You may have heard
that everything is a toxin in the right dose, but that's not quite true. A large enough dose can make something toxic,
but if it takes a lot to kill you, then a substance isn't a toxin.
Platypuses are
really awfully, terribly venomous. From
what I've heard, being stung by a platypus is a life-changing experience, as
any deeply traumatic event shapes who you are.
Their venom causes excruciating pain for several hours, even days.
King cobras can
deliver up to 7 milliliters of venom with every bite -- enough to kill twenty
people!
There is a long
history of using venomous animals for violence -- so much that in several
ancient cultures, specific punishments are detailed for those who commit such
crimes.
The Vish Kanya --
legendary young women assassins in India during the Mauryan Empire (321-185
B.C.) who were said to be bitten by snakes from birth until their very blood
and saliva were so toxic with venom that they could kill with a kiss.
In Egypt, death by
snakebite was thought to give a person spiritual immortality. In Alexandria,
snakebite was generally considered a humane method of execution.
Bees and their
relatives kill more people every year in the United States than snakes,
scorpions, and spiders combined -- ten times as many, in fact.
In the Arctic,
mosquito populations can be so dense that caribou herds will alter their migration course just to avoid
them. The bloodsuckers have been known
to drain 300 milliliters of blood -- almost a soda can's worth -- from every
single caribou in a herd daily.
The Komodo dragon
(Varanus komodoensis) is the largest living lizard in the world. The biggest one on record measured more than
ten feet long and weighed more than 360 pounds.
They're intimidating beasts known to feed on anything they want, from
pigs to water buffalo (which can stand more than six feet at the shoulder and
weigh more than one thousand pounds).
Out of the eight
thousand venomous snakebites that occur annually in the United States --most of
which are attributed to rattlesnakes -- fewer than a dozen are fatal.
Necrosis is defined
as the death of living tissue, but the clinical definition fails to encapsulate
just how disgusting and horrible tissue death is. Necrotic venoms leave large areas of skin and
even entire limbs rotten and gangrenous, oozing blood and pus and stinking of
decay. Healthy, pink tissue becomes black in death, swelling from fluid from
liquefied flesh, until it falls from the bone in putrid, zombified chunks.
The worst necrotic
venoms don't just tear through cells on their own: they enlist our own immune
system to continue the death and destruction.
Our immune cells are
trained to fight to the death -- which, in the case of bacterial or viral
infection, is a great thing. But in the
case of snake venom, there's no one to kill.
In America, a sly
smile and a few Benjamins might buy you an eight ball of cocaine, but in Delhi,
a similar amount could get you a taste of cobra venom.
Traditional Indian
medicine, referred to as Ayurveda, frequently employed snake venoms as
therapeutics, delivering them on the tip of a needle (a technique called
suchikavoron) or after a detoxification process (shodhono).
There are several
documented cases where venoms appear to have treated what doctors failed
to. One of the most incredible stories I
have ever heard is that of Ellie Lobel, a woman who was dying of Lyme disease
until she was viciously attacked by a swarm of Africanized bees.
Melittin -- the most
abundant component of bee venoms -- is a potent antibiotic. In high doses, it tears holes in bacterial
cells, killing them.
