Voraciously Heinous and Veinous Venom

Do you have a strong stomach?

Seriously. Don’t just click that video all willy-nilly.

If you do proceed, you’re in for one of the most whoa-inducing demonstrations of venom chemistry that I’ve ever seen. You’ll have to ignore the annoyingly dubbed audio.

The Russell’s viper is native to the Indian subcontinent and is responsible for a huge number of fatal snakebites. They can deliver 4-5 times the lethal dose of venom in a single bite, using what I can only scientifically describe as horrendous knife-like appendages of piercing death poison.

The coagulants (the blood-clotting factors) in venom like this thicken the blood by causing a protein called prothrombin to activate into its active thrombin form. By snipping off a little piece of the prothrombin molecule, kind of like pulling a pin from a grenade, the thrombin acts as a switch to activate a whole mess of things in your bloodstream that gel up and form fibers. Normally, this would help stop bleeding, but in the case of the snake it just kills you from the inside (a charming cause of death referred to as “disseminated intravascular coagulation”).

There are more deadly snakes in the world, but I’ve never seen venom that acts in such a dramatically disgusting fashion. There is a silver lining, though. The venom is so good at clotting blood that it led to medical blood clotting aids to help stop wounds and a common lab test to diagnose lupus.

312 Notes/ Hide

  1. intheyear1787 reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  2. math-erin reblogged this from jtotheizzoe and added:
    Holy fucking shit.
  3. pointyteeth reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  4. placitas reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  5. rosetylersgirlfriend reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  6. fourteengoingon reblogged this from jtotheizzoe and added:
    typically kills things, can be used
  7. hisnamewasbeanni reblogged this from scishow and added:
    Holy crap, that’s amazing! Go on, click it! It’s not gross, I promise. That stuff is crazy.
  8. spybutts reblogged this from niggie-san
  9. tenebrific reblogged this from twitterpatedlyyours
  10. twitterpatedlyyours reblogged this from scishow
  11. kiwiblue reblogged this from jtotheizzoe and added:
    Crikey! Not for the squeamish.
  12. thewildstrawberry reblogged this from scishow
  13. heiri-xqr reblogged this from orionator
  14. lectictinium reblogged this from orionator
  15. orionator reblogged this from officially-whelmed
  16. officially-whelmed reblogged this from jtotheizzoe and added:
    what, we need some competitive enzymes
  17. thegreatestwant reblogged this from agirlneedsgoals
  18. chickiedear reblogged this from maggieblueberry and added:
    snakes, needles, blood...Description of the video: The snake is collected by its handlers....
  19. agirlneedsgoals reblogged this from faithliketeeth
  20. maggieblueberry reblogged this from scishow and added:
    Note to self: never get bitten by any snake, ever… o_O
  21. ofreisandmen reblogged this from scishow
  22. qwefff146 reblogged this from scishow
  23. theauspicioussuitcase reblogged this from scishow and added:
    Wow.
  24. quantumsquirrel reblogged this from scishow
  25. saraahlynne reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  26. kahroleinmahrie reblogged this from scishow and added:
    Oh my god that is fantastic and amazing holysheets
  27. tooloose-lautrec reblogged this from stingraycoochie
  28. stingraycoochie reblogged this from asexyvirgin
  29. and0rk reblogged this from scishow
  30. asexyvirgin reblogged this from scishow
  31. minwoohoo reblogged this from scishow
  32. azimbaig reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  33. spaceeboundgirl reblogged this from scishow and added:
    Fucking scary..
  34. broodfestertongues reblogged this from scishow

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