SciShow Tangents - Poison

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive science knowledge showcase. I'm your host, Hank Green. And joining me this week, as always, is science expert, Sari Reilly. Hi. And our resident deafery man, Sam Schultz. Just hear those sleigh bells ring-a-ling, ding, ding, ding. Oh, thanks for the reminder. A croon-in. What are you getting for your partner this Christmas?

Starting point is 00:00:42 Oh. I walked into a trap. We're this on november 4th and i don't know let me hit you with another one then i just wanted to see james acaster in seattle about a month ago and and uh it was absolute delight he talked a lot about like the needs of the sort of five-year-old version of him that lives inside of him still. And still has a lot of needs that he has to take care of. So what, if you had a chance, would you buy five-year-old you for Christmas? This is another trap.

Starting point is 00:01:17 I still buy a lot of toys and stuff. It's the exact same thing I want now. Yeah. Sarah, you go first. I also buy the toys that I want. Let me go first. Let me go first. Please go first, Hank.

Starting point is 00:01:34 Yeah. Because I, here's what I do. You know how you can get like slime, like kids can get slime and then they put their hands and they play with it? Yeah. I want that, but I want like at least five gallons i think that the amount of slime that you get is like by far not enough i want to be able to like sink my whole head into the slime i want to i want to like put my arms in it i want to like like a i want to go outside and just like be a slime monster. I want to put it over my, you know, five-year-old little body and run around.

Starting point is 00:02:07 Hank, you want to know what? I was going to also say slime or some kind of goo. Because I feel like when you grow up, you're like, if I get the goo, it's just going to get ruined or it's going to get on my carpet. And then my wife's going to be pissed. When you're five and you don't got a wife to worry about, you're going to be slinging slime everywhere. Yeah, I want to like, I want to put slime on me and then get on a bike just ride around the neighborhood i don't i think you both could achieve this dream get a kiddie pool get a lot of like a big five gallon bucket of elmer's glue and some borax i bet you could buy a lot of slime on amazon

Starting point is 00:02:43 you could probably subscribe to slime on Amazon. Like you can subscribe to Bottle Caps. Slime of the month. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've actually even have, I've got like mutuals on TikTok who are slime makers. So I could DM them and be like, hey, how much?

Starting point is 00:02:57 How much for five gallons? Can I get a bulk slime discount? I'm sure a lot of it's just the packaging process of like getting it into the little can. Let's skip that step. Send me the bucket. The postage on that would be insane though well maybe they'll just put it in their trunk and drive it over that's a real santa delivering it on chris this morning too so also very exciting for five-year-old yeah it's been tricky for santa since slime happened because it's so heavy and so messy it gets all over that everything to do with santa is made of like crushed velvet and that does not mix well that don't come out that don't come out

Starting point is 00:03:31 he has a lot more outfits now than back in the old day where he just keep re-wearing it okay now i'm picturing five-year-old sari running around being happy and cute and inquisitive what is sari what does little sari want i feel like i would want unlimited time in some sort of like insectarium like rent a museum for myself maybe just biosphere too but if it was safe for kids like just running around you just you want, I think my big dream is, is a bucket of slime. And so he's like, I want biosphere too. I want to do a Pauly Shore movie.

Starting point is 00:04:15 Five-year-old Sari would just want to run around unattended and, uh, you want a bunch of bugs. Yeah. I had so many like paper notebooks that I made where I would walk around our yard and tape sticks and leaves into it. And so if I could just do that,

Starting point is 00:04:32 but with more cool stuff than what I could find in our yard, I think I would be happy. I'm so happy for all of our little five-year-old selves. If only we could get out of childhood free of trauma, I'm sure that none of us would be so driven and... Yeah, that's what we are. We're driven. All right. Every week here on Tangent, we get together to try to one-up, amaze, and delight each other with science facts while also trying to stay on topic. Our panelists are playing for glory and for Hank Bucks, which I will be awarding as we play. And at the end of the episode, one of them will be crowned

Starting point is 00:05:09 the winner. Now, as always, we introduced this week's topic with the traditional science poem. This week, it's from me. I like to have a drink sometimes when I'm out with my friends, a couple of beers, a couple of shots to celebrate weekends. But another couple shots from there, I know I've made a mistake. I'm not having fun anymore. My body needs a break. I've got my Uber headed home. It'll be here any minute. The cemeteries are full of folks who didn't know their limit. It's the dose that makes the poison, the quantity that counts. Anything will kill you if you have the right amount. I like to go on Twitter. It's an easy thing to do. Open it up and see what fresh hell's waiting there for you. But then I close it down and have breakfast with my wife. Playing Wordle over coffee is a great part of my life. If I didn't take some breaks, I don't know if I'd be alive. That much Twitter all day long, could anyone survive? It's the dose that makes the poison, the quantity that counts. Anything will kill you if you have the right amount.

Starting point is 00:06:04 The topic for the day is poison up in the air so whether or not twitter will still exist by the time this airs i may have quit by then that's that's certainly possible uh or at least scaled back my presence so poison uh am i right sari it's everything as long as you have enough. I would say that anything can be considered. You can have toxic amounts of anything. I don't know if scientists would look at everything in the world and be like. I would call that a poison.

Starting point is 00:06:38 Yeah. Would they look at Twitter and be like, I would call that a poison? Probably. Sociologists say yes. What about a specific substance that interferes with the body's ability to do body stuff? So toxin is the overall thing.

Starting point is 00:06:55 And I think it's like interferes with body stuff at relatively small amounts is how I would put it. Is the amount of the thing needed is relatively small small which is what makes it dangerous and toxic as opposed to just like a food that we eat or water that we drink or twitter that we scroll on the difference that a lot of people like to draw between

Starting point is 00:07:17 poison and venom is how they enter your body so toxin is just like if you want to talk about bad things that are out there, things that can harm you in small doses. You're always accidentally saying poison or venom when you mean venom or poison. But if you say toxin, you're good every time. Yes, that's my strategy. That's my science communication tip for everyone listening. Whenever I'm a little bit unsure i use toxin instead and i'm like i know that's gonna no one's gonna call me out for that i almost texted you guys to be like should we just call this episode toxin because i'm having a hell of a time

Starting point is 00:07:55 about poison we can make this episode in spirit about toxin poison is a sexier word though we're gonna keep it's poison how's venom compared to poison and then it's cool too ah toxin sucks compared to the okay toxins too technical toxins the nerd version and then you get poisons and venoms venom so poison you eat if you ingest it then it's poisonous and venom eats you or is injected somewhere into your body then it's venom so like a sting a bite can be venomous a berry uh can be poisonous what if i swallow a bee and it stings my tummy i was having the same question earlier uh if a if a beast stung inside your tummy i would still call it a venom because the sting is the method of delivery if it dissolved in your tummy and then you went oh i feel sick then that's a poison i got bee poisoning and then there was a

Starting point is 00:08:59 2014 paper that i was reading that uh when you get to like the middle zone of poisons and venoms, there are animals that spray. And so it's like, well, not quite injecting it. It's not a stinger. It's not a bite, but it's not as passive as poison. Like you're not necessarily being eaten. You're like you have this poison that you create. You have this toxin that you create and are halfway active but when when it sprays on you then that's when it absorbs into your skin or something ultimately there is a

Starting point is 00:09:33 line here where it gets fuzzy also did they name these two things first and then later they were like oh maybe that's kind of the same thing it feels a little like that to me it feels a little like we sort of retroactively had to apply definitions to these we already got these two really cool words though so we can't really get rid of either get rid of them let's just make up a bullshit definition for one of them well they kind of had a difference from their from their root words so poison comes from potare which means to drink and so poison is very in the in family. Like you drink something and then it's bad for you. And then you're dead. It's like a borrowing from French.

Starting point is 00:10:10 So I don't know. Poisson. I don't speak French. Don't I mean fish? One of those words fish. It does sound like the fish word. Yeah. Be careful, French people.

Starting point is 00:10:21 Don't make that mistake. Yeah. Poisson is fish in French. What is poison in French? Also, very similar. It is poison. It is just spelled the exact same way. Do I know how to pronounce it? Absolutely not. Poison.

Starting point is 00:10:35 Poison. I thought that was Catherine. I love Catherine. I'm standing there with you. Just writing it. She's always here listening to us podcast live, but only one third of it. What a horrible, horrible realization.

Starting point is 00:10:57 Venom comes from Latin venenum, which is poison. So yes, it means something. But then I think it evolved to something that was secreted by an animal or transferred by biting venom means poison yeah this is or just maybe probably means toxin but probably means talk yeah probably mean more accurately yeah they might not have even sort of understood that a venom was a thing it was like a snake bite like the problem wasn't the thing the snake injected in you. It was the snake, you know?

Starting point is 00:11:26 Yeah. Snakes are bad. Things that hurt are like, that's the animal's thing. Whereas poison is oftentimes something that people do to people. All right. I feel informed on our topic.

Starting point is 00:11:38 We're going to move on now to the quiz portion of our show. And that means we're going to be playing Dead or Not Dead. It's a special, note for the new Tangents game. I'm going to tell you the name of an animal, and you have to imagine that you are that animal.

Starting point is 00:11:54 Then I will be offering you something that might sound potentially appetizing to you, as said animal. As a catch, though, it could be poison. It's up to you to decide whether or not that meal will leave you dead or not dead. I love this. All right. So you are, for this first one, a black-headed grosbeak, a bird found in the western part of North America. Its song has been described by

Starting point is 00:12:18 allaboutbirds.org as like a tipsy robin welcoming spring. So they're having a good time over there. Yeah, that sounds great. And you might migrate down to central Mexico when the weather gets org as like a tipsy robin welcoming spring so they're having a good time over there and you might migrate down to central mexico when the weather gets cold i'm offering you an insect that you might run into on your path south that has distinctive black and orange wings would this leave you dead or not dead well black and orange that seems like the don't eat me color but then there's other guys who pretend to do the don't eat me color. So it really is kind of up in the air. I think dead.

Starting point is 00:12:49 I think a gross beak shouldn't be messing with that kind of thing. I wouldn't where I want. I'd eat a nice berry instead. You logicked it all out. I would say as a gross beak, I'm brave. Why am I called a gross beak? Because you got gross stuff in there in your beak yeah i got gross stuff in there i think it's actually from french for big but i'm just

Starting point is 00:13:10 okay well if i have a big big beak i can crunch that bug i'll crunch it so um i'm gonna say not dead the answer is not dead because i offered you a monarch butterfly i know that's not what you were thinking when you heard orange and black insects, but that is what it is, which is poisonous to many animals thanks to its ability to consume another poison, milkweed. Milkweed is the same type of poison that comes from the poison arrow

Starting point is 00:13:36 tree, and it can cause cardiac arrest in humans and animals besides humans. These compounds interfere with the sodium potassium pumps in your muscles that messes with your heartbeat. But monarch butterflies are able to consume milkweed thanks to a set of mutations that enable the sodium pump to function despite the compounds. And it turns out that the black headed grosbeak also has a similar set of mutations as do several other monarch butterfly consumers,

Starting point is 00:14:01 including the Mexican black eared deer mouse. This mutation is an example of convergent evolution. It comes in handy for the black-headed grosbeak, which eats monarch butterflies as it migrates south. So it would kill you, and it's happened in the butterfly, and in a bird, and in a mouse. If you ate the bird, would you die?

Starting point is 00:14:21 Uh, if a human ate a bird that was full, just chock full of of butterfly it's just like the butterflies just goosh but the bird on the bird on its own is not poisonous no no okay i don't think so but maybe i haven't tried next question it's not in my list of facts you are a yellow spotted monitor lizard that lives in Australia. You are brown with various

Starting point is 00:14:48 light-colored spots, and you live on the ground digging holes to nest in. But you're also great at climbing, and you can sprint on your hind legs. You have long, forked, bluish tongue that you

Starting point is 00:14:58 use to look for prey by sensing odor molecules. This sounds like a grand old time for you. I'm offering you a large brown warty toad that was brought to Australia in the 1930s to help control pests on sugar cane farms, but has unsurprisingly spread beyond the farms.

Starting point is 00:15:14 Would this leave you dead or not dead? So toads, I feel same way. I understand why this game is so hard because they're the guys that are poisonous. There are plenty of toads that have the toxic mucus on their outsides. And then there are probably some guys that just pretend to. Or maybe my blue tongue has some sort of anti-toxin, anti-poison antidote. The blue tongue could be a clue.

Starting point is 00:15:40 I'm going to say die. Dead. Toads, don't mess with them. They got these big, like, they have a Chad-type look to them. They're walking around. The toads or the lizards? The lizards. They're walking around, they're like, oh, delicious

Starting point is 00:15:55 lizard. And then, yeah, they're going to croak. They're going to eat anything in their path and these toads are no good for them. They're dead. The answer is dead. As a monitor lizard, it would take you less than 30 seconds of having that toad in no good for them. They're dead. The answer is dead. As a monitor lizard, it would take you less than 30 seconds of having that toad in your mouth to die. Scientists have reported that 90%

Starting point is 00:16:11 of yellow spotted monitors have died in areas that have been taken over by cane toads. That's a bummer. However, it turns out that smaller juvenile toads are slightly less poisonous to monitor lizards, a fact that scientists decided to use to see if they could teach monitor lizards to not eat cane toads.

Starting point is 00:16:28 So they presented young cane toads to monitor lizards via a fishing pole. And when the lizard ate the small toads, they would get a little sick, but not so much to leave permanent damage. And that appeared to be enough to convince the monitor lizards to not give them a second try.

Starting point is 00:16:42 Don't want they gotta go tell their friends or something? Well, no, you just gotta hit every one of them okay one at a time baby toads that's a wild way to do it i would think maybe you could like make a meatloaf that looks like a toad and just like make it taste real bad but no they just find the baby ones put them on a fishing pole and and semi-poison a lizard science a little puppet a little toad puppet and go what scare the lizard so they run away yeah uh that's how i would do it round number three our final round you are the african crested rat roughly the size of a rabbit with black and white fur that makes you look kind of like a skunk scientists used to think that you lived alone but it turns out that you're social and you like to purr at your fellow crested rat friends.

Starting point is 00:17:27 I'm offering you the bark of a small tree that has broad leaves and berries that taste sweet, but slightly bitter when ripe. Would this leave you dead or not dead? I think we both know the answer to this, don't we? I think we both know. I was going to put on a show for the podcast, Sam. Do you know the answer?

Starting point is 00:17:48 I thought you were joking. I'm pretty sure this is the thing that makes them poisonous, right? The thing it eats and it grooms itself or something. And then the rat is imbued with poison powers. So he's fine. Is that right? This is definitely the poisonous rodent like that exists it's very metal it has spikes it is poisonous i don't know what gives it its poison though a lot of times it's

Starting point is 00:18:14 insects like frogs oh and birds that are poisonous uh get them from insects but this one could get it from bark i just feel like you wrote an episode episode of SciShow that I animated about this subject. Is that the case? Probably yes. Yeah, okay. But then I put that information where the information goes, which is to the ether. The space between the worlds. Then it became a lingering fun fact in my brain where come time for this episode, I was like, I think I know about a poisonous rodent. Oh, shoot.

Starting point is 00:18:48 I'm doubting myself. I think he's okay, though. Yeah. The bark, it's fine. The answer, indeed, is not dead. In fact, as you were saying, you probably should chew on this bark if you are this rodent because this is the poison arrow tree, which I mentioned earlier. And it's very toxic to mammals. It can lead to vomiting,

Starting point is 00:19:10 difficulty breathing, and cardiac arrest at high doses. It can also be used as heart medicines at lower doses. But you know what's also poisonous? The fur of the African crested rat, because the rat likes to chew on this bark. When researchers studied the rat in captivity, they watched them take their spit after chewing and apply it to their fur, coating it in the poison. And they hypothesize that the rats are able to tolerate the toxins from the bark because of their four-chambered stomachs and all the gut bacteria that can break this stuff down. And then they just wipe the poison on their bodies. Cool. Also, the berries, when ripe, are not poisonous. Only the bark.

Starting point is 00:19:40 Oh. Of the tree. Not of the rats. The rat berries don't mess with. Well, that means that Sam has two points and Sari got all three of those. Right. Next up, we're going to take a short break.

Starting point is 00:19:49 Then it will be time for the fact. Hello. Hello and welcome back, everybody. It's time for the Fact Off. Our panelists have brought science facts to present to me in an attempt to blow my mind. And after they've presented their facts, I will judge them and award Hank Bucks any way I see fit. But to decide who goes first, I have a trivia question for you. Throughout history, people have found ways to repurpose poisons into medicine, like Botox, for example, which is made from a toxin produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum. The toxin is responsible for botulism, which is very bad and dangerous, and it targets nerves and can lead to paralysis and death. Clostridium botulinum was discovered towards the end of the 19th century by Professor Emile van Ermenghem

Starting point is 00:20:47 at the University of Ghent. A group of Belgian musicians had contracted botulism after performing at a funeral and eating smoked ham. Oh no! Three of the musicians died, and their organs along with the smoked ham were sent to Ermenghem for his

Starting point is 00:21:03 bacterial expertise. How many musicians, three of them died, how many got sick with botulism this is not where i thought this question was gonna go i was gonna be like how few grams of botulism can it be and you still die no give me a number of musicians how many how many musicians do you need at a funeral is the real question. Yeah. I would think three would be plenty. Maybe it was a funeral for a really rich guy, and it was like a full orchestra because this was back in the day. But how many hams couldn't have all been bad because it didn't say it, just one ham.

Starting point is 00:21:39 So how many hams can a full orchestra eat? I think a full orchestra could eat seven hams. So what's seven divided by 50? How many people are in a full orchestra? 50. What's seven divided by 50? I'm asking for real. You could have just said, how many people can one ham feed?

Starting point is 00:21:58 It would have been a more direct path to the same answer. Like eight? 50 divided, 56 divided by seven? Leave me alone. Sorry. Like eight? Fifty divided. Fifty six divided by seven. Hank, leave me alone. Sorry. I'm just letting you know. Seven. The answer is seven.

Starting point is 00:22:11 7.14. So how many musicians got sick? 7.14 musicians. Three of them died. One person just got a little bit. A little pinky. I think Belgian musicians love to smoke ham. So I think everyone is in on the ham. i think everyone is in on the ham i think everyone's in on the ham okay okay okay i think i think all the ham was bad i think

Starting point is 00:22:33 they were all going ham for the ham and then they put all the ham in a big thing and they mixed it all up so you don't know which ham is which. Yeah, they just had a big ham platter. Everyone was grabbing from who knows what. So I think 20 of them got sick. The answer is 34. Oh my God. That's horrible. So I don't know how,

Starting point is 00:22:54 but it was definitely more than one ham unless they were all having very small bites. They were passing the ham around. Take a lick. Take a lick.

Starting point is 00:23:04 Everybody take a lick. That sucks lick uh so yeah all right so sarah that means you get to go first or not whichever you want i'll go first i'll dive into the the ham the smoked ham abyss uh ants are tidy critters as we've talked about on this podcast before maybe me i talk about ants a lot i think but they can't go to the grocery store and buy some soap or disinfecting wipes like we can so instead they have to rely on a hyper local organic cleaning product poison brewed in their own butts more precisely the backmost butt segment of an ant's body is called the gaster and certain subfamilies use a multi-purpose hole called an acidopore at the tip of their gaster to spray a toxic substance as a weapon or a defense

Starting point is 00:23:52 mechanism and this hole also connects to the anus and the pheromone gland in case you were curious so three purpose hole cool scientists have analyzed these poisons and noticed that a major component of them is formic acid, which makes sense because formica is Latin for ant, which can be corrosive to lots of things from human eyes and skin to bacterial membranes or even rival ants. But they're not just spraying creatures they don't like. This is a multipurpose poison. a multi-purpose poison. The species Lassius neglectus has been observed spraying poison inside their nests or any nest boxes created experimentally, including on their larvae, to kill off pathogens like bacteria or fungi. And no, they are not worried about this disinfectant acid burning their soft, fragile little babies because, as a 2018 paper showed, this species' larvae are swaddled in silk cocoons that act as protection. Sometimes these ants also suck poison straight into their mouths from their acidopores and groom the cocoons to remove any pesky fungal spores.

Starting point is 00:24:58 And in a 2020 study, another species called Camptonotus floridinus was observed gargling and or swallowing their own poison after eating food or drinking water, basically trying to kill any pathogens before they can fester and multiply in their little tummies. Across these projects, there are various experimental ways to prevent the ants from spreading their poison to see what happened, such as super gluing parts of their bodies shut or making them really cold so they'd stop moving. Just a little sad. But whenever the ants couldn't disinfect with their poison, they had lower survival rates. So we think it actually does something. It wasn't just that their butts were super glued shut. I feel like that might also lower my survival rate. You know, yeah, your butt and jaw super glued shut but you never know we think it's we think it's

Starting point is 00:25:48 the disinfectant because we use toxic substances to clean all the time and like even our immune system uses destroying particles sometimes so it makes sense that plenty of non-human animals do too and i guess in nature mildly poisoning yourself is worth it if it means you stay alive longer wow windex ants i got really distracted wondering one question what is the hole with the most uses the most is three the most you mean you mean of any of any animal yeah i feel like it's a we're just gonna put that one out there because i don't think we're gonna have an answer to that question that's definitely right soaca. We're just going to put that one out there. Because I don't think we're going to have an answer to that question. That's definitely right.

Starting point is 00:26:27 So I'm going to toss it out to the audience. What's the hole with the most uses? Yes. Sam wants to know. At SciShow Tangents. Yeah, tell me. If Twitter makes it. Oh, no.

Starting point is 00:26:38 All right, wild. Sari, that's very weird. Sam, what do you got? Sari and Hank, let me teach you a little something about viruses. And if I'm wrong at any point, please tell me, because this was really hard. When you're a virus, you sort of have to pick whether you're going to go after cells with nuclei or cells without nuclei. True so far? And you're pretty much locked into that choice.

Starting point is 00:27:02 Like, you want to infect a bacteria? Well, you, my friend, are a bacteriophage, and you aren't going to be able to go after cells with nuclei, like, say, maybe spider cells. And sometimes when you're a virus multiplying in cells, you tend to pick up things in those cells like DNA. Like, let's say that you're a bacteriophage. You probably got some bacteria DNA floating around in you on account of all the bacteria that you infect. But assumedly, you couldn't have any spider DNA, right? Yeah. some bacteria DNA floating around in you on account of all the bacteria that you infect. But assumedly, you couldn't have any spider DNA, right? Am I right, Samar? Okay. Yeah, if you're a bacteriophage, I have no reason to have some spider DNA in you.

Starting point is 00:27:43 Ah, but what do we do when we assume, my friends? You see, in 2016, researchers at Vanderbilt who are sequencing the genome of a bacteriophage called WO found DNA that matches DNA that black widows use to make a toxin in their venom. But what the heck? If these viruses only target bacteria, how did it get spider DNA inside of it? WO's target is a bacteria called Wolbachia, and Wolbachia infects arthropods like black widows. And when it infects arthropods, it hides inside cell membranes, safe and sound from bacteriophages. And similar to a virus,

Starting point is 00:28:11 as a bacteria is doing all that slipping in and out of cells, it's going to get some junk stuck to it along the way, including DNA from its arthropod hosts. And as previously mentioned, viruses end up with DNA in them too, and they don't care if that DNA comes from a bacteria or a black widow. So now you've got a bacteriophage with black widow toxin DNA, which is what they found, and it's the first time that animal DNA has ever been found in a bacteriophage. toxin but the toxin makes holes in cell membranes and these viruses do have to get inside of arthropod cell membranes to get to wolbachia so it seems sort of like they do use it and in this case i think the toxin would be considered a poison thus validating this as a poison fact but there's also a bit of a chicken and an egg situation here that scientists are also looking into. Did the bacteriophage get the ability to make cell damaging poison from the spider DNA passed to it from a bacteria? Or did spiders get the ability to make cell damaging venom from bacteriophage DNA passed to it from a bacteria? Nobody knows, obviously.

Starting point is 00:29:21 But there are only those two options. So it's one of those two. And either one is very cool. Yeah. And WO also contains DNA sequences that are used in animal cells to sense pathogens and trigger cell death and avoid immune responses. So while it's way more likely that this virus has just collected a bunch of junk over the eons, it and other viruses like it might have taught ourselves a lot of tricks that make life possible. other viruses like it might have taught ourselves a lot of tricks that make life possible.

Starting point is 00:29:50 Sari, I have a question for you, which is which way is cooler for it to get this DNA? Is it cooler for the spider to have gotten the toxin from a bacteriophage, or is it cooler for the bacteriophage to have gotten it from a bacteria that got it from the spider? to have gotten it from a bacteria that got it from the spider. I think spider from bacteria phage is cooler because spiders were just harmless at one point. Well, I think they have more than just that one toxin. I like that it got it from the spider because it couldn't get it directly from the spider. It would have to get it from the bacteria that got it from the spider. Which is't get it directly from the spider would have to get it from the bacteria right right just wild for genes to just be like we i'll go wherever well now i have

Starting point is 00:30:32 to choose which is the weird cooler weirder fact and sari's got a point is a point ahead already will it be ants disinfecting their whole situation with their butt poison, including their insides and their outsides and their nests. Or researchers finding spider DNA in a bacteriophage. But how? These are both very good. I think that Sarah is going to pull away from this one, but only because she came into it with the lead. Those points used to not mean anything.

Starting point is 00:31:02 I'm offended that they mean something else. They're a tiebreaker. They're really a tiebreaker. That's what they're there for. You used to give us like 400 points arbitrarily for our facts. You've changed. Well, look, Sam, you got 400 and Sari got 400 and those, you got 401. Oh, shoot.

Starting point is 00:31:20 Okay. Yeah. Cha-ching! Everybody gets 400 all right now it's time to ask the science couch where we've got a listener question for our couch of finally home finally Jan Rhett Sammy's on discord and Emily Nied Bala on YouTube ask is there poisonous venom I mean if you put it in your blood you put it in your interstitial tissues and it's doing damage, you put it in your tummy, it's very likely to also do damage. I'm sure that there are venoms that aren't poisonous, that in the acidic environment of your stomach, they'd be pretty immediately inactivated.

Starting point is 00:31:53 But there's got to be lots that you wouldn't want to put very much of in you. And also, as I said in the poem, you have enough of anything. It's going to get you uncomfortable. Did that make sense, Sari? How did I do the the message of scishow tangents is do not drink venom do not eat it please don't just go to one of those like places where they make anti-venom and they're constantly milking snakes and take a shot don't do that don't do that that's rude yeah but if you want to get really, really technical about it, venom, because it goes into your bloodstream, that's more an easier distribution pathway.

Starting point is 00:32:33 So venoms often contain big proteins that can get denatured. And proteins getting denatured is just when there's enough heat or a molecular reaction for some reason, then they unfold and then they can't do the thing. So a toxic protein would no longer be toxic and mess with your cells and be the poison anymore. Venoms do have different toxicity, whether you inject them or you take them orally and researchers do look into this mostly on mice it's always mice of injecting things versus feeding them to them and to to test and the main thing is that we just don't have we don't we don't really test venoms like eating a lot of different types of venoms. But when we do, there are like a couple things we've learned.

Starting point is 00:33:27 And so that's what I found. One study tested 17 different snake venoms just to see whether you could heat them and denature their proteins. And all but five of the 17, so 12 of them after heating, lost basically all of their activity. They're just food now. That's just protein. That's like eating a steak. And it's just, I wouldn't say that,

Starting point is 00:33:53 but say it's like some dirty water maybe. Not something particularly nutritious either, but there are certain beverages that integrate venom inside them. So like snake wine is prepared by steeping a whole venomous snake in rice wine. and there has been at least one person who was admitted to the hospital because his blood stopped clotting after drinking snake wine. Other people have emerged from it anecdotally fine. I was looking at lab protocols, and it seems like 70% ethanol is the standard cleaning supply for any toxin venom waste. So I would say if you're making alcohol out of venom i would make it at least uh 70 abv which i don't think wine is necessarily i don't think so uh

Starting point is 00:34:58 you would want like a distilled grain and then submerge your snake in it and then you can say you've drunk you can make snake ever clear but you cannot make snake wine yeah but it sounds like it's gonna cause a lot of problems it sounds bad it sounds everything sounds bad but like high enough concentrations of ethanol might help denature the proteins like that's that's the idea too also would take care of any bacteria that might be growing yeah i don't like the idea of i mean the only other fact i have is that tetrodotoxin which is mostly known for puffer fish so if you eat poorly prepared puffer fish where the the gland that contains the

Starting point is 00:35:39 tetrodotoxin has been severed and leaks into the rest of the flesh, then you will be poisoned. But tetrodotoxin is also used as a venom by other species. And so there are, biologically speaking, some species that use the exact same compound as a venom and poison, depending on where you look in the animal kingdom. So yes, even without drinking snake venom, there is poisonous venom out there because they're all toxins. They all fall under the same umbrella and some animals just deliver the same toxin in a different way. Cool. Well, if you want to ask the science couch your question, you can follow us on Twitter at SciShow Tangents, where we'll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes every week. Or you can join the SciShow Tangents Patreon and ask us on our Discord. Thank you to

Starting point is 00:36:23 Broken Thumbs on Discord and at Reality-3 and everybody else who asked us your questions for this episode. If you like this show and you want to help us out, it's really easy to do that. First, you can go to patreon.com slash SciShow Tangents. Become a patron. You get access to things like our newsletter and our bonus episodes. And we have a tier where you can get a special in-episode shout-out, which is the tier that patron John Pollock subscribed.

Starting point is 00:36:45 That, thank you, John. Thanks, John. Second, you can leave us a review where you can get a special in-episode shout-out, which is the tier that patron John Pollock subscribed at. Thank you, John. Thanks, John. Second, you can leave us a review wherever you listen. That's super helpful, and it helps us know what you like about the show. And finally, if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, just tell people about us. Thank you for joining us. I've been Hank Green.

Starting point is 00:37:00 I've been Sari Reilly. And I've been Sam Schultz. SciShow Tangents is created by all of us and produced by Sam Schultz. Our editor is Seth Glicksman. Our story editor is Alan Fillo. Thank you. And remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire. But one more thing. Goats can eat plants like poison oak without being harmed by the urushiol oils that can cause horrible rashes on humans. And surprisingly, it doesn't seem like researchers know how goats protect themselves, like if there are proteins in their spit that help. But an article from 1992 found that in goats that were only fed poison oak for 10 days,

Starting point is 00:38:01 over 90% of the urushiol from the leaves was absorbed or broken down during digestion leaving less than nine percent of it in their poop and none in their milk or pee so if you use goats for landscaping there's probably no need to worry about poison poop but don't roll around in it anyway please i mean that's still like nine percent Seems like plenty. How the heck is it? If it's like exclusively Yerushal eating. Where is it going? It's not in their milk or their pee. And you can eat goats. What's going on here?

Starting point is 00:38:31 It's probably turned into different. It's broken down chemically. Okay. Okay. They're not storing it up in some kind of sack or something. That'd be great though. That's how the African crested rat would do it. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:38:44 Have a big Yerushal sack and it would spray it on predators. And I'd have it on my shoulder and I'd get it to do it to people who are rude to me at the grocery store. Yeah. It's only goats and rats meet each other or else they'll start getting ideas. Yeah. They'll whisper to each other. Transfer some genes and we'll all be in lots of trouble. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:39:06 Hmm.

SciShow Tangents - Poison

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.