Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Have you ever looked up at the stars and wondered, "Is there life on other planets?" From Disney and Pixar. Welcome to the communiverse. Allow me to adjust your gravity. Oh, I'm fine. Gravity off. Are not alone. Are you gonna eat me? Ew! What kind of alien are you? Disney and Pixar's Elio, rated PG. Parental guidance suggested. Only in theaters June 20th. Tickets available now.
Thank you.
If you want to protect your favorite public media programming and podcasts like this one, visit AmericanPublicMedia.org slash action to learn how you can help. One more time, that's AmericanPublicMedia.org slash action. Thanks so much for standing up for public media. From the brains behind Brains On, this is the moment of um. Thanks for tuning in for another Snake Week episode. Um, um, um.
Moment of Um comes to you from APM Studios. I'm Ruby Guthrie. Um, time for lunch. Time for lunch. Time for lunch. Hey, Mark, where are you running to? Ooh, hot diggity. I'm about to check out this new restaurant around the corner. You want to come? Sure. Okay, but we've got to move fast. During the lunch rush, they sell out of the secret sauce for their french fries in minutes. Let's go.
Welcome to the Snake Shack, home of slithering flavors and shedding delights. What can I get you? Can I have a snake burger, a snake shake, and a side of fries with secret sauce? It's dangerously delicious. Oh, what's in the secret sauce? Snake venom. Snake venom? Yeah, that's what gives it that extra bite. It's actually just ketchup mixed with hot sauce. We have no idea how to make snake venom. Gabriel and Luca were wondering the same thing.
Snakes make venom inside venom glands that are located on the sides of their skull. And those venom glands are connected to their teeth with these little ducts. And when they bite their prey, they're able to inject venom into the prey.
I'm Emily Taylor. I'm a professor of biological sciences at Cal Poly, which is a university in San Luis Obispo, California. Venoms vary dramatically from snake species to snake species, even among individual snakes in the same species. Snakes like rattlesnakes are going to have venom that's inside their venom glands, and it can just sit there for a long time not being used.
until they're ready to use it. And so their body is basically going to make venom only when it needs to be replaced because it has used it. Otherwise it'll just kind of sit there waiting. One of the cool things about that is that the venom is not really active when it's inside the venom glands, because otherwise it would digest the snake's head away. And so it's actually going to be partly the fact of the active actually injecting it into the prey item that helps to activate the venom. Um, uh,
Honestly, Mark, it's probably best not to eat snake venom. I guess, but I like the idea I was doing something a little dangerous. Classic Mark. But hey, did you know that snake venom is actually being used by some researchers to develop medicine for things like cancer and heart disease? In fact, there's already a medicine on the market that can help treat blood clots, and it was developed from rattlesnake venom.
Slithering sidewinders on a sidewalk? No way! Yeah, snake venom can actually be helpful to humans. If used properly, of course. Oh, of course. If you like this episode, take a second to subscribe to Moment of Um wherever you listen to podcasts.
And if you want to know more about our slithery friends, check out the Smash Boom Best podcast where we have a whole episode all on snakes versus spiders. If you have a question, we'd love to help you answer it. Drop us a line by going to brainson.org slash contact. See you next week and the next day and every week. Until then, um, order up.