Hi, I'm erin Welsh and I'm Aaron Alman Updike And this.
Is this Podcast Will Kill You crossover edition with the Biology of Superheroes podcast.
This is actually part two of a crossover in which we're going to talk about zombie. In the first episode, which was released on Halloween, we joined Shane Campbell Stayton and Arian Darby of the Biology of Superheroes podcast to talk all things zombies.
You guys should definitely go check out that episode. You can find it at the Biology of Superheroes podcast on whatever platform you listen to your podcasts.
And this week we're so excited to be joined by Shane to take a deeper dive into the physiology, history, and evolutionary biology of zombies.
Do you want to introduce yourself, Shane, Yeah, it's.
Good to be here. I'm Shane Campbell Stateon and I am an evolutionary biologist.
Hey, yes, doctor Campbell Stateon.
Please please remember it.
Also the host of your own amazing podcast tell us about It.
Yeah, we do our thing, so, host of the Biology of Superheroes podcast. Yeah. So we use a lot of you know, science fiction, and use science fiction basically as a way to you know, to talk about biology, evolution, physiology, so on and so forth. So merging the nerd multiverse over here.
I love it, Yes, and definitely everyone check it out. It's an amazing podcast.
Yeah, it's fantastic. It's really fun. We've been waiting to do this crossover since before we even started our podcast. Oh yeah, it's been like on the books.
It has been a long time coming, isn't it.
Yeah.
Okay, so before we jump into that, we've got some important business to take care of. Yeah, we do our quarantining. What are we drinking this week?
This week we're drinking Rum for your Life.
And it's called that because guess what it has in it? Rum and more rum.
It has so much more rum.
So we will post the entire recipe on all of our social media as well as our place Barrita for this episode.
Absolutely you can find us at tpwk Y on Twitter and this podcast will kill you on Instagram and Facebook. Let's let's get we'll move on.
Okay, all right, all.
Right, So today we are talking about zombies and basically sort of the biological basis for whether zombification can happen via tatrota toxin. And then Shane is going to hit us with some expertise on the evolutionary history of tatroda toxin. And I don't know anything about it yet, so I'm really excited because I think it's super cool. Same, I know it's going to be super cool.
I should say, well.
We'll see how cool it is when I'm done.
The coolest. Everyone's going to want to become a marine biologist after this episode.
Yeah, I'm going to take you through the cultural history of the zombie, tracing the origins of the modern zombie back to it's religious and spiritual roots. And we're going to have a blast because, as we talked about, this is one of our favorite topics all of us. Yeah, and first I want to ask you something. Have you, either of you secretly ever wanted to be in a zombie apocalypse to maybe see how you'd react or whether you'd be the first to die.
I feel like this is a conversation that I used to have, like back in college. You know, It's like one of those like two am conversations. Yeah, man, do you think you would be able to survive the zombie apocalypse? Yeah? Man, Yeah, I totally get a machete and this and that, and I go up into the mountains and so on. So you know, meanwhile, you know, at that time, I had like barely like slept outside, you know, but it's like super confident that I'd be able to survive the zombie apocalypse.
Yeah.
Yeah, I feel like it's it's human nature to sort of think about the end of days scenarios. And yeah, I think it's safe to say that we've all watched or read our fair share of zombie movies, shows, books, comics, et cetera. Because we're nerds nerds, But I don't think zombies are necessarily nerdy, are.
They, Shane, you're the expert.
Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna put them up as nerdy. They're pretty nerd cool.
Well, I like being a nerd anyway.
Yeah, ain't nothing wrong with that. I mean to own the nerds.
Yeah exactly.
So, now that we are self proclaimed zombie experts, I want to ask you guys what you see as them as the unifying characteristics of zombies or zombies as they are presented today, great questions to do a little list.
I feel like they have to be they have to be after humans, so they've got to be like aggressive in some way after Okay, not like human no, no, no, coming after you for some reason.
Okay, So driven by human flesh, yes, okay, right, Yeah, I.
Mean I think there's a typical sort of mangled appearance one way or the other, right, either you know, if you're talking about the actual walking dead or if you're talking about the infected yea, you know there are you know, there's typically a you know, very like run down, like dirty clothes, bloody thing happening once you turn into a zombie. Yeah, you you start to you know, you don't worry about
taking a shower and washing your clothes anymore. Here preoccupied by brains in general, biting related activities.
Yeah, And I do think the whole transmitted by bite thing, it's like it's become pretty classic, right, I'm not opposed to it, I'll say that much. I'm not opposed to that idea.
I mean, I haven't I can't think of a modern zombie movie that doesn't have where a bite from a zombie turns you into a zombi or yeah, agreed, Yeah, so okay, so we have that they're mangled dead, undead, they eat human flesh. That's that's the sole thing that they're driven by. Yeah, and they're infectious or being a
zombie is infectious for sure. So this the zombie that we just that we just described, is this modern zombie which was born in nineteen sixty eight when Night of the Living Dead was released, which is kind of funny actually, considering that the word zombie is never used in the movie.
Yeah, but that's so typical, and I feel like all zombie movies now do that because they did that, and it really bothers me. Like in Walking Dead, why can't they just call them zombie? What do they call them the walkers, the blah blah blah.
Walker or I think it depends on the group, Like every sort of group that runs around has their own name for it.
Which is so unrealistic. Bro, everyone knows it's a freaking zombie.
Well so I think. I think in later, later movies in between that time, they were called zombies and a lot of them so annoys me. Well, it was actually so George Romeiro only used the terms like ghouls or flesh eaters when he made this movie, and he didn't really encounter the term zombie until critics started using it when describing the film, So it was really only then when he was like, oh, these ares like and he
had taken clearly from zombie fictions. But I think it sort of he put two and two together after the fact.
So he didn't know he was making the zombie movie until after it was already made.
Well, no, I don't think that's necessarily true. I just don't know if he would have called them zombies or a brand new creature, because he did definitely take from zombie fascinating films.
Okay, so okay, So if.
You haven't seen the movie, which Aaron and I just watched it yesterday for research, the plot revolves around a group of people hiding out in a house somewhere in Pennsylvania as reanimated corpses due to a radiation accident around the house. This movie effectively began or created an entire
new subgenre of horror movie. Romero and his co writer John Russo drew from a bunch of sources, as I mentioned, for inspiration, including a zombie called White Zombie, which I'll talk more about later, and I am legend the book by Richard Matheson about a plague of vampires. But Night of the Living Dead was something really brand new in
many ways. This was the first movie to depict zombies as flesh eating, as outnumbering people, as not controlled by an outside force, as being contagious, and a government struggling to maintain control. This was a far cry from the
early depictions of zombies and Hollywood movies. This movie, in many zombie movies that followed, used zombies as a metaphor for whatever was really threatening society or humanity, such as unchecked consumerism, the violence of Vietnam War or the resistance against America, the threat of nuclear war, racial inequality, and so on. In modern zombie movies, zombies are used to expose the true nature of humanity. How are people going to react in a crisis. And it's not just using
zombies as this apocalyptic backdrop. The zombies themselves are scary because they occupy this uncanny valley where the familiar appearance of your neighbors or friends or spouse or child suddenly becomes horrifying when they're trying to eat your brains all of a sudden.
Yeah, then you have to shoot them in the head.
Yeah, I feel it's a pretty common trope. Right, There's always that moment where you know there's a zombie horde and they're trying to get away, and then you see the face in the hoard that's you know, your best friend or you know the person who you used to love, and you're like, oh, but but Susie, how could And then Susie like chomps down on your jugular and then.
Yeah, you're done.
Yeah so, and all of these characteristics of modern zombie movies have the end result of making you scared of zombies, not of becoming a zombie. So you're more scared of the zombies attacking you rather than of actually becoming one.
I feel interesting.
So before Night of the Living Dead, though the perception of zombies in Western culture was totally different, the modern zombie actually has its roots in Haiti. And to understand how the Haitian zombie was warped and misappropriated into what we know as a zombie today, we have to go
back a bit to the history of Haiti itself. Also, I just want to say that I'm totally out of my depth here and I'm probably gonna miss some stuff, but I'm gonna do the best I can, So if there are any corrections, please.
Way yeah, Okay.
At the beginning, Christopher Columbus Great Guy y Well hand it on the island of Hispaniola, which Haiti is the western third of Hispaniola, which with the eastern two third being the Dominican Republic. During his first trans oceanic voyage in fourteen ninety two, as you can imagine, he instantly claimed it for Spain, set up camps there, and introduced diseases that led to nearly the entire indigenous population of Taino and Arouak being wiped out.
Check our smallpox episode three if you are interested in more.
Uh huh, and with many of the rest of the indigenous population being enslaved. Over the next couple of centuries, French, English and Dutch pirates set up bases on the remote western and northern coast of Hispaniola, which grew as a trading hub throughout the sixteen hundreds while Spanish control lessened. In the early seventeen hundreds, the French had taken control
of the western part, which would later become Haiti. They ramped up export and production, and by the mid seventeen hundred the small piece of land was responsible for producing sixty percent of the world's coffee whoa yeah, and more sugar than all the British Caribbean possessions quote unquote combined.
WHOA, dude, Yeah, I didn't know any of that.
Can you guess how it got to be so productive? Uh? Slave labor, unbelievable amounts of slave labor.
Yeah.
Slaves on these plantations were treated so terribly and forced to live under such horrific conditions that at least seventeen thousand slaves died each year. Whoa, and the death rate outpassed the birth rate eight percent to one percent. Oh my god, it's yeah. Every year the number of people enslaved and taken from Africa to work in the French colony increased, with around forty thousand slaves brought over every year in the years leading up to the Haitian Revolution.
On the eve of the revolution, thirty two thousand white colonists ruled over nearly five hundred thousand slaves, the majority of which were born in Africa, like three quarters.
Whoa, dude, So they killed off everyone who lived there, and then they just kept shipping over more human beings that they just murdered.
Well, seventeen ninety one comes around, and this marks the start of a twelve year revolution that would lead to the formation of an independent Haiti, which was huge. This was the second oldest independent nation in the Western hemisphere.
WHOA yeah, tell me the year again.
Seventeen ninety one marks the beginning.
Of that revolution, thank you.
So I talked a little bit actually about the Haitian Revolution in our episode on yellow fever. Oh, and the possible but debated role that that yellow fever played in destroying French troops when trying to quash the rebellion. But so, the takeaway from all of this is that the free country of Haiti was largely composed of people who were born in Africa and had fought very hard for their freedom.
In the decades leading up to the revolution, a religion had taken shape to unify everyone, which drew heavily from summer reigions in West Africa, including the fun people living in the area we call Benin, the Yoruba people in Nigeria, and the Congo peoples in Angola and Basayer. And also this religion incorporated elements of Catholicism and indigenous Taino beliefs and practices. WHOA yeah. So it was really kind of this very interesting mix. And after the revolution, the US
and Europe effectively cut contact with Haiti. They were like, nope, you're on your own, and they prevented trade from happening. And they also didn't allow any Catholic priests to go to the country, which the French had set up as a Catholic colony. So, as a result, Haitian culture is really strongly influenced by traditions and practices directly from different African cultures, without this sustained colonial presence quashing these influences the way some other Caribbean nations were Wow.
Yeah.
So this religion, or more accurately, experience continued to develop and is known as as vodu to those outside of it. So if you are someone who practices vodu, you don't call it vodu. It's just your spiritual experience. It's serving the spirits. I'm not going to go into any real details of vodu because there are many great resources for that, me not being one of them, but I will say that vodu is this is this spiritual system focused on
healing and spirituality. Zombies or zombification are not a part of vodu as it is practiced. Rather, zombie making is considered a folk religious practice that derives from vodu, but isn't a part of it, okay, So I just wanted to make that clear. So what is a zombie then? In Haitian culture? Great question.
I love that asked and answered and complimented.
Great it self compliments. Well, the word zombie probably came from the West African and Congo words in zabie in zombie, which is god or spirit of a dead person, and zombie, which means fetish. A zombie is created by a boko, which is basically a priest who practices sorcery. There are two types of zombies. One is a zombie astrol, which is the soul of a deceased person that the boko can use to enhance his powers, and the other is the one that we are more familiar with, the zombie
of flesh. This corporeal zombie is one who has either been raised from the dead or is made to appear dead and then awakened or reanimated by a boko. So this zombie flesh has no will and is under complete control by the bokhor who uses the zombie to do his bidding, which often involves laboring in some way, and so the threat of Haitian zombification is different than this modern zombification as in the movies. The loss of a being forced to work against your will, loss of contact
with family and loved ones. These are the consequences of becoming a Haitian zombie, which makes sense for a country with such a horrific history of slavery. In contrast with the modern zombie, becoming a Haitian zombie is scarier than the zombie itself, So you're more scared of becoming a zombie than you are of the zombie.
Right, that does make sense. Yeah, I now understand how why you made that distinction earlier because I was like, I don't want to become a zombie because then you die.
But now it makes more so how did the modern zombie evolve from this? Well? In characteristic manifest destiny form, the US invaded unoccupied Haiti from nineteen fifteen to nineteen thirty four. Classic During the occupation, a bunch of ethnographers and writers, including Zora Neil Hurston, who wrote one of the first books on Vhoto and Haitian culture, came to
Haiti and exported stories of zombies. Many were very sensationalized, which kind of gave rise to this like fear and otherness of vodoo in US culture and Western culture in general. One of these stories was by a man named William Seabrook, who wrote a sensationalist book called The Magic Island. In one chapter, Seabrook describes seeing a zombie master controlling a
group of zombies to labor for free. This was turned into a movie called White Zombie, which has all kinds of racist and sexist I guess, not really undertones, like overtones overtones, yes, sorry, so yeah. In White Zombie, the zombies are catatonic and completely under control of the bocort, and this was the prevailing image of zombies in Western culture until Romero changed the game with Knight of the Living Dead. Interesting, we're still though a piece of the puzzle,
which is the how of a zombie? So what is the medical basis for zombification? Yeah, bro, and I think it's also just an in passing. We're thinking about why researchers and I'm including us in this, feel the need to demystify some cultural or spiritual practices to reduce them
to compounds or chemicals or oh well, this happens. This is how it can happen in reality, you know, And that's just something to kind of I wanted to just say to think about because it was kind of after reading Wade Davis's books, I was like, why are you why why?
Yeah, that's a good question.
Okay, So that aside. In general, back to zombies, there are two basic ideas as to how zombies are created.
Okay, give them to me, okay.
One basically says this is Haitian zombies. One basically says that zombies are created through spiritual belief and that often so called zombies are cases of mental illness and deprivation. The other focuses more on the medical basis of zombification. Belonging to the second category is Wade Davis. As a
grad student, WAYE. Davis went down to Haiti in the nineteen eighties seeking to uncover the truth about zombification, in particular whether it exists at all and whether there was a plant or animal based compound that can actually cause a zombie like state in people. In his journeys, he came across the story of a man whose name I will definitely mess up the pronunciation of Clervius Narses.
I don't know you.
Tried who had emerged after years sixteen years actually of allegedly being kept in a zombie like state and forced to work. And he had been confirmed to have died and been buried. So this was like nineteen sixty two, I think is when he was buried and then only to emerge sixteen years later.
Wait, he died and was buried in sixteen years later he came up.
No, sixteen years later he sort of re emerged into society.
Society got it? Okay, he wasn't buried for sixteen years? No, no, no, no, because I would call the sm well anyway.
So Davis sought to find out how this could have happened, and he was able to gain access to various quote zombie powders and to observe their preparation. The contents of these powders varied region by region, but he found that a few ingredients were always present, among them human remains, cane toad, the hyla tree frog, and various species of
pufferfish puffle fish who say. In examining each of these, he found one likely candidate for making someone appear dead, the pufferfish, which contains a compound known as to trottoxin. Davis alleged that this toxin, when given to the intended zombie, could imitate death, so that the person could be buried and then dug up and held under control by the use of other compounds, including the datura plant. Aaron, please tell us how to tret to talxin works and whether it is the true zombie powder.
I love to.
I'm excited for this part because I avoided it.
And I was like, oh great, then let me tell you about it. To trot to toxin.
Okay.
The thing is, as I started researching this, I was like, we already did this. We've already done this episode. It's called crossover with crossover. Yes, you already knew the answer. Yes, if you haven't yet listened to our crossover episode with Matt Candas of in Defensive Plants, where we discuss Monk's Hood aka Wolf'spin, then go listen to that. You'll probably like it because we're talking about something that has a
very similar mechanism of action. Interesting. Yes, and by very similar I mean the same.
I did listen to that episode and it was absolutely amazing.
Okay, I cannot wait for the evolutionary history and I'm excited for the medical press.
Okay, I'm going to speed through this because I can't wait for the evolutionary history. That's what I want to hear. Listen. Okay, so let me give you the briefest of rundowns to trot to toxin acts on something called your sodium channels. What that was cool of us? We didn't plan that.
It's less cool now that you've said it.
Again. If you want a primer on sodium channels. I really feel like I did a great job explaining them because I got real stoked on them in the last episode, and you explained it really well. Thank you. Basically for those of you who are like, stop talking about it, I'm not going to go listen to that episode, or like I listen to it and I don't remember think
because you did a crappy job of explaining it. Sodium channels are these channels that are on your nerve cells and your muscle cells, and you need to have them open and close at certain times to have nervous system impulses actually transmit to your muscle cells to cause things like muscle contraction. So if you want to lift your arm or move your finger or talk with your mouth. You need these sodium channels to be working. That's the
briefest of rundowns I can give. So tichoto toxin is a compound which binds directly to these sodium channels and.
Blocks That sounds pretty bad.
It's not great. Let me tell ya, it's not great. It blocks them. And what that means is that sodium can no longer get in. If sodium can't get in, your nerve impulses are not traveling, your muscles are not contracting, You're paralyzed. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. And the thing that makes this different than aconite, which is the compound in wolf Spain that we talked about in the crossovers, Matt, is that it's way way more gnarly, way more potent.
What does that mean? Let me tell you. I wrote some numbers down. Oh good, because I have fun with this. If you could think of a compound that's really, really poisonous that could kill you really easily, don't guess because you might guess wrong. I'm gonna tell you it's cyanide. Would you have guessed that?
We absolutely cool? So cyanide all the answers, all the time, cyanide.
You read my mind, Get out of my head.
So, cyanide is a compound that everyone knows. Like, if you hear the word cyanide, even if you have no idea how it works or what it does, you know, like, don't like drink that it's going to kill you really quickly apple seeds exactly. So if I wanted to kill myself, No, if you wanted to kill me with cyanide, you would need at least five hundred and forty six milligrams of cyanide.
What does that look like?
Well, great question. A teaspoon of salt is five ish grams, So that's like five thousand milligrams. So it's a tiny amount. Okay, So it's like a little like a tenth Yes, it's a dash of cyanide. That's all you would need to kill it.
Even a sprinkle less than a sprinkle.
Less than a sprink Okay, Okay. If you wanted to kill me with techototoxin twenty two milligrams.
How would you even measure that out?
I don't. I'd really tried hard to think of a way to like quantify this for people kill you to kill me with tachot to toxin twenty two grams.
Wait wait wait grams are milligrams?
Sorry milligrams?
Whoa bro.
It was like, great, there's a lot of tea spins.
No, it's very few tea spoons. Yeah, right, So, and the reason is because unlike aconite or other, there's actually a ridiculous amount of toxins. And Shane, I don't know if you're going to touch on this at all. I have a feeling you are. How many different organisms produce compounds which bind to sodium channels.
It's a lot, yea, it is a lot. Yeah, And it's a very diverse set of creatures.
Yeah, which is so interesting because the thing is we all have sodium channels. Like, like I said in the Monk Said episode, insects have sodium channels, right, So it's this very universal thing that if you can attack that sodium channel, you can attack absolutely anything. So but to Troto toxin is so good at binding to these sodium
channels that we actually classify sodium channels. There's a lot of different types, like sort of subsets of sodium channels that work better, Like these ones are on your muscles and these ones are on your nerves. But there's kind of two broad categories, one to trototoxin sensitive, one to troto toxin resistant. That's how we classify sodium channels because
that's how strongly to troto talxin binds. So we basically, like all of these different types of sodium channels, we divide them into can to troto talksin bind or can it not? Right? Isn't that cool?
That's amazing?
Yeah, it's super cool. Didn't So? I know, you really want to know what happens to you if you take a bite of a puffer fish, just like out of the ocean, just like the liver, Give me the liver. Here we go. If you ingest this, generally within a half an hour, often less, the first symptom that you'll have is parishesia, which is a fancy silly medical word for your lips start tingling and they get a little numb, and maybe they feel burning and like just like something's
not right in your lips. And then that might start to spread, and then you might start salivating a lot, and then you might start sweating, and then you'll get a headache because you're like, what's going on to me? And then you'll feel really weak.
Oh my God, it's like a subway.
And then you'll get sperienced subway sandwiches. Yes, not endorsed, guys.
That's because I've gotten food poisoning a number of times subway sandwiches, and so far, that's what it sounds like.
Okay, well, and then you'll start to get a tremor and then paralysis.
That's no good, no good.
And the thing that gets really dangerous and why this ends up often causing death is if you have paralysis of the muscles that you use for breathing, so your diaphragm and your intercostal muscles of your ribs. If those muscles become paralyzed, you cannot breathe. See our polio episode for more on that question. Mm hmm.
So it starts in your lips, that's just the first symptom.
Yeah, it's often the first symptom. And that's if we're talking about someone who's eaten fugu or a puffer fish, and that is often the first symptom. And it's because that's sort of the first place where you're gonna encounter to trot to toxin.
Improperly prepared fugu.
Yes, improperly prepared fugu. Right, So like you caught a puffer fish and you took a bite out of it like an apple.
Right.
Then the first place that you'll start to notice symptoms is in your mouth, but then quickly you'll also get gastro intentional symptoms, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea. But again, what ends up killing people is respiratory distress. Right, So you're not able to breathe because all of the muscles of your respiratory tract have failed and they're paralyzed, and then you die.
That sounds like a really horrible way to go.
It's not a great I wouldn't recommend it, and it happens insanely quickly. And part of that's because it's this toxin. Right, it's already, it's there, it's pre formed. You just eat it or whatever. But you don't have to just eat it. Right, what's the preparation that's most commonly associated with zombies? Older?
I was about to ask you that.
Be to to do it. So most people come into contact with tatroto toxin by eating it, right, that's like the most common. But because we're not talking about a bacteria or a virus like we normally are, we're talking about a compound that it's actually produced by bacteria. It's a toxin because it's already something that's formed. You can take a puffer fish, take its liver, dry it out, grind it up into powder, blow it into someone's face, and absolutely expose them to the toxin in that way.
So it's not necessary that it's ingested.
So is it just contact with like like mucous membrane like eyes and nose and mouth.
Yes, And I'm so glad you brought that up. Shame because this is a toxin that is way more deadly, for example, if it's injected. So most of the studies on this are done in mice, so they'll inject mice with the tatototoxin. It's far more dangerous if you inject a mouse versus if you let a mouse just nibble on a pufferfish. Okay, same thing. I would assume. I couldn't find evidence of this, but I think that's because they don't often just like blow to torototoxin into mouse faces.
But you could one could assume that most of the ways that people quote unquote detoxify things, which the way that you do that is with your liver. So if you eat something, then your gas to intestinal tract absorbs it and it has to go through your liver, which takes care of a lot of the problem. Okay, if you inject it straight into your bloodstream or you breathe it straight into your nose, which basically goes straight into your blood through your mucous membranes, you don't have that
liver detoxification happening. So it's actually a lot more potent. So it's a lot more dangerous to inhale is a lot more Yeah. Well, okay, I couldn't find like specific evidence of that, because again I couldn't find studies where they blew to troy totoxinon mice. But what I based
on what I know about how things work. For example, if you take drugs sublingually or by an inhaler sublingually is under tongue rather than swallowing it down, it's more rapidly gets into your bloodstream than if you eat something and it has to go through your gi tracks. Yeah.
Can I just say, like, blowing to toro to toxin into the face of a mouse is like the most depressing lab job I have ever heard of in.
My Can you imagine if you sneeze and inhale.
Like, oh my goodness. If there's a hell, that's pretty much the quickest way to get there is the accepted job, like blowing to trot to toxin in the face of lab mice.
Yeah.
Yeah, But so really, what the question that we have to answer then is what does that have to do with zombies?
Right?
Nothing that I said was like and then you go you bite people or or even like you become controlled by these powers, right, you get paralyzed and then you die because you can't breathe, Like, that's that's what happens, right, So why how could this have become a thing that people associate zombie ism? And I'm really glad that you mentioned how zombies in this non George Romero idea, it's not like wanting your flesh and blood. It's being under
someone else's power. It's also being dead and coming back to life. Now that to chot to toxin can do kind of.
Hmmm.
So I got thrilled when I learned about this. So one of the weird things about totot to toxin from what I've read, is that when all of this is happening to you, you remain conscious. Oh doesn't that sound awful? God? Which explains a lot, but keep going. Yes, so you are aware of what's happening to you. But it can have such a drastic effect because again the sodium channels are everywhere. It can have such a drastic effect on your respiratory rate and your heart rate that you seem
like you're dead. So you can appear, for all intents and purposes, essentially dead if you've been dosed with the right amount of tetrototoxin where it's not completely paralyzing you right, like your brainstem is still working. There's enough function in your diaphragm that your unconscious breathing is still breathing, and your heart is beating just enough to keep you alive,
but maybe not enough to show a pulse, which can happen. Wow. Yeah, And so people can then pronounce you dead, and your family can think you're dead because you know, you started vomiting and diarrhea ing, and then you kind of went limp and paralytic, and now you're not moving. It doesn't seem like you're breathing. You must be dead. How long great question? This can last. So symptoms tend to set
in very quickly, like within ten to thirty minutes. It can it can take hours also, so if you haven't ingested a lot and you know whatever, it can take a longer time if you ingest it versus inject it, et cetera. But when people do recover over a period of many hours, maybe twenty four hours or more, they recover completely. If you live, if you survive, you recover completely.
There's no neurological deficits. So once this totototoxin sort of just makes its way out of your system, there's no residual effects of it.
So it's like the Otown song all or nothing at all.
Oh my god. Yeah, sure, yeah, just.
Saying that, that's so even that's it's interesting that they're like because I would think that there would be at least some effects of like hypoxia, you know, having like such a you know, having your your tissues or brain being deprived of oxygen if you're not breathing very very deeply or very often, and if your heart's not pumping very often, I'd imagine there'd be at least some effects from from just like hypoxia and not getting enough oxen.
Yeah, but it seems like you either die or you recover completely.
That's bizarre.
It's super bizarre. I will say that if your respiratory muscles are affected, it's not a good sign. You're you're probably pretty much gonna die. Almost everyone who if the paralysis spreads all the way to your diaphram, you're you're probably going to die. So here's the thing, this is, it's a gray area. It's not I wouldn't say I buy it one hundred percent that like you could pronounce
somebody dead because they dosed them with tetototoxin. But it's been used a ton in like popular culture, as I'm going to fake someone's death, you know, like that happens all the time. They do it with tatototoxin, often in movies.
I do feel like that's a very common trope. And I could also see, you know, back in you know, the early like late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds or even earlier than that. I could certainly imagine a doctor like, oh, well, he seems dead. Threw up and pooed himself and he's not moving, and I don't want touch him because he threw up and pooed himself, right, so just call him dead and.
Ekg's we didn't have brain scanners, we didn't have like, you can very easily survive if you're breathing, like there's a lot of different breath types that are really not good. But we'll get your body enough oxygen and release enough CHROMEA dioxide. But might seem like you're not breathing because you're breathing so infrequently, But if your heart is still pounding, however weak it might be, then the blood is still flowing.
Then things are still getting oxygen. That I agree. If you are in the seventeen hundreds and you're like, you touch them and you're like, oh, they're kind of cold. They must be dead, you know, and.
The stethoscope isn't invented.
Oh, I don't know. Don't ask me that, but I guess.
Also the trade off is that is that you know, if you're not if you're like completely still in comatas you actually you don't need as much oxygen as you would if you were like up and moving around, so you have this lower metabolic rate as well, so you're you're using less oxygen so you don't need as much boom.
So zombies biology zombies boom. But is it boom or is it just like, yeah, it is.
That's the thing, because it's like, okay, that's it's an almost Maybe I could kind of buy it. Explanation for how someone could be appearing dead and then come back to life beyond that nothing like there's no like and then you will succumb to my will or on the other end, then you will eat flesh of humans, you know, none of that.
So but the other thing is is it biable? Can you reliably make a zombie powder?
No? I don't even fully buy that you could make a powder period that you could be sure would just kind of paralyze someone to the point that you could convince someone else that they're dead, but then make sure that they recover afterwards. Not dude, Yeah, I don't buy it in the slightest, Like you could if you worked really hard, probably convince people that you faked your death by using this. Maybe.
I don't know that I was gonna ask, so when when a person does recover, like what has happened? Like, how does the tatro de toxin unbind from.
That's really a good question. I don't I don't know. I mean, I guess it just eventually something will come by and be able to degrade it. But I don't have a full answer to that, because it from what I can understand, it's not like a reversible binding, right,
like it binds and then it's bound. So it's either just like your body has to make some new sodium channels maybe and maybe your body can make enough to compensate, or eventually, like nothing in your body is going to last forever, right, so eventually, like that sodium channel will be recycled or something, some macrophage will come by and like snag up that to toototoxin or whatever. I don't actually know the mechanism of it. I'm just making things up right now.
But generating hypotheses.
There we go. I like that. But that is it brings up a good point in that we don't have any treatment for it. So the only thing you can really do is if you know that someone ate a puffer fish and they shouldn't have, you can like give them activated charcoal or do a gastric levage, like make them barf it all up, and that can help somewhat.
That is a very fancy word for barf inducing gastric levage.
But there aren't any treatments. So wow, well, people have people have tried different things. I don't want to take too much time, so I don't want to get into like the various specific things that people have tried. They don't work all that well. But here's my question. Clearly, this mechanism of action of involving sodium channels, it's not something new, right, pufferfish didn't invent this by any means.
We've already talked about it with wolf Spain. We'll probably talk about it in the future with something else that binds to the same channels. But the thing about tatrototoxin that makes it so forking terrifying is that it's so potent. It's so potent that we named the channels after it, and the tiniest amount twenty two micrograms can kill me a full grown human, right, twenty two milligrams? Sorry, get
all those units mixed up. So my question, and probably everyone's question at this point, and Shane, why we brought you here, is why on Earth, with something as adorable as a puffer fish need to make such a potent toxin? Do they just want to kill us? Do pufferfish hate us? Why tell me? Why? Please?
That is a phenomenal question. So pufferfish. They did not, you know, they weren't the first to invent to toe to toxin, but Totota toxin is actually named after them, well kind of. Totota toxin is actually named after an order of bony fish called tetra Odontiformes, which includes the puffer fish, but also porcupine fish and you know, the big floppy ocean sunfish and they're like huge and kind
of flat and really goofy looking, and also triggerfish. So all together it's about almost three hundred and fifty species in the order, but not all of these species have to trot to toxin, you know. So it was named in nineteen ten actually as the principal toxin in puffer fish and obviously the principal component of fugu as were as you were saying before, you know, Since then, it's been subsequently described in a really wide array of organisms across the tree of life, sort of both marine and
terrestrial organisms. So several obviously several genera which is the plural of genus, several genera of puffer fish habit specifically in like liver and gonads. The marine gobi, which is another bony fish, has to trot to toxin in its skin and muscles. And then even there are several invertebrates, marine invertebrates that also have it. So there are several species of marine flatworms. There is a trumpet shellfish, which is a different invertebrate that has it in a digestive gland.
Horseshoe crabs apparently have them in their eggs. Some starfish species, I should say, one of the I think most interesting is actually the blue ringed octopus that actually has it in its salivary glands and it uses it as I you know, as it's co opted as a venom in that species. So that's that's really interesting.
The coolest love blue ring octopus. They're like take this. They're so small and they're like you want to fight with me, and then they bite you and then you die.
Oh my god, I love them.
That's the first, the first time I've ever heard it bites you and it dies. Oh my god. I love them. That you hear that very often except on this podcast.
I have a quick question, Shane. So, okay, you mentioned that the organ of a lot of where this tatorta toxin is stored for a lot of these animals. Why the liver, the gonads, the intestinal, whatever system. Why why there?
So that is a great question, and quite frankly, I don't think we know there's so in doing research for this, I realized that there's there's a ton that we don't know about tatro to toxin. Yeah, in terms of how it contributes to to biodiversity and how the vast array of organisms that use it, how they actually go about using it.
Yeah. Yeah, that's so cool.
Yeah, it's it's weird. It is very weird because I mean, essentially, like you're talking about chemical warfare essentially, right, I mean you're taking this super super toxic substance and integrating it into your body in some form or fashion and then using that as as a defense.
Yeah.
So, not only does it occur in marine organisms, but they're also terrestrial species. You know, species that live on land that use it. And this is the amphibians. Uh So, you know, there are tree frog species in the genus Ata Lopus that use Totrota toxin. And then it's been most commonly studied in newts, So newts what are called
rough skin newts. They're in the genus Tarika. Uh So they have really large volumes of to torot to toxin in their skin and actually also five different genera that of salamander that that have to tota toxin.
What this is?
Why?
Yeah? Just tell us why? Shame? We need to know what's the deal here?
Bro Okay, Well, so if I can, before I get to the why, the question is how?
Yeah, okay, good question is that?
Okay? Okay? So just to give you give you sort of the scale of this. We're talking about hundreds of millions of years of diversity of life. So if we're talking about across the tree of life between you know, worms and and you know other invertebrates and terrestrial organisms, terrestrial vertebrates and fish, we're talking about hundreds of millions
of years of diversity. And you get these species popping up across the tree of life that all are using this chemical warfare like co opting to trot to toxin to use as as typically as defense. Right. So, there are actually two major hypotheses about where totrot to toxin comes from. So one is an indogenous origin, right, So something that is you know, genetically coded in an animal to produce totrot to toxin. And there is some support for this and that typically comes from from the tree frogs.
I mentioned that in that genus Ata loopus, where if you take those tree frog species and you bring them into like a controlled environment where you control what you feed them, what they're in contact with, even years after that, they can maintain really high levels of toxicity. And even frog that are hatched in the lab still have amounts like measurable amounts of to torota toxin in their skin,
which suggests that they're actually producing it somehow. WHOA, but what yeah exactly I And again I don't really think we know how this works yet, Yeah, which is really surprising actually. But then the second hypothesis is actually in exogenous origin, so that animals are uptaking to trot to toxin either through the food chain or through symbioses, and a lot of evidence for this. It actually comes from
the puffer fish. So people captively breed puffer fish for food and also for the pet trade, and pufferfish that are born in captivity are actually not toxic. They don't have any measurable amounts of to trot to toxin. But if you feed them to trot to toxin, they very quickly become toxic.
Wait, so is it possible that there are distinct groups of animals that some can produce some some it's indogenous and for some it's exogenous.
Yes, exactly.
A face is so excited right now, she's just like like her eyes can't contain. That's amazing, it's amazing.
And it's it's this really sort of wild example of this classic question and evolutionary biology of the repeatability. Right if like, you know, if you get the same results, i e. I have to toto toxin, don't eat me or I'll mess you up, do you get there by the same by the same path?
Right?
And it seems like, at least in this case, the answer is there are several paths to potentially get there, either through producing it or through uptaking it in the in the environment, or you know, which I think is
an even cooler potential explanation is through symbioses. You know, A major a major hypothesis is that a lot of these species that have to trototoxin have them because as they formed a symbiotic relationship with bacteria that produced the toatrot to toxin, so like Vibrio bacteria is most often suggested as the you know, the symbio in this case, but also pseudomonous and Actinomycetes M. Yeah. But in either case, right,
there remains this really important question about the repeatability of evolution. Right, So, either you have independent origins of totrototoxin production right via these indogenous means, or even if you're uptaking it from the environment, you still have to biologically incorporate it into your own body without being affected by it, right, so you still have to have some level of resistance.
What is this is insane?
It's not like pufferfish don't have their own sodium channels, right.
They do?
Right, Like what.
What you can feed them to trotoxin are like, no worry about and live will take care of.
This, my lip exactly.
I just skipped the other half of the word that wasn't intentional.
My lip Tot's got this, bro.
Exactly.
Yeah. So and this obviously like brings us to your initial question, which is why. And you know, as I described, most of these species are incorporating it in their organs, and it seems that this is mostly associated with defense
against predation. Right, So there are a lot of species that incorporated in different organs, but a lot also have it in their skin and in their muscle, right, so if you bit them or tried to hold on to them, you know, obviously if you know, if you're biding them, you're biding them with your mouth, which leads to, you know, a lot of the issues that you were just talking that we were just talking about when it comes to human infection with toratroda toxin, so it seems to be
associated by and large with defense against predation, which also sort of brings us to this weird dynamic that comes out of these praise species having to trot to toxin, which are what we call evolutionary arms races. Right, So, if you're a puffer fish or if you're a rough skin newt swimming around or walking around doing your thing, you don't want to be eaten. That's generally an unpleasant
experience that we all try to avoid. But if you're a predator, typically you like to eat things, and this like sort of very simple dynamic to competing factors, you know, lead to evolutionary arms races where things that don't want to get eaten figure out ways to not get eaten, either by running really fast or growing large or growing hard parts that can't be chewed on. But then predators,
you know, they find ways to get around that. And there's a really interesting case when it comes to trototoxins, particularly in these rough skin newts that I mentioned before. So this species ranges across the west coast of the United States all the way from like southern Canada down through southern California, and across the range, they vary in their toxicity. So some populations are very highly toxic and some are only mildly toxic. And across their range they
are also garter snakes like very calmon. I'm sure we've all seen garter snakes outside racing from place to place, and garter snakes they occur across the same region, and they're the only predator of the newt that is known to be resistant to totro to toxin. What so they I know, right, right, So these the snakes they eat newts regularly, right, and this has led to a matched resistance to tatrot to toxin. And so where the newts are more toxic, the snakes are more resistant to to toxic. Good,
I know. And so just to give you an idea, this ranges by three orders of magnitude. What so we're talking about some snakes are one thousand times more resistant to toatrot to toxin than others.
What that is so cool?
I know, which brings us back to this idea of the repeatability because this resistance, it seems to have evolved independently at least twice within garter snakes, so separate lineages have come up with this solution to being able to eat these ruskin nuts. It's wild.
It's like different garter snakes the same. It's like garter snakes. You think those are the same snake, but there's different populations that have evolved this different times.
And clearly these newts are really important food source.
Yeah, I mean, and it must be extremely important, right because you know this fundamental question idea is like, well, how how do you get this resistance? Well, you know you've said you know how to torta talksin affects your your sodium channels. But these snakes actually have mutations in their sodium channels that make to tota talksin less efficient at binding to them.
So cool. What I said there was different kinds of sodium channels. Man, They're just like, we're gonna skip to all the resisting kind and just forget about this, these ones over here.
That is, so, why don't we all have resistance sodium channels because we're not.
All because our species haven't been Yeah yeah, exactly, yeah yeah. But it does come out of it does come out a trade off, right, I mean, as you know obviously you know these sodium channels, they provide a really basic biological function, right, and they help us to you know, to contract our muscles and move around. And snakes that have very high to tototoxin resistance cannot move as quickly as those that don't.
Interesting, weird, huh. So there's like a substantial tradeoff.
Yes, absolutely, but it would be really cool if that was the whole story, right. But recently, actually, just earlier this year, in twenty eighteen, there was a study again in two species of skinned newts that suggest that they showed that individuals that were more toxic also had fewer parasites than less toxic individuals.
We just both got so excited.
I thought you would like that one.
One more time, just for emphasis.
Please say it again, please, So.
Rough skin neuts that are more toxic have fewer parasites than they're less toxic counterparts.
My god.
Yeah, So it seems like they're actually there's the possibility that not only does it help them in defense against predators, but it may also help them defend against infection.
Amazing. What kind of so parasites meaning like ectoparasites or are we also talking like bacteria, viruses, et cetera.
So, if I remember correctly, they looked mostly at sort of larger parasites, so things like parasitic worms, and even they looked at fungi as well, like parasitic fungi for you know that effect newts, things like cattrid fungus for instand.
Oh oh oh, that's going to probably have to be a whole own episode.
Oh yeah, for sure, that's.
Won't dive too deep into that one.
That's amazing.
Yeah, And so this brings me back to this original question Aaron Welsh, that you pose of like why like why do we care, like, you know, why do we want to get into like the mechanisms of all this stuff?
I mean, obviously hearing these stories, it's it's actually it's really cool, you know, just on its own, but there is I think some utility and really trying to understand the mechanisms either, you know, when it comes to zombie powder, or when it comes to you know, these crazy creatures across the tree of life that are using totort to toxin, there is some inherent utility there, you know, when it
comes to our understanding of basic biology and medicine. So back in I think it was like nineteen twenty nine and there's this guy, August Crowe, you know, he has this what became a pretty famous quote, and he said that for some large number of human related problems, there will be some animal of choice for which that problem can be most conveniently studied, right, And this is you know, this became his principle, and that's based on this sort
of fundamental observation that evolution by natural selection has produced a vast array of diversity and form and function. And because of this, some species are really well suited for understanding human related problems, right because they've evolved extreme characteristics that mimic human disease states, or they allow us to conduct experiments that would be otherwise impossible, and this gives us fundamental insights into the diseases that plague us and
help us to design effective treatments for those diseases. So in the case of totroto toxin resistance right in these species. Understanding how their ion channels allow them to live with tatrota toxin may provide really valuable insights into many diseases that are thought to result from ion channel dysfunction. And this includes, you know, things from like color blindness and night blindness, to cystic fibrosis to Alzheimer's to Parkinson's to schizophrenia.
You know, so they potentially provide some really fundamental insights into understanding how you know, these really basic aspects of biology can be modified and improved upon.
That was so gorgeous.
It was so perfectly put and fascinating, and we were both at the same time form our hands.
And we were putting them to the computers.
We were like, oh my god, you guys, stop that. No, but that is Oh that was just really well set and really well put. And I think that you made a really good point that it's not just driven by this curiosity, but there is a function and a season, an application for doing this type of research and for being even just interested in it and learning about it from a comparative angle or from a historical angle or from a medical angle, Like there's a reason the Angle.
Yeah, oh cool, I know it's science dude. That was great.
That was a great episode. So should we do sources?
Probably? Okay?
Uh So I read a few books or sections of books. I would recommend Invisible Powers, which is edited by Claudine Michelle and Patrick Bellgarde Smith, and also Passage of Darkness by Wade Davis, American Zombie Gothic by Kyle William Bishop, which kind of details the transformation of the evolution of the zombie genre in movies. Cosanba or the Congress of Santa Barbara to which is like a place to learn about and to have scholarship on vodo. I don't have we'll post all of these.
Yeah, that's the thing is minor, always way too long. I have a bunch of articles that were cool, but you can find them on our website This podcast will Kill You dot com. We have every single one of our episodes. We have all of our sources listed there. So, Shane, do you have any things you'd like to shout out beside your brain? Oh?
I guess what I will shout out is the last paper I mentioned about poisons and parasites in Newts was published earlier this year in the Journal of Animal Ecology. The lead author's last name is Johnson. Johnson at all twenty eighteen.
Sweet. That's right cool. Also, Shane, tell us where everyone can find you and stalk you and listen to your podcast.
Yeah, so you can find me at s Campbell Stayton on Twitter. You can also hit up at Superbio podcast to check out new episodes.
Shane, thank you so much for joining us.
Yes, it is awesome for fun.
I had a great time. Thank you guys so much, and.
Thank you everybody for listening. We love you. You're the number one greatest.
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