When made into a medicine, the deadly Brazilian pit viper’s venom helps to lower peoples’ blood pressure.


Snake Hunter For more than 30 years, Zoltan Takacs has traveled the world as a toxinologist and explorer. He usually travels solo with only a backpack, camera bag, and a sample collecting kit. He oſt en pilots small planes or rides camels to reach remote destinations. His quest for venomous creatures—especially snakes—has taken him to 145 countries. Despite the danger, Takacs and others like him collect as many venom and tissue samples as they can. Why? Venom can be deadly. It evolved in nature


to immobilize or kill. But scientists have discovered that venom can also heal. To understand how, you have to understand a little bit about the way venom works. Venom’s task is to disrupt or change the


chemical reactions that occur normally in the body. T ese reactions keep the body functioning efficiently. For example, some types of venom target the circulatory system. T ey change the chemical make up of blood and cause uncontrolled bleeding inside an animal. Other types of venom target the nervous system. T ey can stop muscles from working or cause body systems to shut down.


4 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EXTREME EXPLORER


Helpful Venom Snake hunters like Zoltan Takacs collect tissue and blood samples from snakes before releasing them back into the wild. Tissue and blood contain DNA—the body’s chemical instructions for making the toxins in venom. T e samples are taken back to a laboratory


for analysis. T e information scientists obtain from the snake DNA is added to a database and stored for future use. It can then be used to recreate venom in a lab. T e overall scientific goal is to use the


chemical ingredients found in snake venom to make new drugs. Each snakes’ venom is a mix of toxins that target diff erent vital parts of the body but nowhere else. Toxins only aff ect their targets, so medicines made from the toxins might not cause unwanted side eff ects. One of the first drugs made from venom


came from the Brazilian pit viper. Pit viper venom incapacitates prey by causing the prey’s blood pressure to drop rapidly. Scientists used this characteristic to develop a drug to lower high blood pressure in people. T e drug opens tight blood vessels in the body so that blood fl ows more smoothly.


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