Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Snakes vs Octopi (featuring Dr. Matt Giorgianni)

Episode Date: April 7, 2026

If a rattlesake bit an octopus, would its venom have any effect? Daniel and Kelly bring venom expert Dr. Matt Giorgianni on to the show to answer this listener question, and to talk about the evolution of snake venom.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to mostly human on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. 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 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 from hurting yourself with your own venom? Or did something like personal anti-venom to your own venom evolve at the same time? And what evolves first? The venom or the fangs needed to deliver the venom? The evolution of snake venom is endlessly

fascinating and is associated with all sorts of misconceptions. And we got super excited about this question after a listener asked us a particularly fun inquiry, which was this, if a rattlesnake bit an octopus, would its venom have any effect? So, on today's show, we bring on venom expert, Dr. Matt Georgiani, who exhibits the patience of a saint as Daniel and I pepper him with loads of weird questions about snake venom and his culinary work with hot dogs and marshmallows. Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's. venomous universe. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I've never been bitten by a snake.

Hello, I'm Kelly Wienersmith. I study parasites and space, and for a while there, actually, I thought I 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 bitten. 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, where you go going for a hike and one jumped out 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 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 I have to worry about like any bacteria or whatever? My mom insisted I go to the doctor. And the doctor was like, no, you're probably fine. We'll give you some antibiotics just in case.

But you are officially the weirdest case I've gotten. I think it was this year. It might have been today, but I think it was this year. And anyway, so I was, you know, proud of myself. How big a snake are we talking here? If it can eat a whole rat, then you 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 separate it from the rest of your body.

That's not how they roll. They, like, swallow things whole. But he 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 about.

talking anyway. Yes, yeah, it was a big snake. Wow. Wow, Kelly got bitten by big snake. I did not know that. That's incredible. It was a very nice snake and it was 100% 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 coop, we very gently move it to another location. And, yeah, snakes are 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, after we removed the rat snake from our coop, 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 its 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, would it's venom have any effect? Some toxins, like fly spray, are very specific as to what animals they harm, and rattles snakes probably only care about what they can do to vertebrates. Are venomous snakes immune to their own venom? Does this give them resistance to the venom of other snake species? Do snakes ever 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.

So if you send me a super weird question, I 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 20 years later, you could be like, I know someone who studies snake venom and could ask, answer a question about whether a rattles snake could kill an octopus if it bit it. I know the guy. Exactly. But before we heard from the guy who might know the answer, we thought, what are the extraordinarily 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 these 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 ink and venom, so I think a rattlesnakes bite might hurt or sting an octopus, but I don't think it would have any deleterious effect. Rattlesnake venom is not species specific. I would guess that octopus biology is not so divergially farmed from typical prey that there is no effect. It seems plausible that rattlesnake venom can kill an octopus because venom 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 neurotic effects of a toxin. They are a species that evolved in very different environments, and the octopus is not an unusual prey to the rattlesnake. I don't know. It may not work. Would not work on octopus because snake poison is formulated by nature to only work on land mammals.

Possibly would kill an octopus, but how are they getting together, I'm not sure. It's a hell of a blind date. What? I didn't know octopuses had any venom at all, so that's spectacular. Now, to answer in honesty, I actually have no clue. If a rattlesnake been 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 its venom 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 the blue ring octopus, for example. So, for example, a venomous snake might be more venomous to one type of mammal than another, but I would have no idea about an octopus. Yes, but we need a bigger collider. Oh, wait, the other one. 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 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. Yeah, 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 Daniel and Kelly.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 Whiteson 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? Is work at the Whiteson Research Institute? Yeah, that's the work I'm most proud of by far.

Oh, nice. 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? I think so. And we had hot dogs.

And Matt was like, hmm, I'm going to put marshmallows on a hot dog. And it blew their little minds. Yeah. 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 bonfires required for this amount of creed. This is a normal day thing for me. Oh, wow. Whoa. Now you see the kind of out of the box thinking that Matt 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 weanies. 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 picking up venomous snakes? Like, what kind of a snake person are you?

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 a snake. an evolutionary question. And I've since then become quite enamored by them. Have you ever eaten a snake inside a 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. I see why you two get along now. Where did you two meet? In graduate school. So he was in Chicago and I was a graduate school at the University of Chicago. Okay. And Daniel and his physics crew would like come and hang out like the cool kids with their leather jackets. I don't believe any of this now. No, now I feel like you're lying to me. Let's fact check that story. So that was in grad school with Katrina.

They were both the University of Chicago in biology. And I was a physics interloper. I was not at University of Chicago. But since Katrina and I were living near campus, the physics department gave me an office. So I got to hang out. And I'm mostly hung out with the biologist, to be honest, because they were more fun. Yeah. But I would also bring a bunch of visits 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 pushing this? You want me to move on?

No, I'm still quite a coward. I've only, so we've gone. 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. It's only really after they're dead. And so I've dissected out venom glands and I've done these sort of things. And 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 I about had a heart attack right there. Some people go forward. into that room and other people are like, yeah, this is not safe. So you came at this question you were saying from an evolutionary point of view, 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?

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 they don't. They do. If you let him sit out too long, they kind of do. So there is something like, you know, there's something like 4,000 species of snakes.

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 names I'll probably keep saying a lot. So within the sort of advanced snakes, which is it's going to be most of the snakes that you're aware of, but does not include a few little guys and some big fat like pythons and bowels. But all the rest of them fall into three groups, which are the elapids, which are like your cobras and crates.

There's vipers, which include rattlesnakes, and then calubrids, which is most of your garden snakes and rat snakes, king snakes, all your little friendly guys. And so those three groups are many of the species, but more than half of the species of snakes. And calubras being the biggest group of them. But elapids and vipers are your two big branches that are venomous. And those are each about three to 400 snakes each or species. 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 we were so excited to study it.

So venom is cool because it's secreted from these venom glands, and it's in this hyper pouch, and they have syringe-like teeth, and they can excrete it. But because it's in this kind of specialized pouch, it seems like evolution can run a little wild in there. So one of the things about most evolutionary novelties and things that happen in evolution

is that you're trying to modify proteins or processes that exist elsewhere in the body. So if you mutate those things, you can have problems everywhere. You can have problems in your development or in other processes or other physiological things. But if you can just sort of sequester these venom genes to just the venom gland, it's like a laboratory and you can start to just mess with these things.

And it seems that that's what snakes have done. Hold on. 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 fewer mutations to like turn my spit into acid than 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.

Like, truly new things are very hard to develop or to evolve because you have to come from something usually. And so most things in 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 if you want it for a new role, it's difficult. 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 sack? Where does the sack come from? Right. So this is where, and this gets into that question of where does Sennem 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, the Calubrids. So we have like, 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 Alapids branch apart from each other. So because Calubrids are largely not. venomous. We kind of have this, all right, so where did venom come from each one separately? But when we start to look, when scientists have looked back at ancestors of these snakes, they can see commonalities of like common proteins that are expressed in both of those venoms. And sometimes they see it in some of the oral glands or tissues of those middle group that colubrids. So that tells us that the ancestor of all three of them had some stuff that we know is in venom today.

And so it's very likely that some kind of venom capacity or some dangerous spit, let's say, was probably present in that ancestor. Hold on. You're saying that because there's commonalities in their venom, then it's likely that it evolved before the split. Right. But isn't there another hypothesis there that 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. 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 gets recruited. We say recruited because we mean that its expression,

while maybe normally that's expression was in the liver, to help digest enzymes. And now suddenly it's gained a new expression in this oral gland or in this, what will be the venom gland. And we consider that event to be a somewhat rare, exceedingly rare process. Because developing the new, like, you know, because you're just changing nucleotides at the DNA level in the genome,

and you're saying, here's a new instruction set, I'd like you to now be expressed, let's say, in the venom gland. And that thing, we think, we think that step is, is rare enough that when we see it in two animals, we don't generally think that that's a conversion event, but rather that it might indicate a shared ancestry. And when we see it at multiple genes, then that sort of reinforces that idea.

And sometimes, and although people haven't done this part yet, if we could know what that instruction kit was, you could say, here is the specific instruction set, and we can see that it's the shared between the two groups. And that would tell us really that, like, this event is so rare that it must have happened further back. So that is often the deal when we're talking about, because many times when we talk about conversion events, it is convergent strategies to approach something. But rarely do we think it's the same mutations that have led to that. I see the way that, like, for example, bats and insects both evolve 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 they 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 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, you know, 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 the same set of instructions for doing something. And so I feel like what Daniel is implying is that they would have had to have lost,

the ability to do something and then independently gained it at another point because given that they were common ancestors, they probably both had the ability to do it. Or is that not the right way to think about it? No, I mean, so loss, 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 right away, you should just remember, like they lost their legs. Yeah. Right. And so that's a really important stuff 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 underwater to migrate frustration. Right. And so these things were really important events. And so it could have been that there was the ancestor to all these snakes was venomous. And that in the calubrid line, they lost that those genes, 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 in venom, maybe I didn't really establish this, but venom is a cocktail of proteins. So it is somewhere in that, you know, seven to ten proteins. 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 animals necessarily, but they are largely

conserved proteins that are important in all kinds of things. And a lot of these proteins have multiple, their families of proteins because there are many versions of these proteins. And this might be like a protease. So proteases are digesting proteins. And there are many types of proteases. But they're all related evolutionarily. And that relatedness goes all the way back in the history to the base of animals in many cases, if not further back. And so in the same way that species are radiating across the planet, like you can imagine that these proteins families are radiating because once you have a protease, it's really useful. If you can make it and change it and slightly modify it, maybe it does something really important for you.

So then we think that venom evolved once in an early ancestor, two snakes, or four, this 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 iguanids or the Komodo dragon. Now, this gets a little more suspect, but there is some idea that there's a whole clade of antithers. animals called toxicopra as a name that's often used for this. Ooh. And the way to think of it might just be that they have a spit that's kind of cool that has a

lot of cool enzymes in it. But if we just want to focus on the advanced snakes and where our big, powerful venom guys come from, it seems reasonable that they had some kind of spit, oral gland cocktail that was doing something. And maybe it just helped digestion. Maybe it's like, you know, you bite a, you eat a mouse and you just need help digesting it. So you have a lot of enzymes and proteases.

Wait, I have two questions before you get any further. Yeah, sure. Are there lizards that have venom-like spit? Is that a thing? This is a little bit unclear. This gets a little bit out of where I know. But, like, for the most part, they don't have, like, venom, the ability to inject a venom.

Commodore 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 Gila Monsters had the grooves in their teeth

and like a venom thing that dripped down the grooves. Right, right. So it's exactly that sort of thing. But 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 inject. That's right. It's a really good point, right? And so you can think about, like, which 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 elapids 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 evolved twice. And so calubras, those guys in the middle, snakes. They don't have big fangs either, right? But it seems like elapids did, and then they, and associated with that, that ven, that oral gland became this really powerful venom gland, and the same thing along the lines of phypers. So they develop a slightly different tube-like tooth that can inject, you know, using all the muscles around a big and large venom gland. And from that, they can, you know, subdue their prey. And so it does seem that maybe while venom might have evolved, the sort of the

capacity for some kind of venom evolves first, we then see the fangs develop. So, wait, before you have the, like, syringe to inject the venom into animal, venom is still beneficial because you're, like, biting something and your whole mouth is coated 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 was just really a digestive thing, or if it was some other purpose. Could you just been, like a seasoning. That's right. Ooh, I like spicy food. I 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 injected in their skin. This was, in the report I 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 an, on a reaction. So if you inject enough of something, right, and you inject enough enzymes into you. Oh, I see. It's. It's going to be.

going to have some kind of effect. And so what we've always questioned early on was, well, you know, the key thing about elapids and vipers is that they have massive amounts of this venom that they can inject. And are these venom proteins actually super dangerous? Are they that much different than the proteins they evolved from? Or is it just the amount that you're injecting in? Interesting. 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 tingling mouth. Is it? Is it meant? I mean, it sounds like, wow, delicious, right? I mean, Cap Sason evolved as, you know, 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. 2%. That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter, and on my podcast, 2%. I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. I'll be speaking with writers, researchers, and other health and fitness experts, and more, to look past the impractical and way too complex pseudoscience. that dominates the wellness industry.

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You'll hear unfiltered analysis, behind the scene stories, and conversations with leaders making an impact across the sport. Today we have Logan Ledneckies. I feel like our fan base in general is very connected. It's like a comforting feeling. to play at home. Whether you're following the final push of love season or just love the game, serving pancakes brings you closer to the action and the people shaping the future of volleyball. Jordan Thompson had that microphone out. God forbid we make mistakes or cuss at our coach. Like when time or two times. Open your free IHeart Radio app. Search Serving Pancakes and listen now.

This has been Serving Pancakes and we'll catch you on the flip side. Okay. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. If you're trying to keep up with everything happening on and off the court, we've got you covered on the podcast, flagrant and funny. You look at the top four number one seeds. What do you think UCLA is going to do? Break down that for me, my friend. Obviously, Yukon is the overwhelming favorite in this tournament. But I'll be honest, I think people are kind of sleeping on Texas.

Experts are suggesting that UCLA is the number one challenger to Yukon and that right after that would be Texas. S&C is so deep and so thick and just about everything. It really is annoying. So it's UCLA, Texas, South Carolina, LSU. Only ones that could possibly upset Yukon. On Flagrant and Funny, we're giving our unfiltered takes on the biggest moments of the conversations everyone's having. So whether your bracket is busted or you just want the latest on the tournament,

we got you. Listen to Flakron and Funny with Kerry Champion and Jamel Hill on the IHeart Radio app. Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back. I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting. Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians. Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leveh, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.

And this season I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more. Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin. You related to the Phantom at that point. Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that. That's so funny. So, share each day with me, each night, each morning.

Say you love me. You know I... So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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... and spicy and extra spicy so one of those one of those main types is a is a neurotoxin and so these are there's a few selectin 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

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 quite serious, right? Yeah, yeah, it certainly is. I mean, it is fun to joke about this. And 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, hemorrhagic. And so these are proteins that target the blood. and the hemostatic system. So, you know, it's very important for us to have our blood, like, flowing nicely. And then if you get cut, you know, you have to be able to clot that blood and prevent it from having hemorrhage, for example. And a lot of these proteins are targeting elements of that system.

Some of them are causing massive clotting, which can then disrupt all your other blood systems, as well as throwing clots throughout your system, which is never good. But some of them are kind of doing the reverse where they are essentially disrupting the clotting system completely such that there is, you just bleed. I mean, you just have massive hemorrhage because, and so this creates obviously a lot of problems if you can't clot after a wound or especially if the damage starts to spread. And then there are many other components that are then targeting that sort of the vascular system or the muscle system and degrading cells and chopping up parts of the cell membranes that are essentially really important. for the integrity of your body. So these are two very different mechanisms, right? Yeah.

Targeting the nervous system or targeting your clotting. 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 they isolated in the two different groups of snakes, or how does that all fit together? I mean, this is why it gets where it gets so exciting. So 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 elapid split, they each start to recruit new genes into their venom. And those are the ones that are the ones we really talk about, the real dangerous guys. And along the alapid lineage, they develop some really powerful neurotoxins. And largely speaking, but not exclusively, they are neurotoxic venom.

And they have components of that hemorrhagic venom and they have elements that are disrupting cell integrity. but they also have really powerful neurotoxas. And that's why those snakes can be really, really deadly and act quite quickly. Can you remind me? Elapids are vipers, is that right? So elapids are going to be your cobras and crates and some sea snakes. So anything in Australia, I don't know why people would ever go there.

Some of the deadliest snakes are the world. 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 venomous. Anyway, crazy.

They probably already put venom on their hot dogs down in Australia. They just don't even talk about it. They're made of sterner stuff down there. It's so boring to them. That's right. So, um, 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 lineage, they developed a lot of like, they recruited in a lot of protease. and other genes that help really disrupt that hemistatic system. But they also have taken some of those and turn those into neurotoxins as well. So they've mutated some of these proteins that were initially, we think, used for disrupting the hemistatic system or disrupting the cells and change them and modify them and turn them into neurotoxys as well. So we see neurotoxicity within Vipers addition.

So Vipers, again, are rattlesnakes. and but then there's a ton of those snakes over in Europe and in Africa and Asia. So all of these snakes are kind of all over the world for the most part. But there are no vipers. There are no vipers in Australia. 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, no, 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, and this is only, they split maybe 30 to, maybe it's 40 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 mostly in, mostly in vipers. But they took one gene, for example, one metalloprotease,

and it seems to be recruited into the venom gland, something they would excrete. And if you look at it, if you look in a human, we have this metalloprotease in the same genomic location. So we have a few flanking genes that are conserved across all vertebrates. And we could say, oh, yeah, there's gene X and gene Y, and then there's this metallopordease, and then there's some other genes.

But in a rattlesnake, in the western, diamond back, for example. There might be up to 30 copies of that metalloprotease. And they're all different. They have really conserved areas, but they have, the proteins have been modified and changed. And we don't know why. We have no idea why they have so many copies of this gene and why they're also different from each other. And so more copies doesn't mean you necessarily mean you make more, but it means what you make, you make different versions of it? So, right, there's slight, they're like different variations in the same way that there are thousands of variations of hot sauces.

these are different variations of these proteins. And we assume, and we don't know really how they function differently, but we assume it has to do with the prey that they're eating or the predators that are avoiding and that they are constantly tweaking these genes to be more effective against different types of prey, potentially, in the same way that the prey is kind of going like, I really should figure out how to stop this.

So that's the other part I wanted to ask about because the missing part of this 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? Were they in different parts of the world?

Why do we understand the motivation for that split at all? Well, they split in the way that every species split all the time. Who knows exactly? We have no idea exactly what context led the, you know, the split of, but 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, a couple of sister species or something like that. What led it, you know, when maybe once the lineage for viper starts to evolve one type of venom, maybe they focused on one kind of prey that was different than what

elapids did. And elapid behavior, and it's very different than viper behavior in many ways. So the venom evolution could either just be like, look, we went 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 snack on. 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 that means versus another might just be all that they needed to truly start to delineate these two groups. And there might have been other elements.

Like, you know, the snakes do have some other physiological differences between each other, but, you know, they largely, yeah, exactly what led to the split between the two is, It's hard to say. Do we see any patterns where, like, 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 where they've tried to look at the prey that's, you know, what they're eating and then see if the different venom types are correlating. but it's not great. There's some correlations there, but it doesn't seem like some smoking gun. This is clearly what's driving the differences. And what about non-snake venom's? I know we talked about lizards,

and you mentioned trees or whatever. In other species 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 phospholipase A2.

And so phospholitis A2 is a part of this large family of proteins, and that's in the viper venom. They use one of these. The elapids also recruited a phospholipase A2, but a different family member, a deeply diverged version of it. So we call that a group one, PLE2. And the vipers use group two. And bees use group three in the venom that they have. So in that case, you have a convergent use of a similar energy. enzyme that can be used when injected to cause pain or to disrupt the prey or whatever you're

trying to sting. But other molecules, especially like in cone snails and stuff, they use very different kinds of molecules that work effectively at, you know, they can often work as neurotoxins or some other effect. But we suspect that, so I don't know a lot of the chemistry about all the different kinds of venom, but that I suspect that the evolutionary sort of effects of these, or the result of gaining toxin or gaining venom, and then what we see following that in terms of the diversity of toxins or the evolution of those toxins once acquired, we might have some similarities

in there. I probably shouldn't have used the word venom for the trees. It's probably some other word was the right word. 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 rattlesnake 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 to 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 act as inhibitors to those hemorrhagic toxins. So that's a pretty, pretty cool invention and very, really good for the squirrel. Yeah, I'd say. And why isn't that more widespread? So that's a great question. And it seems that, well, 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, hit an animal, and then kind of pull back, and the animal will walk off and die somewhere, and it will follow and find the prey that it killed, and then eat it. And this is largely because they don't really want to tussle that much, you know, because you have potential for injury. If all you are is a hot dog with teeth, it's really easy for something to 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, it does. A hawzog with teeth that follows you. So, you know, vipers are also often ambush predators. So rattlesnakes 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 and stock things out. So the things that rattlesnakes are eating, why is there not more? There may be more resistance.

And it might be that the history, that the reason that that venom is so complex might reveal an evolutionary history of prey resistance and then trying to overcome it by either recruiting in new toxins or duplicating and multiplying the toxins you do have and changing them. You have an arms race going on. Right. So 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 mere cats have involved, I think in some cases convergently ways to prevent the neurotoxin

from affecting them. And these are all animals that eat, you know, cobras and other snakes because essentially they're really juicy tasty hot dogs. And so if you want to eat a hot dog that can. and bite you back when you're trying to eat it. Like you, that's a where then if you're depending on that for your diet, it might, it's possible there's even stronger sort of pressure to, to sort of evolve or resistance.

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. 2%. That is the number of people who take the stairs, when there is also an escalator available.

I'm Michael Easter, and on my podcast, 2%, I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. I'll be speaking with writers, researchers, and other health and fitness experts, and more to look past the impractical and way too complex pseudoscience

that dominates the wellness industry. We really believe that seed oils were inherently inflammatory. We got it wrong. Many of the problems that we are freaked out about in the world are the result of stress. Put yourself through some hardships and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's T-W-O-Persent on the I-Hart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Serving Pancakes podcast, conversations about volleyball go beyond the court.

Today we have a little best friend compatibility test. Okay. How long have we been best friends for? Since the day we met. As the League One volleyball season heads towards its final stretch, there's no better time to tune in. We really are like yin and yang, vodka and tequila. You'll hear unfiltered analysis, behind-the-scenes stories, and conversations with leaders making an impact across the sport. Today we have Logan Ledmecky.

I feel like our fan base in general is very connected. Just like a comforting feeling getting to play at home. Whether you're following the final push of love season or just love the game, serving pancakes brings you closer to the action. and the people shaping the future of volleyball. Jordan, Thompson, had that microphone out. God forbid we make mistakes or cuss at our coach.

Like when talking or two times. Open your free IHeart Radio app, search Serving Pancakes, and listen now. This has been serving pancakes, and we'll catch you on the flip side. Okay. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. If you're trying to keep up with everything happening on and off the court,

we've got you covered on the podcast, flagrant and funny. You look at the top four number one seeds. What do you think UCLA is going to do? Break down that for me, my friend. Obviously, Yukon is the overwhelming favorite in this tournament. But I'll be honest, I think people are kind of sleeping on Texas. Experts are suggesting that UCLA is the number one challenger to Yukon and that right after that would be Texas.

S&C is so deep and so thick and just about everything. It really is annoying. So it's UCLA, Texas, South Carolina, LSU. Only ones that could possibly upset Yukon. On Flagrant and Funny, we're giving our unfiltered takes on the biggest moments the conversations everyone's having. So whether your bracket is busted or you just want the latest on the tournament, we got you.

Listen to Flakron and Funny with Carrie Champion and Jamel Hill on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much. that my podcast called Playing Along is back. I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting. Every episode's a little different,

but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians. Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leveh, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name. And this season, I've sat down with

Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more. Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin. You related to the phantom at that point. Yeah, I was definitely the phantom in that. That's so funny. Share each day with me, each night, each morning. Say you love me.

You know how you... So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to playing along on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. We have been hitting Matt with all the hot dog relations. 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 nipping at each other, 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 because class chicken. So the most important thing is, of course, is just to stay calm. And if you're in the United States and if it's a rattlesnake, you're going to 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 7 to 8,000 bytes a year within the U.S. And there's five or six deaths, which is tragic, but is a good survival rate for sure. Yeah. And as long as there's access to some medical care, you're going to be just fine. That's fewer people than are killed by sharks, I think, otherwise known as ocean-based hot dogs. Oh, shit. 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. 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 it, well, not great than they're dead. It's great in that it does put all of it into a framework. Yeah.

And so obviously the number one, of course, is mosquitoes, right? Mosquitoes are killing the mouse. And then it's like humans. Yeah. Depressive. Other dangerous. But then snakes is third. Right?

So as much as snake bites in the U.S. are not really, they're not, not you should be like, it's nothing, but it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it. is like not the problem it is in Africa or in Asia, where it's a significant problem. Of course. 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 does 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 anti-venoms. And so what this is essentially they'll take venom. They'll inject it in a horse initially. Initially, people do these in horses or sheep. And then you're essentially just asking the animal's immune system to create a series of antibodies that'll block the toxins. And so they'll take, you know, they'll take a few of the snakes that are here. So the one, the main one in the United States takes denim from four different animals, four different snakes, puts it together, puts it in sheep or horse. And then it does some, it will try to do some purification.

But then you take that polyclonal antibody, and then you essentially just put that in vials, and then you have to take it if you get bit. And this system is sort of just working around the world where they take the venom from the snakes in the area, and then they try to create antibodies against it. Unfortunately, it's not like, while it's very good that it saves or save lives

and prevents damage, to some degree, it is also, it's not like the most perfect system. because people can develop allergies to these kinds of antibodies. And they're extraordinarily expensive. I mean, even if in the U.S., like you're getting, I think you might have to get like 10 vials of an antivenom. And if there are a few thousand a pop, that's going to, it's significant. And they require refrigeration.

So this is like why Stakebite is such a problem in the developing world where they don't have access to this sort of, these sort of antivenombs. For their costly, they have to be handled correctly. and the bigger problem in many cases is that the diversity of snakes, even regionally the venoms are different enough that your anti-venom might not be sufficient to cover you if you're bitten in a slightly different area by a slightly different sister species. So for horses, I had imagined maybe you go with horses because they're gigantic, and so you can hit them with a little bit of venom and their bodies are big enough that they can handle it and survive.

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. Because they survive this, right? They need to 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 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 venom's to develop antibodies. Right. So this guy's, he's great. I mean, I don't know about 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 for an antibody being used. So if we can develop human-based antibodies, that's the best. And there are people doing that. And there's someone that's, they've been doing that recently for a 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. In this case, it's actually just taking a library, like a library of antibodies. So it's not in a human, but it's rather 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 better.

The other issue is here that we're talking, I talked about a cocktail of proteins, right? And we actually, as much as we know that the different kinds of actions, the different kinds of toxins can do, we don't really know what contributes the most to like a fatality. We don't really know like specifically is it all of them are needed or some of them. So some of these, like, and when you throw a bunch of snake venom's in there and you put a bunch of antibodies against all of them or you hope that you're gathering all of them, you don't know exactly what you're stopping or blocking. And so I think some people are now trying to like specifically target a few. proteins alone and say like maybe this is the worst one and this is the one we should stop. But the best antivenom comes from humans, which is why we're so ingratiated to Tim Fried, who's injected himself more than 700 times voluntarily with venom to develop an unparalleled

snake anti-venom. That's amazing. Thank you, Tim. 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 might be good. I think there will be other methods too. And I think there are some, there's some work now with what are called nanobodies. And so this is if you inject llamas and alpacas. So they have a slightly different immune system. Like the antibodies that they generateers are different enough that they can be essentially broken up so that they take away the animal, like the llama specific part. And so they might be able to function without the same kind of allergic reactions and side effects that are possible.

So there's some of that. And then I think there's also some people trying to develop like just small molecule inhibitors, things that are just like you can generate as a chemical and then maybe give that to people. And so those are the kind of things that might be even better because especially when we're talking about like snake bite as a health issue, it is the biggest issue and the main reason why so many people are dying injured is because they just have no access to medical care or it's so delayed that by the time they're given it, it's too late.

And part of that is like those, there's the borough hospitals don't have the denim stopped and all this other stuff. And if we can come up with things that are that you might take into the field with you or things that you don't have to be refrigerated, that's like the real goal, the real, then you can really save, you know, a million lives a year or whatever, or 100,000 lives a year. Well, if you think that an anti-venom industry based on one guy named Tim is impractical, here's an idea for you. What if you made snakes out of antimatter? So you have anti-snakes, and their venom is anti-venom. Can you just use that as anti-venom? It's amazing. Wow.

Because I suspect you could keep an anti-snake with you at all times. And then you have like a little pan ant-anthesnake. If you ever get bit, you can just have the 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 that's, that part's the easy part. That's the easy part. This is why we need interview.

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. Snakes on a plane and crashes in the ocean, I don't know, dot, dot, dot. Man, I really, we do 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 anyway. So to try to get at this question, I obviously 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, octopus doesn't really have the same kind of clotting systems, but they do have cells that are still made of like same kind of membranes that these venoms do target. So I suspect it could still do quite a bit of damage and probably just really disrupt those tissues. Octopuses, of course, can kind of, some of them can grow their limbs back, so they may not actually

care too much. Amazing. That might be one thing. 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, let's say, let's say, so all bets are sort of off on how effective it would actually be, but there's reason to think that even these venoms would still be pretty damaging to an octopus. Amazing.

So you wouldn't recommend to an octopus to get bitten by rattlesnake? I wouldn't, but I mean, honestly, an octopus with all those eight tentacles and a snake, I don't know how that hot dog, it's a picture I have is a, is a marshmallow surrounding an octopus, a hot dog. I don't know, I don't know what the snake could do. Australian octopi would probably shrug it off. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. There are some venomous sea snakes, right? There are, yes. So there are elapids 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 going to 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 spur 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, like legless animals versus squids and octopies. I think we've 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 grow it back. Not medical advice, people. Don't listen to him. Seriously. The listener also sent us an extended question and wanted to to know. So we already established that if a diamond back rattlesnake bit another diamond back rattlesnake or bit itself, it would probably be fine.

But what if like a diamond back rattlesnake bit a cobra bit a diamond back rattlesnake, what would happen then? This is a great question. I suspect that if we go between Elapids and fipers, we might see that they don't have the same kind of resistance to that venom.

The one that I'm not sure about is so the king cobra is called a king because it eats other snakes. And it probably, so I should really know this, but it probably could have some resistance to other vipers if 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 Naya cook for that first. But even within rattlesnakes, we don't know. 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 have neurotoxic phantoms. 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 for the best. We probably should know. 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?

Oh, geez. I don't even think I can respond to that. I think the snake community is quite nice. It can be, there's a lot of collaboration that I see out there. Many snake scientists, 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 snakes, which I cannot do. I will not do. But there is a lot that's into, so there's a lot of the snake world that is into the populations of snakes and how they move and react and tracing the evolutionary history of those snakes. So there's a lot of, I think in today's world, there's a lot of genomics has become a lot easier to use, to stuff.

variation and distribution of animals. And in the stake world, that's no different. So there's a lot of work that's breaking down these genomes and then trying to compare them across different snake lineages and try to learn the history of those snakes and where they've come from. Very cool. And then with respect to venom, then there's always like cases of, you know, trying to understand where venoms are coming from.

And it just so many ones you could study. So there's a number of different lineages or lines of it, you know, studying different venoms. And so I want to know my last questions are, as a 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 touch them. Oh, that's where I started.

Yeah. It's what everybody wants to know. It's, but it's the right question. Because if you talk to like my, I have a coworker who is very much the guy like, oh, Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely. And we have a big debate because I like to tell vipers is the better venom snake, and he is a big elapid fan. And part of that has to do with the joy of holding him a lapid.

Which I'm like, fine, you could do that. So that's one of those things that's always asked, of course. And then a lot of like, you know, what is venom or what does it do to you? Those kind of questions are great. In terms of misconceptions, I think generally speaking, the idea that, I mean, if you watch any kind of movie about what snakes in it, it's 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 gentle and they're really fearful. They just are trying to hide. They just want to be basking in the sun.

But they react to prey, predators that are things that they perceive as predators. And so oftentimes they get perceived as a danger when they're, they may not be. and they just need to be moved away or sort of gently encouraged to not to sit where they are sitting. 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 tube, like worms, I think a tube is a really great simple body system. So the snakes obviously came from a more complex evolutionary history of having 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 in 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 on 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. Big fan of whales work, yeah. Yeah, they're neat. Everywhere 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 we just decorate it with different kinds of legs and pinchers or other teeth or whatever you want. But it's all just basically a tube to get food through and reproduce. So if you meet a biologist in real life, folks, they are thinking about you as an ornamented mouth to butt tube. Yep. That's exactly what you are. That tells me a lot about how biologists see the world. I think of you as a parasite host, so it depends on you, the biologist. That's right.

Yeah. And so many parasites are just little worms, so they're 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, venomous 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.

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, Matt, for being on the show. This was fantastic. It's my absolute pleasure. Thank you, guys.

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