SNAKES!!!!!!!! and Science

#1

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/7 ... -chemistry

Traumatic bleeding stopped cold using snake venom, visible light, and some cool chemistry

Imagine being able to apply a paste to the wound, shine some light on it, and have the wound seal up and stop bleeding in less than a minute. A group of researchers from China and Canada have teamed up with a highly venomous pit viper, Bothrops atrox, to provide just this kind of solution. They reported it July 14 in Science Advances.

There are three parts to this:

1) We need a gel that sets quickly to seal up the wound, even if it’s bleeding profusely
2) We want the blood to clot up around the wound, and quickly
3) The whole thing’s got to be nontoxic and biocompatible, so there are no ill effects

To get a grip on Step 1, let’s talk about tires! You may know that a process called vulcanization toughens up rubber to make it roadworthy. It works because of crosslinking, where we get long, chainlike molecules to link together to form a sort of mesh. For rubber, we add sulfur and ovenlike heat (Δ), and we get this to happen:
[Chemical structure picture I can't download. There are several more diagrams for chemistry gurus.]
Vulcanization causes chains of rubber to crosslink, converting the material from soft and pliable to tough and durable

► Show Spoiler
Now, we can’t very well heat a wound up to 300°F, so we’re going to need a way to do this more easily in the field.

In 2017, a Harvard-MIT-Tufts group found a way to do this sort of thing using visible light. They modified gelatin, which is made up of protein chains, to have crosslinkable hooks on it. They called the product GelMA (methacrylated gelatin). Traditionally, you need to use UV light to get these chains to link together.

The only problem with gel adhesives like this is that the setting process can get disrupted by severe bleeding. Wounds will eventually clot naturally, but if there’s a lot of bleeding, that won’t happen fast enough. Here’s where we get some help from the pit viper.

For blood to clot, red blood cells and platelets need to collect around the wound, and then they get wrapped up, as if within a net, by strands of a protein called fibrin. Fibrin comes from the snipping of a protein called fibrinogen, and the snipper is still another protein called thrombin.

The pit viper’s venom contains a protein called hemocoagulase. The catchier name for it is “reptilase”. It acts just like thrombin — that is, it snips fibrinogen to make fibrin — but unlike thrombin, it’s not regulated by anything in the human body. With no brakes, it just keeps rolling along until it gets trapped within a big blood clot.

Fortunately, in order to get reptilase, we don’t need to squeeze snake heads to collect venom anymore. With genetic engineering, now we can make lots of it in yeast.

Slim Cognito · #2

Cool! Snakes kinda fascinate me. Not that I want one, although I do have a small black-colored snake living in my front rock garden. I named him Snakey.

But I also think alligators are cool. Walking dinosaurs.

Here's a pix a neighbor took when Snakey decided to visit her across the street. She was not pleased. He's about three feet long. He's not very sciency but, oh hell, snakes moving that fast without feet. That's pretty sciency. I always talk to him when I see him and the last time we met up, he actually lifted his head and looked at me like he was listening. Then he decided to hide in the bush, except his last 12 inches were peaking out on the lava rock. But he thought I couldn't see him. I wasn't going to take that away from him.

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#3

Is Snakey's head oval or triangle shaped? If triangular, Snakey might be venomous. S/he seems to have a copperhead pattern.

I luvs snakes. My mom was morbidly afraid of them.

Slim Cognito · #4

I really never looked. Maybe I'd best check it out next time we cross paths. We do have little rattlers here, although I've never seen one, but everyone told me the black ones were good to have around for rodent and frog control. Maybe it's the way the sun is shining off him, but he's definitely black.

#5

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/15/world/sn ... index.html

Researchers have found that snakes have a clitoris. Here’s what it could mean

“It’s quite a taboo area. Female genitalia is not an easy subject to bring up sometimes and I think people were happy saying ‘it doesn’t exist. There’s no need for snake to have one,’” said lead study author Megan Folwell, a doctoral student at the University of Adelaide in Australia.

Folwell decided to investigate the female genitalia of snakes after noticing that very little research had been done on the topic. She found the organ varied among the types of snakes, taking up most of the anterior tail region in some, according to the study published Wednesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

"People weren’t looking, and it was hard to find. It’s not the easiest structure to see in some (snake) species,” she explained, adding that some researchers had previously confused the clitorises in snakes for scent glands.

Officially known as a hemiclitoris because it has two distinct parts, the organ appeared to be shaped “like two teardrops that formed a love heart structure” in the death adder, Folwell said. In reptiles like snakes, the penis is known as a hemipenis because it also has a dual structure.

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Folwell said that further work was needed to reveal exactly why snakes had a clitoris, but according to the study, a cluster of nerve endings in the hemiclitoris suggested it played a role in sexual arousal, perhaps creating a “sensation to the female snake during courtship and copulation, which might promote longer and more frequent mating leading to increased fertilization success.”

It could also give the female snake information to decide whether she wants to cut the copulation short to reduce chances of reproducing with a particular male, Schwenk said.

“It empowers the female to make decisions that allow her to control the copulation and which male she copulates with,” Schwenk said. “There’s been a tendency historically to see females of other species, well not just other species, as passive recipients of male copulatory behavior or even victims.”

But research like this shows that female animals likely have a much more active part in mating than they are given credit for, he added.

#6

I personally have zero use for snakes. I hate snakes and on our little patch of wilderness VA we have mostly copperheads and black snakes. I opened my front kitchen door one time and a big ass black snake that was slithering up the outside of the door fell on my head. I screamed so loud that both dogs and all 3 cats came running to see what had happened

But just because I dislike them doesn’t mean I’d want them to suffer. I found this guy all tangled up in bird net out in one of the sheds. He was very upset so my Mister held it as still as he could while I cut him out of that mess with tweezers and suture scissors that have a little hook to get under the stitch. There was one really tight band around his middle and when I finally got that cut loose the poor thing just relaxed and I think he understood we were just trying to help. Once he was free of it all we took him down to the horse field and turned him loose. Then I hunted down every scrap of that nasty net, bagged it so nothing else could get caught in it and threw it in the trash.

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#7

My #1 phobia is snakes. They can send me into a panic attack/fight-or-flight mode. I go batsh&t nuts.

I've tried to quell this irrationality over the decades to some degree. But I am certainly not bringing one into my house as a pet.

I think this is a major one, if not the most common, phobia and how it ended up in the bible.

SO, now you all know the secret of how to terrorize and torture me.

#8

We have two snakes. Mr Bump, who is an apricot variety Pueblan Milk Snake, and Mr Che, a Sinaloan Milk Snake. We have had Mr Bump since he was a baby, and we got him in 1999. Mr Che was an adult when we got him, around 4 years old. We've had him since 2001.

No fear of snakes here.

#9

I love snakes (with respectful distance from venomous varieties and giant squeezers). I make up for the fearful and the haters.

#10

How long will they live, Aza? I have no problem with them either.

Maybenaut · #11

neonzx wrote: ↑Mon Dec 19, 2022 10:39 am My #1 phobia is snakes. They can send me into a panic attack/fight-or-flight mode. I go batsh&t nuts.

I think I’ll just stand over here next to neon. Just in case. I mean I don’t want him to be afraid.

#12

Wait, do NOT tell men that snakes have a clitoris, are you nuts?

#13

Foggy wrote: ↑Mon Dec 19, 2022 12:42 pm Wait, do NOT tell men that snakes have a clitoris, are you nuts?

You are freaked out? Ya know, human females have the same thing. It's a male penis.
Shocking news, I know.

#14

Another one. He didn't get the joke, and he didn't even understand it was a joke.

No, I'm not going to explain the joke to you. Waste of my time.

#15

Phoenix520 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 19, 2022 11:23 am How long will they live, Aza? I have no problem with them either.

They've already both exceeded the normal lifespan of wild snakes. It used to be stated that captive milksnakes would live to be around 15-20 years, but better understanding of their needs and the ability to find a veterinarian who will treat 'exotics' has led to the lifespan being more like 20-25 years in captivity.

Mr Bump and Mr Che have slowed down a bit, but are still looking quite healthy considering they are both at least 23 years old now.

I'm putting in links to illustrate what they look like (don't want to scare anyone who doesn't like snakes!). This is what Mr Bump looks like. The apricot morph has apricot coloured rings instead of the normal white rings.

https://www.lllreptile.com/products/313 ... milksnakes

Mr Che looks like this:

https://aminoapps.com/c/reptiles/page/i ... gLVNnj65mn

#16

I'm going to have to add labels:

"This is a joke. I'm trying to be funny."

Then people won't react based on their perception that I'm really traumatized by learning snakes have clitorises.

Edit: I admit, though, that the idea that a clitoris is "a male penis" is shocking news. Also fake news, but shocking fake news.

#17

Foggy wrote: ↑Mon Dec 19, 2022 1:28 pm I'm going to have to add labels:

"This is a joke. I'm trying to be funny."

Then people won't react based on their perception that I'm really traumatized by learning snakes have clitorises.

Male snakes have hemipenes, too.

'Double the fun'.

#18

If you are aware of the phenomenon known as whatever having sex with animals is known as, which I forget at the moment, and if you are familiar at all with male sexuality of human beings, and you have heard various tales during your lifetime of odd and unusual animals which male humans have attempted to have sex with ...

... then you might find it funny, that if men learned snakes have clitorises, they might try having sex with one, just because. I had this vision of a guy turning the snake this way and that, looking for the damned clitoris, "They said it was here!"

There.

I explained the joke. Don't tell men that snakes have clitorises because some men will try to fuck a snake when they learn it.

This may be why Saturday Night Live hasn't hired me yet to write jokes.

#19

Foggy wrote: ↑Mon Dec 19, 2022 1:38 pm If you are aware of the phenomenon known as whatever having sex with animals is known as, which I forget at the moment, and if you are familiar at all with male sexuality of human beings, and you have heard various tales during your lifetime of odd and unusual animals which male humans have attempted to have sex with ...

Slightly off topic since it doesn't involve [human] snakes...but just down the road, in the little town of Enumclaw, is the reason that bestiality is outlawed in the state of Washington:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enumclaw_horse_sex_case

#20

Those links. Very pretty snakes.

(I'm not a fan of them either.)

#21

Foggy wrote: ↑Mon Dec 19, 2022 1:23 pm Another one. He didn't get the joke, and he didn't even understand it was a joke.

No, I'm not going to explain the joke to you. Waste of my time.

Back at ya. You didn't get the joke either. I'm cleverish like that.

#22

Off Topic

... and to continue the hijack, when I worked for the Orange County (CA) Public Defender's office, there was a tale told by the old timers about a defendant who was accused of having sex with a horse, and the defense attorney had the brilliant idea of getting the judge and jury to visit the barn where the horsie lived, I guess so they could see that the gentleman couldn't have performed the act since the horse was too tall, or something stupid.

And that is actually a thing in the law, that if you can persuade the judge, the whole kit and caboodle leaves the courtroom and goes "on location" so to speak. It's difficult to persuade a judge to go along with that, as you might imagine. But as the story goes, the group filed into the barn in relatively good order, quietly and respectfully, as one does. And the horsie in question calmly stood while the entire group entered, and of course the defendant was last, since by definition he was a security risk, being accused of a crime and all.

And the horsie, when she saw her lover, apparently reacted in a way that pretty much sealed the deal against the dude.

One of those "Be careful what you ask for" moments that all attorneys in that court were instructed to consider.

#23

Foggy forced my hand.

#24

An age restricted video that won't even show on Fogbow. Yep, that'll show me.

#25

Foggy wrote: ↑Mon Dec 19, 2022 2:22 pm An age restricted video that won't even show on Fogbow. Yep, that'll show me.

You are 70, grownup. You can click through. Permission granted. I promise not to tell your 'rents.

Fogbow