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The long-glanded blue coral snake secretes a strange and exceptional venom. The toxin is powerful — it has claimed at least one human life — but what makes the chemical special is the way it paralyzes with blistering speed. Thanks to this venom, the fire-headed animal is able to prey upon young king cobras, kraits and other agile, dangerous snakes without killing itself on the hunt.To Bryan G. Fry, a venom expert and professor at the University of Queensland in Australia, such a diet earns the species a title fit for George R.R. Martin: The snake is a “killer of killers.”Cobras are quick to strike and deadly, too, so blue coral snakes must be quicker. The snakes have two immense toxin glands — like fuel tanks for their speedy hunts — traveling along either side of their throats to their ribs for a full quarter-length of their six-foot bodies. Coursing within these twin glands, the largest in any animal, is a venom unlike any chemical previously discovered in snakes, as Fry and his colleagues recently reported in the journal Toxins. And strange though it may sound, this deadly chemical could, down the line, lead to better painkillers for humans.Specifically, the blue coral snake venom targets sodium channels, proteins that pass electrochemical signals from nerve cell to nerve cell or muscle cell to muscle cell. These channels act like a switch on a flashlight, turning a signal on or off.“This is the first time that a snake venom has been reported to act on sodium channels, which is really quite surprising,” said Jennifer Deuis, a coauthor of the study and a researcher at the University of Queensland’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience, in an email to The Washington Post.The scientists named the unusual venom calliotoxin. As the scientists described it in their paper, the compound is the product of a chemical arms race between the blue coral snake and its venomous food. Snakes that eat snakes strike their victims, release the poisoned animals and wait for paralysis to set in. ...
