's innovative in the kitchen, but Matt as someone who studies snake venom? Are you like? Also the kind of person who owns a snake hook and is like regularly

So this is where I get to disappoint all your audience members right away. Oh amazing, I am not a snake person by nature. I did not grow up handling lots of snakes. I don't necessarily like I didn't have like some love for them, but I came to them through sort of as an evolutionary question, and I've since then become quite enamored by them.

Have you ever eaten a snake inside of marshmallow?

No?

But essentially a snake and a hot dog are the same thing. Neither one has legs. They're both just tubes of meat.

So I see why you two get along, now, how you How where did your two meet?

In graduate school?

So?

He was in Chicago and I was. I was a graduate school in the University of Chicago, and uh, and Daniel and his physics crew would like come and hang out like the cool kids with their leather jackets.

And I don't believe any of this.

Now, let's fact check that story. So that was in grad school with Katrina. They're both the University of Chicago and biology, and I was a physics interlooper. It was not at University of Chicago, but since continuing I were living near campus, the physics department gave me an office, so I got to hang out. And I mostly hung out with the biologists, to be honest, because there were more fun. But I would also bring a bunch of physicists to the biology parties.

Oh okay, great.

Which always improves the party, right, I.

Mean until we start talking about poop. But you know, I mean I think that's fun too. Okay, So you weren't snake wrangling when you were younger. Are you someone who handles the venomous snakes now or am I? Am I pushing this still?

No, I'm still quite a coward. I've only so we've gone down to extract venom and to extract tissues and things like that. So the only snakes I've handled, well, I have handled some dangerous snakes. That's only really after they're dead. And so I've dissected out venom glands and I've done these sort of things, and it's they're great and they're exciting. But I went into a room that was full of rattlesnakes and I walk in the room and they instantly all pop up and start rattling, and

So you came to this question. You were saying from an evolution airpoint of you got excited by the scientific question of them. So let's dig into that, and let's ask some first basic questions like how common is it for snakes to produce venom?

Right?

How many different species produce venom? Do you know how many times this evolved in the history of snakes? And why don't hot dogs make venom?

Well that you know of.

If you let them sit out too long, they kind of do.

So there is something like you know we have, there's something like four thousand species of snakes, and and within venom is primarily in two groups of these snakes. And so I'll say three names now just to get like these are of names, I'll probably keep saying a lot. So within the sort of advanced snakes, which is is going to be most of the snakes that you're aware of, but does not include a few little guys and some

So there's hundreds of kinds of venomous snakes.

There are, yes, wow, yeah, quite a few.

And did venom evolve once and then branch into both groups or did it evolve multiple times?

Right, So this is the great question that we get at and one of the reasons that like that we were so excited to study it. So venom is cool because it's secreted, you know, it's secreted from these venom glands, and it's in this hyper pouch and they have like syringe like teeth and they can excrete it. But because it's in this kind of specialized pouch, it seems like

And let's back up and unpack that because not all of us are evolutionologists. Yeah, sure, you're saying that evolution works best when it's adapting existing genes. That's because it takes like fewer mutations to like turn my spit into acid then to like develop an entirely new fluid inside the body, right.

Right, And I mean new genes, like whole scale new proteins are very very rare. I truly, new things are very hard to develop or to evolve because you have to come from something usually, and so most things that evolution are sort of piecing together bits from other you know, maybe merging things together or mutating things that exist already. But it could be difficult if the thing you're trying to mutate already has a really important function, and so

I see. So you're mutating one thing, but you also have to not mess up the system that already works.

Yes, that's really critical.

But if you were to be evolving a fluid into an acid, you wouldn't want that acid all over your body. So if you could just get acid in a little spot, that would be helpful. But then how do you evolve that little sac? Where does the sac come from?

Right? So this is where and this gets into that question of where does venom come from? When did it first evolve? And then so we'll start with just with those two groups of elapids and vipers, so they are sort of separated by this middle group that calubrids. So we have like this, there's an original ancestor of all three of those groups, and then there's the vipers branch off into their group, and then the next a little after that, some several million years later, calubrids and a

Hold On, you're saying that because there's commonalities in their venom, that it's likely that it evolved before the split, Right, But isn't there another hypothesis there that, like maybe they discovered the same combination was useful independently, Like maybe you're not the only person to put marshmallows and hot dogs together, right, Other people can discover these delicious combinations.

I'll definitely argue that point. But so this there is, Yeah, that's a really good point that we can get these things what we call convergently when two different groups evolve the same thing. However, in this situation, what we're talking about often is a particular gene, a venom gene that

I see the way that like, for example, bats and insects both evolved flight independently, but the mechanisms underneath are quite different, and that's how we know that they're independent.

That's right.

If they had exactly the same internal structures, you would suspect that it really had a common origin.

That's right.

But it's not a definitive argument, right, it's just more likely. I mean, these things are always statistical, and you're that's right, making arguments, but it's not a smoking gun.

That's right. No, absolutely true. So you could imagine if there were something very special about these particular proteins that we would see that you know, that maybe there's enough pressure that we could see a multiple conversion events happening at once.

Would it also be fair to say that, like, so you know, if you're looking at individuals who are very closely related to each other and are you know, splitting off from one another over time. In order for them to have independently evolved very similar ways of doing things, wouldn't they have had to have like lost traits and then gained them again since they were like so you know, if you split from a common ancestor, you probably have

No?

I mean it's so lost. We think it's really important in evolution as well. So we think of oftentimes that evolution can be like gaining things, but like snakes will right away, you should just remember, like they lost their legs, yeah, right, and so that's a really important step for them. It wasn't just like they fell off, they just it was a really important We.

All lost our gills, right, I can't breathe them the water to my grade frustration.

Right, And so these things are really important men. And so it could have been that there was the ancestor to all these snakes was venomous, and that in the Colubrid line they lost that the instruction to say this is venomous.

Oh, I see.

But really what I think what ends up happening is we look at this complement of venom genes, so venom. I maybe I didn't really establish this, but venom is a cocktail of proteins, so it is it is somewhere in the you know, seven to ten proteins or and these are you know, proteins that are parts of large protein families, proteins that are conserved across all animals that are used in various physiological purposes. So they're important genes. We don't know what they all do natively in different

So then we think that venom evolved once in an early ancestor to snakes or for the split into different categories.

So one of the theories out there is that that's the case, and there are other theories that even say that it goes further back into their ancestors in the lizard world, which would be something like the iguanats or

Wait, I have two questions before you get you further. Yes, are there lizards that have venom like spit? Is that a thing?

This is a little bit unclear, and this gets a little bit out of where I know. But like for the most part, they don't have the ability to inject a venom. Kimodo dragons are associated with certain bad outcomes for their prey, but that might be more to do with other parts of their spit and so it's not clear that it's a venom in this case. But it could be that these families, these genes that I'm talking about have started to be used in that oral structure.

I see.

I thought HeLa monsters had the grooves in their teeth and like a venom thing that drip down the grooves.

Right, right, Yeah, So it's exactly that sort of thing. And how these things are, you know, whether we call them venom or not, becomes a little tricky at times, okay.

And does this give us any insight into the question of like venom and fangs, Like does venom precede fangs, because like, why would you have these like syringe like teeth if you didn't have something to ingestate rights?

It's a really good point, right, and so you could think about like what step would probably come first? Having really sharp fangs does seem reasonable as a thing to catch animals with alone, But really, it does seem that the evolution of fangs, so between those lapids and those vipers, the evolution of the fang seems to be a convergent situation. So morphologically they're different enough that it seems that fangs

So wait before you have the like syringe to inject the venom. And to animal, venom is still beneficial because you're like biting something and your whole mouth is coded in venom and you're smearing it on the surface, and it's not as effective.

But well, we don't know if it was used to kill prey at the time I see, or if it's just really a digestive thing, or if it was some other purpose.

Could you just been like a season ex right? Ooh, I like spicy food.

Even because I've read this report of you know, so we all we have enzymes in our saliva as well, right, and we don't think of ourselves as toxic. However, I guess there's these reports of people that used to take human saliva and inject it in their in this was the reporter read. It was like to get out of prison, but it would it were to get like to the hospital in the prison, because it would create on a reaction.

And why hasn't anybody made a snake venom based hot sauce yet?

This is a great question because I mean, I'm sure you'll get tingly mouth. It'll be.

I mean it sounds like wow, delicious, right, I mean, capsation evolved, as you know, an animal plant warfare toxin, and so like, why not double down on that. I think this is a billion dollar idea.

Let's give the extraordinaries a moment to ponder this amazing question that Daniel has shared with us, and when we get back, we will return to chatting about venom with Matt.

Okay, we're back and we're talking to Matt Georgiani about snake venom and whether it would be tasty on a hot dog. Matt, give us some insight into the chemistry of venom. You've talked about it as proteins. We've talked about how enzymes in your mouth do stuff. What is venom doing? Why is it so bad to get injected with venom? What does it do to you?

Right? So, there are two major flavors of venom.

And spicy and extra I see.

So one of those one of those main types is a neuotoxin. And so these are there's a few selecting proteins and peptides that are targeting nerve receptors and so anyway, they're disrupting the nervous system and this can result in paralysis and you know, shock or various like organ failure that happens.

To me after I eat a big burrito.

Anyway, or this might help reinject the system, I don't know, might start you right back up.

No, we're joking, but this is this is quite serious, right.

Yeah, yeah, so it certainly is. I mean, it is fun to joke about this other than there's a real obviously there's a real human component to what venoms can do. But the other major flavor are what we call, let's say broadly, we'll call them heemorrhagic. And so these are these are proteins that target the blood and the hemostatics system.

So these are two very different mechanisms, right, Yeah, targeting the nervous system or targeting your plotting. I thought earlier we were saying that we thought there was a common origin of venom because the fundamental mechanisms of them were so similar. But now there's two different ones. Are the isolated in the two different groups of snakes or how does that all fit together?

I mean, this is why it gets It's where it gets so exciting. So that what I talked about the commonality is that, like at the base, there are some components of this system that are shared. But when the vipers in a lapid split, they each start to recruit new genes into their venom, and those are the ones that are the real are the ones we really talk about,

Can you remind me elapids are vipers? Is that right?

So elapids are going to be your cobras and crates and some sex so anything in Australia. I don't know why people would ever go there, some of the deadliest things.

Because everybody who lives there is smart and good looking. That's why people.

Would go there.

No, that's true pandering to our listeners.

Because they are surviving snakes all the time.

They even have like venomous trees in Australia, like poisonous trees, not anyway crazy.

They probably already put venom on their hot dogs down in Australia. They just don't even talk.

It's so boring.

That's great. So cobras and Australia stuff.

So there's a lot of these things, and they have the super potent neurotoxin, so they're very dangerous in that respect. So vipers along that lineas they developed a lot of like theycruited in a lot of proteass and other genes that help really disrupt that hemostatic system, but they also have taken some of those and turned those into neurotoxins

I see. So the answer because its biology is it depends or it's complicated, and so it seems like, if I'm understanding, there is some common origin to the venom. But then after the split, they continue to evolve and the vipers become neurotoxins, and the cobras become neurotoxins, and the rattlesnakes become hemorrhagic. And so now they've also separated, right, and so there's some elements of both to the story that is fascinating.

Yeah, each lineage, you know, and this is only they maybe thirty maybe it's forty million years ago, and each lineage starts to develop just really starts to experiment and play with the things they can do with this venom. And so this is the part that we came in as being very interested and my focus initially was in

And some more copies doesn't mean you necessarily mean you make more, but it means what you make, you make different versions of it or.

So right, they're slight. There are like different variations in the same way that there are thousands of variations of

So that's the other part I wanted to ask about, because the missing part of the story is the evolutionary context in which they're evolving, right, the things that they're injecting the venom into. So do we understand, for example, why these two lineages split and develop different kinds of toxins. Are they effective on different kinds of prey? Are they in different parts of the world. Why do we understand the motivation for that split at all?

Well, they split in the way then every species split all the time. Who knows exactly We have no idea exactly what context led this, you know, the split, but you know, and initially it was one little snake hanging out and occasionally, you know, if you look soon after the split, it would seem like the exact same you know,

So the venom evolution could either just be like, look, we're in a random different direction because we were separate species. Or it could be that it worked better on the kind of prey that they were tending to snap.

I mean, you know, these mutations and these recruitment events are random, we think, right, and so that they are that they just happened in one linians versus another might just be all that I needed to thoroughly start to delineate these two groups. And there might have been other elements, like give the snakes, do you have some other physiological differences with between each other? But you know they largely Yeah, exactly what led to the split between the two, It's hard to say.

Do we see any patterns where like, uh, if you are, for example, a snake that goes after rodents versus a snake that goes after I don't know, birds, is there certain kinds of venom that are more helpful depending on what kind of prey you're going after or what kind of predators you're trying to avoid.

Yeah, there certainly seems to be some correlations, but it's not great. It's not I think people have done some nice studies, but they've tried to look at the prey that's, you know, that what they're eating, and then see if the different venom types are correlating. But it's not. It's not great. It's like there's some correlations there, but it doesn't seem like some smoking gun like this is clearly what's driving the differences.

And what about non snake venoms. I know, we talked about lizards, and you mentioned trees or whatever in others shees that develop venoms. Is there any similarity to snake venom in terms of the chemistry or.

The history the chemistry is so, there's so. One of the genes, one of the interesting genes that we study is called phospholipace A two, and so fosplit A two is a part of this large family of proteins, and that's in the viper venom. They use one of these, the elap It's also recruited a phospholipase A two, but a different family member, a deeply diverged version of it.

I probably shouldn't have used the word venom for the trees. It's probably some other word was the right word. But so you mentioned that the prey are probably wanting quote unquote, you know, to evolve a way around being susceptible to the venom. Do we see prey evolving ways around the venom? Like can you get bit by a rattle snake and just kind of shake that off if you're a mouse, for example.

So it seems that at least in the one good example is the California ground squirrel, which has evolved the resistance to the Pacific rattlesnake. So this is in Oregon and northern California, and in some of those locations, what we have are a ground squirrel that can take a bite and survive. Wow. So it's invented by like sort of recruiting in some little proteins, some small proteins that

Yeah, and why isn't that more widespread?

So that's a great question. And it seems that it's unclear because let's say that we have a lot of snakes are hunting small mice, and it seems, at least to me naively that a big bite from a big rattlesnake is going to be quite damaging to you, regardless of it whether or not it has venom. Now, a viper generally speaking, will strike hid an animal and then kind of pull back, and the animal will walk off and die somewhere, and it will follow and find the

Get you with no marshmallow armor.

You try to belittle it. You try to belittle it, but that's still that's the inspiration for a horror movie right there. Yeah, that's a hot dog with teeth that follows you.

So you know, vipers are also often ambush predators. So rattlesanks don't go seeking out their prey, but they kind of hang tight. They wait for animals to go by and they nip at them, whereas the lapids tend to hunt stock things out. So the things that rattlestanks are eating,

Give an arms race going on.

Right, We think this might really truly be a really good example of an arms race, but we don't know. It's hard to look at the history because all the animals that kind of came along the way are all dead now. But where we also see a lot of resistance is actually in predators of snakes, and so these are ones that are like in Africa, there's like the honey badger or the mongoose, or even meerkats have evolved, i think, in some cases convergently ways to prevent the

All right, we're going to take a break, and when we come back, we're going to ask Matt all the really weird snake venom questions we've been holding back on.

We're back. We have been hitting Matt with all the hot dog related questions we could think of, but now we are going to hit him with the weird venom related questions that we've got, including venom related questions from the listeners. So first, all right, Matt, if a snake accidentally bit itself, would it be immune to its own venom.

Perfect. It seems valuable.

Right.

And if I told you especially that rattlesnakes are living in these big dens often, right, you know, there's tons of them around. If you ever see videos, you can see videos of these guys swarming all over each other and the young ones, you might are nip it at each other. You don't want a ton of death. So it does turn out that rattlesnakes have resistance to their own venom.

Wow, And this.

Seems like that's probably important. It might be because the big fangs and they're trying to chomp at something. Maybe they bite themselves occasionally. Maybe it's happening. We don't really know exactly where and when they might be nipping each other or getting their own venom. But it does seem like they really do have a few layers potentially of resistance, which makes perfect sense.

Which makes perfect sense. And now a question that requires a qualifier that you're not a medical doctor and not giving medical advice. But what should you do if you are bitten by a venomous snake? Should you cut it with an X and suck it out?

I think you should just cry a little bit first, but don't take too long. So the most abortant they gets. Course, it's just to stay calm. And if you're in the United States, and if it's a rattlesnake, you're gonna live. Oh, I mean, if you can get to a hospital. There's anti venoms, and there's generally speaking, you know, there are I think I looked it up for this. So there's you know, some seven to eight thousand bites a year within the US, and there's five or six deaths, which

That's fewer people than are killed by sharks, I think, otherwise known as ocean based hot dogs.

Daniel, I've been listening to some of our past episodes and you often compare things to shark deaths. Do you actually know how many people are killed by sharks every year? This isn't the first time you've used that as a baseline.

I use that as a baseline because it's something people think of as very rare, and it is quite rare, but they're still terrified of and you know, I think people don't have a great sense of the frequency at which you can be killed by various things. And so it's just a fun example. And no, thank you for putting me on the spot. I do not have that number off the top of my head.

I'll have to I'll send you. I have this diagram that has like human deaths caused by animals and it's really great because well, not great, great in that it does put all of it into a framework. And so obviously the number one, of course is misciitis. Are killing these and then it's like humans depressive, other dangerous. But

And do we know how anti venoms work, Like is it just some chemistry where this chemical attacks that chemical and breaks it apart, or is it like go into your system and the way it does in this squirrel and like block it somehow.

No, So by and large, what we've done is created antibody based antiveatoms. And so what this is essentially as they'll take venom, they'll inject it in a horse initially, initially people do these horses or cheap and then you're essentially just creating asking the animals immune system to create a series of antibodies that'll that'll block the toxins, and so they'll take you know, they'll take a few of

So for horses, I had imagine maybe you go with horses because they're gigantic and so you can hit them a little bit of venom and they, you know, their bodies are big enough that they can handle it and survive. Why why sheep?

I think you can just have a lot more sheep. Okay, all right, I think it's just easier. Honestly, I don't know, Okay, but because.

They survive this, right, They need you to mount an immune response.

They do. They do. After that, though, we need to get the blood out to get the antibodies. I'm not sure how much. I don't want to. I shouldn't speak for their industry, but I don't know that it's great?

Got it? Okay?

And do antibodies developed by sheep always work for humans? Is it transfer that way? I was reading about this crazy guy who like injects himself with venoms to develop antibodies.

Right, So this guy's he's great. I mean, I don't know that great, but he's insane. Right, So a human antibody is way better for humans because we don't have the same allergic reaction to having a foreign body foreign antibody being used. So if we can develop human based antibodies as the best, and there are people doing that, and there's someone that's they've been doing that recently for our neurotoxin that cobras have, and they've done it against a synthetic library of human antibodies.

But that means injecting a human with steak venom intentionally, right.

In this case, it's actually just taking a library, like a library of antibodies. So that's not in a human but it's rather you know, in a tube essentially, and then testing to see which ones are reactive or which ones can bind, and then using those specifically as therapeutics or treatments. And so those might be much that are

But the best antivenom comes from humans, which is why we're so ingratiated to Tim Freed who's injected himself more than seven hundred times voluntarily with venom to develop an unparalleled snake anti venom. That's amazing, thank you too.

But that's not going to be sustainable for an industry.

It's not very sustainable. I mean, I don't know all what's planned with it. But while that might be good, it's I think there will be other methods too, and

Well, if you think that an anti venom industry based on one guy named him is impractical, here's an idea for you. What if you made snakes out of anti matter, so you have anti snakes and their venom is anti venom. Can't you just use that as anti venom?

Amazing? Wow, because I suspect you could keep an anti snake with you.

At all times.

And then you have like a little pan anti snake and you ever get bit, you can just have the anti snake bite you.

If your anti snake in some sort of magnetic bottle. I mean, I just come up with the ideas. The engineers need to figure.

It out, right, I think it's that's that Part's the easy part.

This is why we need integrative research projects.

Yes, exactly, cross disciplinary ideas. You can see how useful they are.

Every biology project needs a physicist and vice versa.

So then let's get to the actual question of the episode. Now that we have some understanding of snakes and venoms, if a rattlesnake bid an octopus, would its venom have any effect?

First of all, this is like one of the greatest questions you could ever ask.

And imagine a scenario where this happens.

Yeah, I'm already it's just amazing.

Snake's on a plane and crashes in the ocean. I don't know, dot.

Dot dot, man, I really got to figure this out. This is important.

Are you saying this is not currently the top question in snake venom science?

But that's a failure of top venom science and not a failure anymore. So, uh, to try to get at this question, I can't really know. But if we think about those viper venoms that are designed around sort of mammalian blood systems, and disrupting clotting or causing it those hemorrhagic type venoms. You know, you might, you might. Octopus doesn't really have the same kind of clotting systems, but they do have cells that are still made of like

Amazing.

That might be one thing that as far as the neurotoxic snakes, you know, these are still they still have muscles and that still have you know, neurotoxin. You know, they have receptors on them that these neurotoxins could target. Now they certainly haven't evolved to do that or you know, and this is definitely outside of the sort of outside of mammals, let's say, mammals and reptiles that most snakes

So you wouldn't recommend to an octopus to get bitten by reddle snake.

I wouldn't, But I mean, honestly, an octopus with all those eight tentacles and the snake, I don't know how that's hot dog. It's a picture I to have is a is a marshmallow surrounding an octopus hot dog, And I don't know. I don't know what the snake could.

Do Australian OCTOPI probably shrugged off.

Yeah, there are some venomous sea snakes right.

There are yes, So there are a lapids that are especially come off the coast of Australia, and those things are super deadly, primarily because they're in the ocean and they're just they mostly hunt fish. But this is the closest we're gonna get to, like if this thing is happening in real life.

Okay, So I.

Mean, you know, when I was a kid, it was the giant squid and the and the sperm whale and like no one had ever seen the battle. So I think this is really on par with that. Whales also lost their legs, So I feel like we're really kind of into this, likeliss animals versus squids and octopies.

I think we got to try to sell the movie rates pretty good.

And also we should add a qualifier. Matt is not an octopus doctor, So if you're an octopus and you're listening, don't take his advice as medical advice.

Just chop off one of your legs and craw it back.

Not medical advice. People don't listen to him seriously.

The listener also sent us an extended question and wanted to know. So we already established that like if a diamondback rattlesnake bit another diamondback rattlesnake or bit itself, it would probably be fine. But what if like a diamondback rattlesnake bit a cobra or a cobra bit a diamondback rattlesnake, what would happen?

Then?

This is a great question. I suspect that if we go between a lappas and vipers, we might see that they don't have the same kind of resistance to that patom.

Yeah.

The one that I'm not sure about is that so the king cobra, it's called a king because it eats other snakes and it probably so I actould really know this but it probably has. It probably could have some resistance to other vipers that it could be eating.

You're totally going to do this experiment this afternoon, aren't you.

Yeah. I do have a few in the back, so I will just make sure I throw them together and see what happens.

You need an eye of cook for that.

But even within rattlesnakes, we don't know, you know, within within rattlesnakes biting each other, I think the further they are apart from each other evolutionarily, it's possible that they won't have that same resistance. And there are some rattlesnakes that are have neurotoxic venoms, and so how those two would react with each other, I don't know.

I'd like to say that I think it's probably good we don't have the answers to some of these, because it suggests perhaps a lack of ethics that we've like, you know, thrown snakes together and been like what happens? Now, Like, I'm kind of glad we don't know.

It's probably the best now.

Yeah, So within ethical guidelines, what kind of questions are being investigated at the cutting edge of snake venom science? What are the big arguments at the Snake Venom conferences all about.

I think that, well, there's let's see.

And is this a nice community or is it toxic?

I don't even think I can respond to that. I think the stake community is quite nice. It can be. Uh, there's a lot of collaboration that I see out there. These many snakes scientists and snake scidists. Many of these guys are true herpetologists. So these are the guys that do really love to get the snake hook out and pick them up and show pictures of themselves holding sakes,

And so I want to know. My last questions are, as a like rattlesnake venom person, what question do you get asked most often? And what is the most common misconception you encounter?

Yes, so I most often am asked if I ever get to hold the snakes or carter touch.

But that's where I started.

Yeah, it's what everybody wants to it's but it's the right question because you if you talk to like my I have a coworker who is very much the guy like, oh yeah, oh absolutely, And we have a big debate because I like to I like to toeut vipers as the better venom bet a snake, and he is a big a lapet friend. And part of that has to do with the joy of holding in the lap which I'm like, fine, he could do that.

OK.

So that's that's one of those things that that's always asked, of course, and then and then a lot of like you know, what is what is venom? Or what does it do to you? Those kind of questions are great in terms of misconceptions. I think generally speaking, they're the idea that I mean, if you watch any kind of movie about with snakes in it is often somehow incorrect. And they're hunting. They're usually like looking for humans and trying to bite them. And of course snakes are really

The poor misunderstood venomous snake.

Yep, yes, I like snakes.

Well, then let me ask you my favorite question, which is, you are landing on an alien planet on which you think there's probably life, do you expect there to be snakes? Do you expect there to be venom? How universal do you think this is across the universe?

Well, snakes like as a you know, as a tube, like worms. I think a tube is a really great simple body system. So the stakes obviously came from a more complex evolutionary history of having atlantic legs and having used to swim in the sea, and now they're walking on land, and now they lost the legs, and now they're crawling on the dirt into the sea again. So they've done all kinds of stuff. And so tubes I think are really probably pretty cool systems we'll see in any on any alien planet.

But you're not giving up your legs, right, you know, becoming tubular.

I prefer my legs, you know, so I'll keep them for now. But you know, whales did great things without them, and so have snakes.

A big fan of whales work.

Yeah, yeah, neat everyone should be.

So you think there probably are tubular animals on alien planets.

It just seems like a very easy body system, right, So essentially all we are tubes with just ornamentation, right, you know, all animals essentially are just a tube from mouth to butt or whatever you say here and then and and we just do we just decorate it with different kinds of legs and pinchers or other teeth or whatever you want. But like it's all just basically a tube to get food through and uh and reproduced.

So if you meet a biologist in your life, folks, they are thinking about you as an ornamented mouth to butt tube.

Yep, that's exactly what you are.

That tells me glory about how biologists see the world.

I think of you as a parasite host, So it depends on the biology.

Yeah, and so many parasites are just a little worms, So they're a little tubes.

That's a good point. That's a good point. But do you think that those tubes are going to be venomous?

I mean, look, venom, it seems to be a system that works in a lot of different animal systems. If you can use chemicals as a defense system, great, And if you need to bite into something or if you're tussling with something and you need to poke it and make it stop, then venom's a really great system. So I would expect that you would see, you know, venom kind of anywhere you see conflict between animals.

Well, I have learned a lot about snake venom and a lot about ways to cook hot dogs and I will never see a human the same way again.

Good So thank you.

So much MATD for being on the show. This was fantastic.

It's my absolute pleasure. Thank you guys.

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