Speaker 1: Hi, I'm erin Welsh and I'm Aaron Alman Updike And this.
Speaker 2: Is this Podcast Will Kill You crossover edition with the
Speaker 2: Biology of Superheroes podcast.
Speaker 1: This is actually part two of a crossover in which
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about zombie. In the first episode,
Speaker 1: which was released on Halloween, we joined Shane Campbell Stayton
Speaker 1: and Arian Darby of the Biology of Superheroes podcast to
Speaker 1: talk all things zombies.
Speaker 2: You guys should definitely go check out that episode. You
Speaker 2: can find it at the Biology of Superheroes podcast on
Speaker 2: whatever platform you listen to your podcasts.
Speaker 1: And this week we're so excited to be joined by
Speaker 1: Shane to take a deeper dive into the physiology, history,
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology of zombies.
Speaker 2: Do you want to introduce yourself, Shane, Yeah, it's.
Speaker 3: Good to be here. I'm Shane Campbell Stateon and I
Speaker 3: am an evolutionary biologist.
Speaker 1: Hey, yes, doctor Campbell Stateon.
Speaker 3: Please please remember it.
Speaker 1: Also the host of your own amazing podcast tell us
Speaker 1: about It.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we do our thing, so, host of the Biology
Speaker 3: of Superheroes podcast. Yeah. So we use a lot of
Speaker 3: you know, science fiction, and use science fiction basically as
Speaker 3: a way to you know, to talk about biology, evolution, physiology,
Speaker 3: so on and so forth. So merging the nerd multiverse
Speaker 3: over here.
Speaker 2: I love it, Yes, and definitely everyone check it out.
Speaker 2: It's an amazing podcast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fantastic. It's really fun. We've been waiting to
Speaker 1: do this crossover since before we even started our podcast.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's been like on the books.
Speaker 3: It has been a long time coming, isn't it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, so before we jump into that, we've got some
Speaker 2: important business to take care of. Yeah, we do our quarantining.
Speaker 2: What are we drinking this week?
Speaker 1: This week we're drinking Rum for your Life.
Speaker 2: And it's called that because guess what it has in it?
Speaker 2: Rum and more rum.
Speaker 1: It has so much more rum.
Speaker 2: So we will post the entire recipe on all of
Speaker 2: our social media as well as our place Barrita for
Speaker 2: this episode.
Speaker 1: Absolutely you can find us at tpwk Y on Twitter
Speaker 1: and this podcast will kill you on Instagram and Facebook.
Speaker 1: Let's let's get we'll move on.
Speaker 4: Okay, all right, all.
Speaker 2: Right, So today we are talking about zombies and basically
Speaker 2: sort of the biological basis for whether zombification can happen
Speaker 2: via tatrota toxin. And then Shane is going to hit
Speaker 2: us with some expertise on the evolutionary history of tatroda toxin.
Speaker 2: And I don't know anything about it yet, so I'm
Speaker 2: really excited because I think it's super cool. Same, I
Speaker 2: know it's going to be super cool.
Speaker 1: I should say, well.
Speaker 3: We'll see how cool it is when I'm done.
Speaker 1: The coolest. Everyone's going to want to become a marine
Speaker 1: biologist after this episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm going to take you through the cultural history
Speaker 2: of the zombie, tracing the origins of the modern zombie
Speaker 2: back to it's religious and spiritual roots. And we're going
Speaker 2: to have a blast because, as we talked about, this
Speaker 2: is one of our favorite topics all of us. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and first I want to ask you something. Have you,
Speaker 2: either of you secretly ever wanted to be in a
Speaker 2: zombie apocalypse to maybe see how you'd react or whether
Speaker 2: you'd be the first to die.
Speaker 3: I feel like this is a conversation that I used
Speaker 3: to have, like back in college. You know, It's like
Speaker 3: one of those like two am conversations. Yeah, man, do
Speaker 3: you think you would be able to survive the zombie apocalypse? Yeah? Man, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I totally get a machete and this and that, and
Speaker 3: I go up into the mountains and so on. So
Speaker 3: you know, meanwhile, you know, at that time, I had
Speaker 3: like barely like slept outside, you know, but it's like
Speaker 3: super confident that I'd be able to survive the zombie apocalypse.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like it's it's human nature to sort
Speaker 2: of think about the end of days scenarios. And yeah,
Speaker 2: I think it's safe to say that we've all watched
Speaker 2: or read our fair share of zombie movies, shows, books, comics,
Speaker 2: et cetera. Because we're nerds nerds, But I don't think
Speaker 2: zombies are necessarily nerdy, are.
Speaker 1: They, Shane, you're the expert.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna put them up as nerdy. They're
Speaker 3: pretty nerd cool.
Speaker 2: Well, I like being a nerd anyway.
Speaker 3: Yeah, ain't nothing wrong with that. I mean to own
Speaker 3: the nerds.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2: So, now that we are self proclaimed zombie experts, I
Speaker 2: want to ask you guys what you see as them
Speaker 2: as the unifying characteristics of zombies or zombies as they
Speaker 2: are presented today, great questions to do a little list.
Speaker 1: I feel like they have to be they have to
Speaker 1: be after humans, so they've got to be like aggressive
Speaker 1: in some way after Okay, not like human no, no, no,
Speaker 1: coming after you for some reason.
Speaker 2: Okay, So driven by human flesh, yes, okay, right, Yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Mean I think there's a typical sort of mangled appearance
Speaker 3: one way or the other, right, either you know, if
Speaker 3: you're talking about the actual walking dead or if you're
Speaker 3: talking about the infected yea, you know there are you know,
Speaker 3: there's typically a you know, very like run down, like
Speaker 3: dirty clothes, bloody thing happening once you turn into a zombie. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you you start to you know, you don't worry about
Speaker 3: taking a shower and washing your clothes anymore. Here preoccupied
Speaker 3: by brains in general, biting related activities.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I do think the whole transmitted by bite thing,
Speaker 1: it's like it's become pretty classic, right, I'm not opposed
Speaker 1: to it, I'll say that much. I'm not opposed to
Speaker 1: that idea.
Speaker 2: I mean, I haven't I can't think of a modern
Speaker 2: zombie movie that doesn't have where a bite from a
Speaker 2: zombie turns you into a zombi or yeah, agreed, Yeah,
Speaker 2: so okay, so we have that they're mangled dead, undead,
Speaker 2: they eat human flesh. That's that's the sole thing that
Speaker 2: they're driven by. Yeah, and they're infectious or being a
Speaker 2: zombie is infectious for sure. So this the zombie that
Speaker 2: we just that we just described, is this modern zombie
Speaker 2: which was born in nineteen sixty eight when Night of
Speaker 2: the Living Dead was released, which is kind of funny actually,
Speaker 2: considering that the word zombie is never used in the movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's so typical, and I feel like all
Speaker 1: zombie movies now do that because they did that, and
Speaker 1: it really bothers me. Like in Walking Dead, why can't
Speaker 1: they just call them zombie? What do they call them
Speaker 1: the walkers, the blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: Walker or I think it depends on the group, Like
Speaker 3: every sort of group that runs around has their own
Speaker 3: name for it.
Speaker 1: Which is so unrealistic. Bro, everyone knows it's a freaking zombie.
Speaker 2: Well so I think. I think in later, later movies
Speaker 2: in between that time, they were called zombies and a
Speaker 2: lot of them so annoys me. Well, it was actually
Speaker 2: so George Romeiro only used the terms like ghouls or
Speaker 2: flesh eaters when he made this movie, and he didn't
Speaker 2: really encounter the term zombie until critics started using it
Speaker 2: when describing the film, So it was really only then
Speaker 2: when he was like, oh, these ares like and he
Speaker 2: had taken clearly from zombie fictions. But I think it
Speaker 2: sort of he put two and two together after the fact.
Speaker 1: So he didn't know he was making the zombie movie
Speaker 1: until after it was already made.
Speaker 2: Well, no, I don't think that's necessarily true. I just
Speaker 2: don't know if he would have called them zombies or
Speaker 2: a brand new creature, because he did definitely take from
Speaker 2: zombie fascinating films.
Speaker 1: Okay, so okay, So if.
Speaker 2: You haven't seen the movie, which Aaron and I just
Speaker 2: watched it yesterday for research, the plot revolves around a
Speaker 2: group of people hiding out in a house somewhere in
Speaker 2: Pennsylvania as reanimated corpses due to a radiation accident around
Speaker 2: the house. This movie effectively began or created an entire
Speaker 2: new subgenre of horror movie. Romero and his co writer
Speaker 2: John Russo drew from a bunch of sources, as I mentioned,
Speaker 2: for inspiration, including a zombie called White Zombie, which I'll
Speaker 2: talk more about later, and I am legend the book
Speaker 2: by Richard Matheson about a plague of vampires. But Night
Speaker 2: of the Living Dead was something really brand new in
Speaker 2: many ways. This was the first movie to depict zombies
Speaker 2: as flesh eating, as outnumbering people, as not controlled by
Speaker 2: an outside force, as being contagious, and a government struggling
Speaker 2: to maintain control. This was a far cry from the
Speaker 2: early depictions of zombies and Hollywood movies. This movie, in
Speaker 2: many zombie movies that followed, used zombies as a metaphor
Speaker 2: for whatever was really threatening society or humanity, such as
Speaker 2: unchecked consumerism, the violence of Vietnam War or the resistance
Speaker 2: against America, the threat of nuclear war, racial inequality, and
Speaker 2: so on. In modern zombie movies, zombies are used to
Speaker 2: expose the true nature of humanity. How are people going
Speaker 2: to react in a crisis. And it's not just using
Speaker 2: zombies as this apocalyptic backdrop. The zombies themselves are scary
Speaker 2: because they occupy this uncanny valley where the familiar appearance
Speaker 2: of your neighbors or friends or spouse or child suddenly
Speaker 2: becomes horrifying when they're trying to eat your brains all
Speaker 2: of a sudden.
Speaker 1: Yeah, then you have to shoot them in the head.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel it's a pretty common trope. Right, There's
Speaker 3: always that moment where you know there's a zombie horde
Speaker 3: and they're trying to get away, and then you see
Speaker 3: the face in the hoard that's you know, your best
Speaker 3: friend or you know the person who you used to love,
Speaker 3: and you're like, oh, but but Susie, how could And
Speaker 3: then Susie like chomps down on your jugular and then.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you're done.
Speaker 2: Yeah so, and all of these characteristics of modern zombie
Speaker 2: movies have the end result of making you scared of zombies,
Speaker 2: not of becoming a zombie. So you're more scared of
Speaker 2: the zombies attacking you rather than of actually becoming one.
Speaker 1: I feel interesting.
Speaker 2: So before Night of the Living Dead, though the perception
Speaker 2: of zombies in Western culture was totally different, the modern
Speaker 2: zombie actually has its roots in Haiti. And to understand
Speaker 2: how the Haitian zombie was warped and misappropriated into what
Speaker 2: we know as a zombie today, we have to go
Speaker 2: back a bit to the history of Haiti itself. Also,
Speaker 2: I just want to say that I'm totally out of
Speaker 2: my depth here and I'm probably gonna miss some stuff,
Speaker 2: but I'm gonna do the best I can, So if
Speaker 2: there are any corrections, please.
Speaker 1: Way yeah, Okay.
Speaker 2: At the beginning, Christopher Columbus Great Guy y Well hand
Speaker 2: it on the island of Hispaniola, which Haiti is the
Speaker 2: western third of Hispaniola, which with the eastern two third
Speaker 2: being the Dominican Republic. During his first trans oceanic voyage
Speaker 2: in fourteen ninety two, as you can imagine, he instantly
Speaker 2: claimed it for Spain, set up camps there, and introduced
Speaker 2: diseases that led to nearly the entire indigenous population of
Speaker 2: Taino and Arouak being wiped out.
Speaker 1: Check our smallpox episode three if you are interested in more.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, and with many of the rest of the
Speaker 2: indigenous population being enslaved. Over the next couple of centuries, French,
Speaker 2: English and Dutch pirates set up bases on the remote
Speaker 2: western and northern coast of Hispaniola, which grew as a
Speaker 2: trading hub throughout the sixteen hundreds while Spanish control lessened.
Speaker 2: In the early seventeen hundreds, the French had taken control
Speaker 2: of the western part, which would later become Haiti. They
Speaker 2: ramped up export and production, and by the mid seventeen
Speaker 2: hundred the small piece of land was responsible for producing
Speaker 2: sixty percent of the world's coffee whoa yeah, and more
Speaker 2: sugar than all the British Caribbean possessions quote unquote combined.
Speaker 1: WHOA, dude, Yeah, I didn't know any of that.
Speaker 2: Can you guess how it got to be so productive? Uh?
Speaker 2: Slave labor, unbelievable amounts of slave labor.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Slaves on these plantations were treated so terribly and forced
Speaker 2: to live under such horrific conditions that at least seventeen
Speaker 2: thousand slaves died each year. Whoa, and the death rate
Speaker 2: outpassed the birth rate eight percent to one percent. Oh
Speaker 2: my god, it's yeah. Every year the number of people
Speaker 2: enslaved and taken from Africa to work in the French
Speaker 2: colony increased, with around forty thousand slaves brought over every
Speaker 2: year in the years leading up to the Haitian Revolution.
Speaker 2: On the eve of the revolution, thirty two thousand white
Speaker 2: colonists ruled over nearly five hundred thousand slaves, the majority
Speaker 2: of which were born in Africa, like three quarters.
Speaker 1: Whoa, dude, So they killed off everyone who lived there,
Speaker 1: and then they just kept shipping over more human beings
Speaker 1: that they just murdered.
Speaker 2: Well, seventeen ninety one comes around, and this marks the
Speaker 2: start of a twelve year revolution that would lead to
Speaker 2: the formation of an independent Haiti, which was huge. This
Speaker 2: was the second oldest independent nation in the Western hemisphere.
Speaker 1: WHOA yeah, tell me the year again.
Speaker 2: Seventeen ninety one marks the beginning.
Speaker 1: Of that revolution, thank you.
Speaker 2: So I talked a little bit actually about the Haitian
Speaker 2: Revolution in our episode on yellow fever. Oh, and the
Speaker 2: possible but debated role that that yellow fever played in
Speaker 2: destroying French troops when trying to quash the rebellion. But so,
Speaker 2: the takeaway from all of this is that the free
Speaker 2: country of Haiti was largely composed of people who were
Speaker 2: born in Africa and had fought very hard for their freedom.
Speaker 2: In the decades leading up to the revolution, a religion
Speaker 2: had taken shape to unify everyone, which drew heavily from
Speaker 2: summer reigions in West Africa, including the fun people living
Speaker 2: in the area we call Benin, the Yoruba people in Nigeria,
Speaker 2: and the Congo peoples in Angola and Basayer. And also
Speaker 2: this religion incorporated elements of Catholicism and indigenous Taino beliefs
Speaker 2: and practices. WHOA yeah. So it was really kind of
Speaker 2: this very interesting mix. And after the revolution, the US
Speaker 2: and Europe effectively cut contact with Haiti. They were like, nope,
Speaker 2: you're on your own, and they prevented trade from happening.
Speaker 2: And they also didn't allow any Catholic priests to go
Speaker 2: to the country, which the French had set up as
Speaker 2: a Catholic colony. So, as a result, Haitian culture is
Speaker 2: really strongly influenced by traditions and practices directly from different
Speaker 2: African cultures, without this sustained colonial presence quashing these influences
Speaker 2: the way some other Caribbean nations were Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So this religion, or more accurately, experience continued to develop
Speaker 2: and is known as as vodu to those outside of it.
Speaker 2: So if you are someone who practices vodu, you don't
Speaker 2: call it vodu. It's just your spiritual experience. It's serving
Speaker 2: the spirits. I'm not going to go into any real
Speaker 2: details of vodu because there are many great resources for that,
Speaker 2: me not being one of them, but I will say
Speaker 2: that vodu is this is this spiritual system focused on
Speaker 2: healing and spirituality. Zombies or zombification are not a part
Speaker 2: of vodu as it is practiced. Rather, zombie making is
Speaker 2: considered a folk religious practice that derives from vodu, but
Speaker 2: isn't a part of it, okay, So I just wanted
Speaker 2: to make that clear. So what is a zombie then?
Speaker 2: In Haitian culture? Great question.
Speaker 1: I love that asked and answered and complimented.
Speaker 2: Great it self compliments. Well, the word zombie probably came
Speaker 2: from the West African and Congo words in zabie in zombie,
Speaker 2: which is god or spirit of a dead person, and zombie,
Speaker 2: which means fetish. A zombie is created by a boko,
Speaker 2: which is basically a priest who practices sorcery. There are
Speaker 2: two types of zombies. One is a zombie astrol, which
Speaker 2: is the soul of a deceased person that the boko
Speaker 2: can use to enhance his powers, and the other is
Speaker 2: the one that we are more familiar with, the zombie
Speaker 2: of flesh. This corporeal zombie is one who has either
Speaker 2: been raised from the dead or is made to appear
Speaker 2: dead and then awakened or reanimated by a boko. So
Speaker 2: this zombie flesh has no will and is under complete
Speaker 2: control by the bokhor who uses the zombie to do
Speaker 2: his bidding, which often involves laboring in some way, and
Speaker 2: so the threat of Haitian zombification is different than this
Speaker 2: modern zombification as in the movies. The loss of a
Speaker 2: being forced to work against your will, loss of contact
Speaker 2: with family and loved ones. These are the consequences of
Speaker 2: becoming a Haitian zombie, which makes sense for a country
Speaker 2: with such a horrific history of slavery. In contrast with
Speaker 2: the modern zombie, becoming a Haitian zombie is scarier than
Speaker 2: the zombie itself, So you're more scared of becoming a
Speaker 2: zombie than you are of the zombie.
Speaker 1: Right, that does make sense. Yeah, I now understand how
Speaker 1: why you made that distinction earlier because I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to become a zombie because then you die.
Speaker 2: But now it makes more so how did the modern
Speaker 2: zombie evolve from this? Well? In characteristic manifest destiny form,
Speaker 2: the US invaded unoccupied Haiti from nineteen fifteen to nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty four. Classic During the occupation, a bunch of ethnographers
Speaker 2: and writers, including Zora Neil Hurston, who wrote one of
Speaker 2: the first books on Vhoto and Haitian culture, came to
Speaker 2: Haiti and exported stories of zombies. Many were very sensationalized,
Speaker 2: which kind of gave rise to this like fear and
Speaker 2: otherness of vodoo in US culture and Western culture in general.
Speaker 2: One of these stories was by a man named William Seabrook,
Speaker 2: who wrote a sensationalist book called The Magic Island. In
Speaker 2: one chapter, Seabrook describes seeing a zombie master controlling a
Speaker 2: group of zombies to labor for free. This was turned
Speaker 2: into a movie called White Zombie, which has all kinds
Speaker 2: of racist and sexist I guess, not really undertones, like
Speaker 2: overtones overtones, yes, sorry, so yeah. In White Zombie, the
Speaker 2: zombies are catatonic and completely under control of the bocort,
Speaker 2: and this was the prevailing image of zombies in Western
Speaker 2: culture until Romero changed the game with Knight of the
Speaker 2: Living Dead. Interesting, we're still though a piece of the puzzle,
Speaker 2: which is the how of a zombie? So what is
Speaker 2: the medical basis for zombification? Yeah, bro, and I think
Speaker 2: it's also just an in passing. We're thinking about why
Speaker 2: researchers and I'm including us in this, feel the need
Speaker 2: to demystify some cultural or spiritual practices to reduce them
Speaker 2: to compounds or chemicals or oh well, this happens. This
Speaker 2: is how it can happen in reality, you know, And
Speaker 2: that's just something to kind of I wanted to just
Speaker 2: say to think about because it was kind of after
Speaker 2: reading Wade Davis's books, I was like, why are you
Speaker 2: why why?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker 2: Okay, So that aside. In general, back to zombies, there
Speaker 2: are two basic ideas as to how zombies are created.
Speaker 1: Okay, give them to me, okay.
Speaker 2: One basically says this is Haitian zombies. One basically says
Speaker 2: that zombies are created through spiritual belief and that often
Speaker 2: so called zombies are cases of mental illness and deprivation.
Speaker 2: The other focuses more on the medical basis of zombification.
Speaker 2: Belonging to the second category is Wade Davis. As a
Speaker 2: grad student, WAYE. Davis went down to Haiti in the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties seeking to uncover the truth about zombification, in
Speaker 2: particular whether it exists at all and whether there was
Speaker 2: a plant or animal based compound that can actually cause
Speaker 2: a zombie like state in people. In his journeys, he
Speaker 2: came across the story of a man whose name I
Speaker 2: will definitely mess up the pronunciation of Clervius Narses.
Speaker 1: I don't know you.
Speaker 2: Tried who had emerged after years sixteen years actually of
Speaker 2: allegedly being kept in a zombie like state and forced
Speaker 2: to work. And he had been confirmed to have died
Speaker 2: and been buried. So this was like nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 2: I think is when he was buried and then only
Speaker 2: to emerge sixteen years later.
Speaker 1: Wait, he died and was buried in sixteen years later
Speaker 1: he came up.
Speaker 2: No, sixteen years later he sort of re emerged into society.
Speaker 1: Society got it? Okay, he wasn't buried for sixteen years? No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: because I would call the sm well anyway.
Speaker 2: So Davis sought to find out how this could have happened,
Speaker 2: and he was able to gain access to various quote
Speaker 2: zombie powders and to observe their preparation. The contents of
Speaker 2: these powders varied region by region, but he found that
Speaker 2: a few ingredients were always present, among them human remains,
Speaker 2: cane toad, the hyla tree frog, and various species of
Speaker 2: pufferfish puffle fish who say. In examining each of these,
Speaker 2: he found one likely candidate for making someone appear dead,
Speaker 2: the pufferfish, which contains a compound known as to trottoxin.
Speaker 2: Davis alleged that this toxin, when given to the intended zombie,
Speaker 2: could imitate death, so that the person could be buried
Speaker 2: and then dug up and held under control by the
Speaker 2: use of other compounds, including the datura plant. Aaron, please
Speaker 2: tell us how to tret to talxin works and whether
Speaker 2: it is the true zombie powder.
Speaker 1: I love to.
Speaker 2: I'm excited for this part because I avoided it.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh great, then let me tell
Speaker 1: you about it. To trot to toxin.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: The thing is, as I started researching this, I was like,
Speaker 1: we already did this. We've already done this episode. It's
Speaker 1: called crossover with crossover. Yes, you already knew the answer. Yes,
Speaker 1: if you haven't yet listened to our crossover episode with
Speaker 1: Matt Candas of in Defensive Plants, where we discuss Monk's
Speaker 1: Hood aka Wolf'spin, then go listen to that. You'll probably
Speaker 1: like it because we're talking about something that has a
Speaker 1: very similar mechanism of action. Interesting. Yes, and by very
Speaker 1: similar I mean the same.
Speaker 3: I did listen to that episode and it was absolutely amazing.
Speaker 2: Okay, I cannot wait for the evolutionary history and I'm
Speaker 2: excited for the medical press.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm going to speed through this because I can't
Speaker 1: wait for the evolutionary history. That's what I want to hear. Listen. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let me give you the briefest of rundowns to
Speaker 1: trot to toxin acts on something called your sodium channels.
Speaker 1: What that was cool of us? We didn't plan that.
Speaker 3: It's less cool now that you've said it.
Speaker 1: Again. If you want a primer on sodium channels. I
Speaker 1: really feel like I did a great job explaining them
Speaker 1: because I got real stoked on them in the last episode,
Speaker 1: and you explained it really well. Thank you. Basically for
Speaker 1: those of you who are like, stop talking about it,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go listen to that episode, or
Speaker 1: like I listen to it and I don't remember think
Speaker 1: because you did a crappy job of explaining it. Sodium
Speaker 1: channels are these channels that are on your nerve cells
Speaker 1: and your muscle cells, and you need to have them
Speaker 1: open and close at certain times to have nervous system
Speaker 1: impulses actually transmit to your muscle cells to cause things
Speaker 1: like muscle contraction. So if you want to lift your
Speaker 1: arm or move your finger or talk with your mouth.
Speaker 1: You need these sodium channels to be working. That's the
Speaker 1: briefest of rundowns I can give. So tichoto toxin is
Speaker 1: a compound which binds directly to these sodium channels and.
Speaker 2: Blocks That sounds pretty bad.
Speaker 1: It's not great. Let me tell ya, it's not great.
Speaker 1: It blocks them. And what that means is that sodium
Speaker 1: can no longer get in. If sodium can't get in,
Speaker 1: your nerve impulses are not traveling, your muscles are not contracting,
Speaker 1: You're paralyzed. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. And the
Speaker 1: thing that makes this different than aconite, which is the
Speaker 1: compound in wolf Spain that we talked about in the crossovers, Matt,
Speaker 1: is that it's way way more gnarly, way more potent.
Speaker 1: What does that mean? Let me tell you. I wrote
Speaker 1: some numbers down. Oh good, because I have fun with this.
Speaker 1: If you could think of a compound that's really, really
Speaker 1: poisonous that could kill you really easily, don't guess because
Speaker 1: you might guess wrong. I'm gonna tell you it's cyanide.
Speaker 1: Would you have guessed that?
Speaker 2: We absolutely cool? So cyanide all the answers, all the time, cyanide.
Speaker 3: You read my mind, Get out of my head.
Speaker 1: So, cyanide is a compound that everyone knows. Like, if
Speaker 1: you hear the word cyanide, even if you have no
Speaker 1: idea how it works or what it does, you know, like,
Speaker 1: don't like drink that it's going to kill you really
Speaker 1: quickly apple seeds exactly. So if I wanted to kill myself, No,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to kill me with cyanide, you would
Speaker 1: need at least five hundred and forty six milligrams of cyanide.
Speaker 2: What does that look like?
Speaker 1: Well, great question. A teaspoon of salt is five ish grams,
Speaker 1: So that's like five thousand milligrams. So it's a tiny amount. Okay,
Speaker 1: So it's like a little like a tenth Yes, it's
Speaker 1: a dash of cyanide. That's all you would need to
Speaker 1: kill it.
Speaker 2: Even a sprinkle less than a sprinkle.
Speaker 1: Less than a sprink Okay, Okay. If you wanted to
Speaker 1: kill me with techototoxin twenty two milligrams.
Speaker 2: How would you even measure that out?
Speaker 1: I don't. I'd really tried hard to think of a
Speaker 1: way to like quantify this for people kill you to
Speaker 1: kill me with tachot to toxin twenty two grams.
Speaker 2: Wait wait wait grams are milligrams?
Speaker 1: Sorry milligrams?
Speaker 3: Whoa bro.
Speaker 2: It was like, great, there's a lot of tea spins.
Speaker 1: No, it's very few tea spoons. Yeah, right, So, and
Speaker 1: the reason is because unlike aconite or other, there's actually
Speaker 1: a ridiculous amount of toxins. And Shane, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you're going to touch on this at all. I
Speaker 1: have a feeling you are. How many different organisms produce
Speaker 1: compounds which bind to sodium channels.
Speaker 3: It's a lot, yea, it is a lot. Yeah, And
Speaker 3: it's a very diverse set of creatures.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is so interesting because the thing is we
Speaker 1: all have sodium channels. Like, like I said in the
Speaker 1: Monk Said episode, insects have sodium channels, right, So it's
Speaker 1: this very universal thing that if you can attack that
Speaker 1: sodium channel, you can attack absolutely anything. So but to
Speaker 1: Troto toxin is so good at binding to these sodium
Speaker 1: channels that we actually classify sodium channels. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of different types, like sort of subsets of sodium channels
Speaker 1: that work better, Like these ones are on your muscles
Speaker 1: and these ones are on your nerves. But there's kind
Speaker 1: of two broad categories, one to trototoxin sensitive, one to
Speaker 1: troto toxin resistant. That's how we classify sodium channels because
Speaker 1: that's how strongly to troto talxin binds. So we basically,
Speaker 1: like all of these different types of sodium channels, we
Speaker 1: divide them into can to troto talksin bind or can
Speaker 1: it not? Right? Isn't that cool?
Speaker 2: That's amazing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's super cool. Didn't So? I know, you really
Speaker 1: want to know what happens to you if you take
Speaker 1: a bite of a puffer fish, just like out of
Speaker 1: the ocean, just like the liver, Give me the liver.
Speaker 1: Here we go. If you ingest this, generally within a
Speaker 1: half an hour, often less, the first symptom that you'll
Speaker 1: have is parishesia, which is a fancy silly medical word
Speaker 1: for your lips start tingling and they get a little numb,
Speaker 1: and maybe they feel burning and like just like something's
Speaker 1: not right in your lips. And then that might start
Speaker 1: to spread, and then you might start salivating a lot,
Speaker 1: and then you might start sweating, and then you'll get
Speaker 1: a headache because you're like, what's going on to me?
Speaker 1: And then you'll feel really weak.
Speaker 2: Oh my God, it's like a subway.
Speaker 1: And then you'll get sperienced subway sandwiches. Yes, not endorsed, guys.
Speaker 2: That's because I've gotten food poisoning a number of times
Speaker 2: subway sandwiches, and so far, that's what it sounds like.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, and then you'll start to get a tremor
Speaker 1: and then paralysis.
Speaker 2: That's no good, no good.
Speaker 1: And the thing that gets really dangerous and why this
Speaker 1: ends up often causing death is if you have paralysis
Speaker 1: of the muscles that you use for breathing, so your
Speaker 1: diaphragm and your intercostal muscles of your ribs. If those
Speaker 1: muscles become paralyzed, you cannot breathe. See our polio episode
Speaker 1: for more on that question. Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: So it starts in your lips, that's just the first symptom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's often the first symptom. And that's if we're
Speaker 1: talking about someone who's eaten fugu or a puffer fish,
Speaker 1: and that is often the first symptom. And it's because
Speaker 1: that's sort of the first place where you're gonna encounter
Speaker 1: to trot to toxin.
Speaker 2: Improperly prepared fugu.
Speaker 1: Yes, improperly prepared fugu. Right, So like you caught a
Speaker 1: puffer fish and you took a bite out of it
Speaker 1: like an apple.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: Then the first place that you'll start to notice symptoms
Speaker 1: is in your mouth, but then quickly you'll also get
Speaker 1: gastro intentional symptoms, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea. But again, what ends
Speaker 1: up killing people is respiratory distress. Right, So you're not
Speaker 1: able to breathe because all of the muscles of your
Speaker 1: respiratory tract have failed and they're paralyzed, and then you die.
Speaker 2: That sounds like a really horrible way to go.
Speaker 1: It's not a great I wouldn't recommend it, and it
Speaker 1: happens insanely quickly. And part of that's because it's this toxin. Right,
Speaker 1: it's already, it's there, it's pre formed. You just eat
Speaker 1: it or whatever. But you don't have to just eat it. Right,
Speaker 1: what's the preparation that's most commonly associated with zombies? Older?
Speaker 2: I was about to ask you that.
Speaker 1: Be to to do it. So most people come into
Speaker 1: contact with tatroto toxin by eating it, right, that's like
Speaker 1: the most common. But because we're not talking about a
Speaker 1: bacteria or a virus like we normally are, we're talking
Speaker 1: about a compound that it's actually produced by bacteria. It's
Speaker 1: a toxin because it's already something that's formed. You can
Speaker 1: take a puffer fish, take its liver, dry it out,
Speaker 1: grind it up into powder, blow it into someone's face,
Speaker 1: and absolutely expose them to the toxin in that way.
Speaker 1: So it's not necessary that it's ingested.
Speaker 3: So is it just contact with like like mucous membrane
Speaker 3: like eyes and nose and mouth.
Speaker 1: Yes, And I'm so glad you brought that up. Shame
Speaker 1: because this is a toxin that is way more deadly,
Speaker 1: for example, if it's injected. So most of the studies
Speaker 1: on this are done in mice, so they'll inject mice
Speaker 1: with the tatototoxin. It's far more dangerous if you inject
Speaker 1: a mouse versus if you let a mouse just nibble
Speaker 1: on a pufferfish. Okay, same thing. I would assume. I
Speaker 1: couldn't find evidence of this, but I think that's because
Speaker 1: they don't often just like blow to torototoxin into mouse faces.
Speaker 1: But you could one could assume that most of the
Speaker 1: ways that people quote unquote detoxify things, which the way
Speaker 1: that you do that is with your liver. So if
Speaker 1: you eat something, then your gas to intestinal tract absorbs
Speaker 1: it and it has to go through your liver, which
Speaker 1: takes care of a lot of the problem. Okay, if
Speaker 1: you inject it straight into your bloodstream or you breathe
Speaker 1: it straight into your nose, which basically goes straight into
Speaker 1: your blood through your mucous membranes, you don't have that
Speaker 1: liver detoxification happening. So it's actually a lot more potent.
Speaker 1: So it's a lot more dangerous to inhale is a
Speaker 1: lot more Yeah. Well, okay, I couldn't find like specific
Speaker 1: evidence of that, because again I couldn't find studies where
Speaker 1: they blew to troy totoxinon mice. But what I based
Speaker 1: on what I know about how things work. For example,
Speaker 1: if you take drugs sublingually or by an inhaler sublingually
Speaker 1: is under tongue rather than swallowing it down, it's more
Speaker 1: rapidly gets into your bloodstream than if you eat something
Speaker 1: and it has to go through your gi tracks. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Can I just say, like, blowing to toro to toxin
Speaker 3: into the face of a mouse is like the most
Speaker 3: depressing lab job I have ever heard of in.
Speaker 2: My Can you imagine if you sneeze and inhale.
Speaker 3: Like, oh my goodness. If there's a hell, that's pretty
Speaker 3: much the quickest way to get there is the accepted job,
Speaker 3: like blowing to trot to toxin in the face of
Speaker 3: lab mice.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But so really, what the question that we have
Speaker 1: to answer then is what does that have to do
Speaker 1: with zombies?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: Nothing that I said was like and then you go
Speaker 1: you bite people or or even like you become controlled
Speaker 1: by these powers, right, you get paralyzed and then you
Speaker 1: die because you can't breathe, Like, that's that's what happens, right,
Speaker 1: So why how could this have become a thing that
Speaker 1: people associate zombie ism? And I'm really glad that you
Speaker 1: mentioned how zombies in this non George Romero idea, it's
Speaker 1: not like wanting your flesh and blood. It's being under
Speaker 1: someone else's power. It's also being dead and coming back
Speaker 1: to life. Now that to chot to toxin can do
Speaker 1: kind of.
Speaker 5: Hmmm.
Speaker 1: So I got thrilled when I learned about this. So
Speaker 1: one of the weird things about totot to toxin from
Speaker 1: what I've read, is that when all of this is
Speaker 1: happening to you, you remain conscious. Oh doesn't that sound awful? God?
Speaker 1: Which explains a lot, but keep going. Yes, so you
Speaker 1: are aware of what's happening to you. But it can
Speaker 1: have such a drastic effect because again the sodium channels
Speaker 1: are everywhere. It can have such a drastic effect on
Speaker 1: your respiratory rate and your heart rate that you seem
Speaker 1: like you're dead. So you can appear, for all intents
Speaker 1: and purposes, essentially dead if you've been dosed with the
Speaker 1: right amount of tetrototoxin where it's not completely paralyzing you right,
Speaker 1: like your brainstem is still working. There's enough function in
Speaker 1: your diaphragm that your unconscious breathing is still breathing, and
Speaker 1: your heart is beating just enough to keep you alive,
Speaker 1: but maybe not enough to show a pulse, which can happen. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so people can then pronounce you dead, and your
Speaker 1: family can think you're dead because you know, you started
Speaker 1: vomiting and diarrhea ing, and then you kind of went
Speaker 1: limp and paralytic, and now you're not moving. It doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like you're breathing. You must be dead. How long
Speaker 1: great question? This can last. So symptoms tend to set
Speaker 1: in very quickly, like within ten to thirty minutes. It
Speaker 1: can it can take hours also, so if you haven't
Speaker 1: ingested a lot and you know whatever, it can take
Speaker 1: a longer time if you ingest it versus inject it,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But when people do recover over a period
Speaker 1: of many hours, maybe twenty four hours or more, they
Speaker 1: recover completely. If you live, if you survive, you recover completely.
Speaker 1: There's no neurological deficits. So once this totototoxin sort of
Speaker 1: just makes its way out of your system, there's no
Speaker 1: residual effects of it.
Speaker 2: So it's like the Otown song all or nothing at all.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Yeah, sure, yeah, just.
Speaker 3: Saying that, that's so even that's it's interesting that they're
Speaker 3: like because I would think that there would be at
Speaker 3: least some effects of like hypoxia, you know, having like
Speaker 3: such a you know, having your your tissues or brain
Speaker 3: being deprived of oxygen if you're not breathing very very
Speaker 3: deeply or very often, and if your heart's not pumping
Speaker 3: very often, I'd imagine there'd be at least some effects
Speaker 3: from from just like hypoxia and not getting enough oxen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it seems like you either die or you
Speaker 1: recover completely.
Speaker 2: That's bizarre.
Speaker 1: It's super bizarre. I will say that if your respiratory
Speaker 1: muscles are affected, it's not a good sign. You're you're
Speaker 1: probably pretty much gonna die. Almost everyone who if the
Speaker 1: paralysis spreads all the way to your diaphram, you're you're
Speaker 1: probably going to die. So here's the thing, this is,
Speaker 1: it's a gray area. It's not I wouldn't say I
Speaker 1: buy it one hundred percent that like you could pronounce
Speaker 1: somebody dead because they dosed them with tetototoxin. But it's
Speaker 1: been used a ton in like popular culture, as I'm
Speaker 1: going to fake someone's death, you know, like that happens
Speaker 1: all the time. They do it with tatototoxin, often in movies.
Speaker 3: I do feel like that's a very common trope. And
Speaker 3: I could also see, you know, back in you know,
Speaker 3: the early like late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds or
Speaker 3: even earlier than that. I could certainly imagine a doctor like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: he seems dead. Threw up and pooed himself and he's
Speaker 3: not moving, and I don't want touch him because he
Speaker 3: threw up and pooed himself, right, so just call him
Speaker 3: dead and.
Speaker 1: Ekg's we didn't have brain scanners, we didn't have like,
Speaker 1: you can very easily survive if you're breathing, like there's
Speaker 1: a lot of different breath types that are really not good.
Speaker 1: But we'll get your body enough oxygen and release enough
Speaker 1: CHROMEA dioxide. But might seem like you're not breathing because
Speaker 1: you're breathing so infrequently, But if your heart is still pounding,
Speaker 1: however weak it might be, then the blood is still flowing.
Speaker 1: Then things are still getting oxygen. That I agree. If
Speaker 1: you are in the seventeen hundreds and you're like, you
Speaker 1: touch them and you're like, oh, they're kind of cold.
Speaker 1: They must be dead, you know, and.
Speaker 2: The stethoscope isn't invented.
Speaker 1: Oh, I don't know. Don't ask me that, but I guess.
Speaker 3: Also the trade off is that is that you know,
Speaker 3: if you're not if you're like completely still in comatas
Speaker 3: you actually you don't need as much oxygen as you
Speaker 3: would if you were like up and moving around, so
Speaker 3: you have this lower metabolic rate as well, so you're
Speaker 3: you're using less oxygen so you don't need as much boom.
Speaker 2: So zombies biology zombies boom. But is it boom or
Speaker 2: is it just like, yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: That's the thing, because it's like, okay, that's it's an
Speaker 1: almost Maybe I could kind of buy it. Explanation for
Speaker 1: how someone could be appearing dead and then come back
Speaker 1: to life beyond that nothing like there's no like and
Speaker 1: then you will succumb to my will or on the
Speaker 1: other end, then you will eat flesh of humans, you know,
Speaker 1: none of that.
Speaker 2: So but the other thing is is it biable? Can
Speaker 2: you reliably make a zombie powder?
Speaker 1: No? I don't even fully buy that you could make
Speaker 1: a powder period that you could be sure would just
Speaker 1: kind of paralyze someone to the point that you could
Speaker 1: convince someone else that they're dead, but then make sure
Speaker 1: that they recover afterwards. Not dude, Yeah, I don't buy
Speaker 1: it in the slightest, Like you could if you worked
Speaker 1: really hard, probably convince people that you faked your death
Speaker 1: by using this. Maybe.
Speaker 3: I don't know that I was gonna ask, so when
Speaker 3: when a person does recover, like what has happened? Like,
Speaker 3: how does the tatro de toxin unbind from.
Speaker 1: That's really a good question. I don't I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it just eventually something will come
Speaker 1: by and be able to degrade it. But I don't
Speaker 1: have a full answer to that, because it from what
Speaker 1: I can understand, it's not like a reversible binding, right,
Speaker 1: like it binds and then it's bound. So it's either
Speaker 1: just like your body has to make some new sodium
Speaker 1: channels maybe and maybe your body can make enough to compensate,
Speaker 1: or eventually, like nothing in your body is going to
Speaker 1: last forever, right, so eventually, like that sodium channel will
Speaker 1: be recycled or something, some macrophage will come by and
Speaker 1: like snag up that to toototoxin or whatever. I don't
Speaker 1: actually know the mechanism of it. I'm just making things
Speaker 1: up right now.
Speaker 3: But generating hypotheses.
Speaker 1: There we go. I like that. But that is it
Speaker 1: brings up a good point in that we don't have
Speaker 1: any treatment for it. So the only thing you can
Speaker 1: really do is if you know that someone ate a
Speaker 1: puffer fish and they shouldn't have, you can like give
Speaker 1: them activated charcoal or do a gastric levage, like make
Speaker 1: them barf it all up, and that can help somewhat.
Speaker 3: That is a very fancy word for barf inducing gastric levage.
Speaker 1: But there aren't any treatments. So wow, well, people have
Speaker 1: people have tried different things. I don't want to take
Speaker 1: too much time, so I don't want to get into
Speaker 1: like the various specific things that people have tried. They
Speaker 1: don't work all that well. But here's my question. Clearly,
Speaker 1: this mechanism of action of involving sodium channels, it's not
Speaker 1: something new, right, pufferfish didn't invent this by any means.
Speaker 1: We've already talked about it with wolf Spain. We'll probably
Speaker 1: talk about it in the future with something else that
Speaker 1: binds to the same channels. But the thing about tatrototoxin
Speaker 1: that makes it so forking terrifying is that it's so potent.
Speaker 1: It's so potent that we named the channels after it,
Speaker 1: and the tiniest amount twenty two micrograms can kill me
Speaker 1: a full grown human, right, twenty two milligrams? Sorry, get
Speaker 1: all those units mixed up. So my question, and probably
Speaker 1: everyone's question at this point, and Shane, why we brought
Speaker 1: you here, is why on Earth, with something as adorable
Speaker 1: as a puffer fish need to make such a potent toxin?
Speaker 1: Do they just want to kill us? Do pufferfish hate us?
Speaker 1: Why tell me? Why? Please?
Speaker 3: That is a phenomenal question. So pufferfish. They did not,
Speaker 3: you know, they weren't the first to invent to toe
Speaker 3: to toxin, but Totota toxin is actually named after them,
Speaker 3: well kind of. Totota toxin is actually named after an
Speaker 3: order of bony fish called tetra Odontiformes, which includes the
Speaker 3: puffer fish, but also porcupine fish and you know, the
Speaker 3: big floppy ocean sunfish and they're like huge and kind
Speaker 3: of flat and really goofy looking, and also triggerfish. So
Speaker 3: all together it's about almost three hundred and fifty species
Speaker 3: in the order, but not all of these species have
Speaker 3: to trot to toxin, you know. So it was named
Speaker 3: in nineteen ten actually as the principal toxin in puffer
Speaker 3: fish and obviously the principal component of fugu as were
Speaker 3: as you were saying before, you know, Since then, it's
Speaker 3: been subsequently described in a really wide array of organisms
Speaker 3: across the tree of life, sort of both marine and
Speaker 3: terrestrial organisms. So several obviously several genera which is the
Speaker 3: plural of genus, several genera of puffer fish habit specifically
Speaker 3: in like liver and gonads. The marine gobi, which is
Speaker 3: another bony fish, has to trot to toxin in its
Speaker 3: skin and muscles. And then even there are several invertebrates,
Speaker 3: marine invertebrates that also have it. So there are several
Speaker 3: species of marine flatworms. There is a trumpet shellfish, which
Speaker 3: is a different invertebrate that has it in a digestive gland.
Speaker 3: Horseshoe crabs apparently have them in their eggs. Some starfish species,
Speaker 3: I should say, one of the I think most interesting
Speaker 3: is actually the blue ringed octopus that actually has it
Speaker 3: in its salivary glands and it uses it as I
Speaker 3: you know, as it's co opted as a venom in
Speaker 3: that species. So that's that's really interesting.
Speaker 1: The coolest love blue ring octopus. They're like take this.
Speaker 1: They're so small and they're like you want to fight
Speaker 1: with me, and then they bite you and then you die.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I love them.
Speaker 3: That's the first, the first time I've ever heard it
Speaker 3: bites you and it dies. Oh my god. I love them.
Speaker 3: That you hear that very often except on this podcast.
Speaker 2: I have a quick question, Shane. So, okay, you mentioned
Speaker 2: that the organ of a lot of where this tatorta
Speaker 2: toxin is stored for a lot of these animals. Why
Speaker 2: the liver, the gonads, the intestinal, whatever system. Why why there?
Speaker 3: So that is a great question, and quite frankly, I
Speaker 3: don't think we know there's so in doing research for this,
Speaker 3: I realized that there's there's a ton that we don't
Speaker 3: know about tatro to toxin. Yeah, in terms of how
Speaker 3: it contributes to to biodiversity and how the vast array
Speaker 3: of organisms that use it, how they actually go about
Speaker 3: using it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, that's so cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's weird. It is very weird because I mean, essentially,
Speaker 3: like you're talking about chemical warfare essentially, right, I mean
Speaker 3: you're taking this super super toxic substance and integrating it
Speaker 3: into your body in some form or fashion and then
Speaker 3: using that as as a defense.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, not only does it occur in marine organisms, but
Speaker 3: they're also terrestrial species. You know, species that live on
Speaker 3: land that use it. And this is the amphibians. Uh So,
Speaker 3: you know, there are tree frog species in the genus
Speaker 3: Ata Lopus that use Totrota toxin. And then it's been
Speaker 3: most commonly studied in newts, So newts what are called
Speaker 3: rough skin newts. They're in the genus Tarika. Uh So
Speaker 3: they have really large volumes of to torot to toxin
Speaker 3: in their skin and actually also five different genera that
Speaker 3: of salamander that that have to tota toxin.
Speaker 1: What this is?
Speaker 5: Why?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Just tell us why? Shame? We need to know
Speaker 1: what's the deal here?
Speaker 3: Bro Okay, Well, so if I can, before I get
Speaker 3: to the why, the question is how?
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, good question is that?
Speaker 3: Okay? Okay? So just to give you give you sort
Speaker 3: of the scale of this. We're talking about hundreds of
Speaker 3: millions of years of diversity of life. So if we're
Speaker 3: talking about across the tree of life between you know,
Speaker 3: worms and and you know other invertebrates and terrestrial organisms,
Speaker 3: terrestrial vertebrates and fish, we're talking about hundreds of millions
Speaker 3: of years of diversity. And you get these species popping
Speaker 3: up across the tree of life that all are using
Speaker 3: this chemical warfare like co opting to trot to toxin
Speaker 3: to use as as typically as defense. Right. So, there
Speaker 3: are actually two major hypotheses about where totrot to toxin
Speaker 3: comes from. So one is an indogenous origin, right, So
Speaker 3: something that is you know, genetically coded in an animal
Speaker 3: to produce totrot to toxin. And there is some support
Speaker 3: for this and that typically comes from from the tree frogs.
Speaker 3: I mentioned that in that genus Ata loopus, where if
Speaker 3: you take those tree frog species and you bring them
Speaker 3: into like a controlled environment where you control what you
Speaker 3: feed them, what they're in contact with, even years after that,
Speaker 3: they can maintain really high levels of toxicity. And even
Speaker 3: frog that are hatched in the lab still have amounts
Speaker 3: like measurable amounts of to torota toxin in their skin,
Speaker 3: which suggests that they're actually producing it somehow. WHOA, but
Speaker 3: what yeah exactly I And again I don't really think
Speaker 3: we know how this works yet, Yeah, which is really
Speaker 3: surprising actually. But then the second hypothesis is actually in
Speaker 3: exogenous origin, so that animals are uptaking to trot to
Speaker 3: toxin either through the food chain or through symbioses, and
Speaker 3: a lot of evidence for this. It actually comes from
Speaker 3: the puffer fish. So people captively breed puffer fish for
Speaker 3: food and also for the pet trade, and pufferfish that
Speaker 3: are born in captivity are actually not toxic. They don't
Speaker 3: have any measurable amounts of to trot to toxin. But
Speaker 3: if you feed them to trot to toxin, they very
Speaker 3: quickly become toxic.
Speaker 2: Wait, so is it possible that there are distinct groups
Speaker 2: of animals that some can produce some some it's indogenous
Speaker 2: and for some it's exogenous.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: A face is so excited right now, she's just like
Speaker 1: like her eyes can't contain. That's amazing, it's amazing.
Speaker 3: And it's it's this really sort of wild example of
Speaker 3: this classic question and evolutionary biology of the repeatability. Right
Speaker 3: if like, you know, if you get the same results,
Speaker 3: i e. I have to toto toxin, don't eat me
Speaker 3: or I'll mess you up, do you get there by
Speaker 3: the same by the same path?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 3: And it seems like, at least in this case, the
Speaker 3: answer is there are several paths to potentially get there,
Speaker 3: either through producing it or through uptaking it in the
Speaker 3: in the environment, or you know, which I think is
Speaker 3: an even cooler potential explanation is through symbioses. You know,
Speaker 3: A major a major hypothesis is that a lot of
Speaker 3: these species that have to trototoxin have them because as
Speaker 3: they formed a symbiotic relationship with bacteria that produced the
Speaker 3: toatrot to toxin, so like Vibrio bacteria is most often
Speaker 3: suggested as the you know, the symbio in this case,
Speaker 3: but also pseudomonous and Actinomycetes M. Yeah. But in either case, right,
Speaker 3: there remains this really important question about the repeatability of evolution. Right, So,
Speaker 3: either you have independent origins of totrototoxin production right via
Speaker 3: these indogenous means, or even if you're uptaking it from
Speaker 3: the environment, you still have to biologically incorporate it into
Speaker 3: your own body without being affected by it, right, so
Speaker 3: you still have to have some level of resistance.
Speaker 2: What is this is insane?
Speaker 1: It's not like pufferfish don't have their own sodium channels, right.
Speaker 2: They do?
Speaker 5: Right, Like what.
Speaker 1: What you can feed them to trotoxin are like, no
Speaker 1: worry about and live will take care of.
Speaker 3: This, my lip exactly.
Speaker 1: I just skipped the other half of the word that
Speaker 1: wasn't intentional.
Speaker 3: My lip Tot's got this, bro.
Speaker 1: Exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So and this obviously like brings us to your
Speaker 3: initial question, which is why. And you know, as I described,
Speaker 3: most of these species are incorporating it in their organs,
Speaker 3: and it seems that this is mostly associated with defense
Speaker 3: against predation. Right, So there are a lot of species
Speaker 3: that incorporated in different organs, but a lot also have
Speaker 3: it in their skin and in their muscle, right, so
Speaker 3: if you bit them or tried to hold on to them,
Speaker 3: you know, obviously if you know, if you're biding them,
Speaker 3: you're biding them with your mouth, which leads to, you know,
Speaker 3: a lot of the issues that you were just talking
Speaker 3: that we were just talking about when it comes to
Speaker 3: human infection with toratroda toxin, so it seems to be
Speaker 3: associated by and large with defense against predation, which also
Speaker 3: sort of brings us to this weird dynamic that comes
Speaker 3: out of these praise species having to trot to toxin,
Speaker 3: which are what we call evolutionary arms races. Right, So,
Speaker 3: if you're a puffer fish or if you're a rough
Speaker 3: skin newt swimming around or walking around doing your thing,
Speaker 3: you don't want to be eaten. That's generally an unpleasant
Speaker 3: experience that we all try to avoid. But if you're
Speaker 3: a predator, typically you like to eat things, and this
Speaker 3: like sort of very simple dynamic to competing factors, you know,
Speaker 3: lead to evolutionary arms races where things that don't want
Speaker 3: to get eaten figure out ways to not get eaten,
Speaker 3: either by running really fast or growing large or growing
Speaker 3: hard parts that can't be chewed on. But then predators,
Speaker 3: you know, they find ways to get around that. And
Speaker 3: there's a really interesting case when it comes to trototoxins,
Speaker 3: particularly in these rough skin newts that I mentioned before.
Speaker 3: So this species ranges across the west coast of the
Speaker 3: United States all the way from like southern Canada down
Speaker 3: through southern California, and across the range, they vary in
Speaker 3: their toxicity. So some populations are very highly toxic and
Speaker 3: some are only mildly toxic. And across their range they
Speaker 3: are also garter snakes like very calmon. I'm sure we've
Speaker 3: all seen garter snakes outside racing from place to place,
Speaker 3: and garter snakes they occur across the same region, and
Speaker 3: they're the only predator of the newt that is known
Speaker 3: to be resistant to totro to toxin. What so they
Speaker 3: I know, right, right, So these the snakes they eat
Speaker 3: newts regularly, right, and this has led to a matched
Speaker 3: resistance to tatrot to toxin. And so where the newts
Speaker 3: are more toxic, the snakes are more resistant to to toxic. Good,
Speaker 3: I know. And so just to give you an idea,
Speaker 3: this ranges by three orders of magnitude. What so we're
Speaker 3: talking about some snakes are one thousand times more resistant
Speaker 3: to toatrot to toxin than others.
Speaker 1: What that is so cool?
Speaker 3: I know, which brings us back to this idea of
Speaker 3: the repeatability because this resistance, it seems to have evolved
Speaker 3: independently at least twice within garter snakes, so separate lineages
Speaker 3: have come up with this solution to being able to
Speaker 3: eat these ruskin nuts. It's wild.
Speaker 1: It's like different garter snakes the same. It's like garter snakes.
Speaker 1: You think those are the same snake, but there's different
Speaker 1: populations that have evolved this different times.
Speaker 2: And clearly these newts are really important food source.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, and it must be extremely important, right
Speaker 3: because you know this fundamental question idea is like, well,
Speaker 3: how how do you get this resistance? Well, you know
Speaker 3: you've said you know how to torta talksin affects your
Speaker 3: your sodium channels. But these snakes actually have mutations in
Speaker 3: their sodium channels that make to tota talksin less efficient
Speaker 3: at binding to them.
Speaker 1: So cool. What I said there was different kinds of
Speaker 1: sodium channels. Man, They're just like, we're gonna skip to
Speaker 1: all the resisting kind and just forget about this, these
Speaker 1: ones over here.
Speaker 2: That is, so, why don't we all have resistance sodium
Speaker 2: channels because we're not.
Speaker 3: All because our species haven't been Yeah yeah, exactly, yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: But it does come out of it does come out
Speaker 3: a trade off, right, I mean, as you know obviously
Speaker 3: you know these sodium channels, they provide a really basic
Speaker 3: biological function, right, and they help us to you know,
Speaker 3: to contract our muscles and move around. And snakes that
Speaker 3: have very high to tototoxin resistance cannot move as quickly
Speaker 3: as those that don't.
Speaker 2: Interesting, weird, huh. So there's like a substantial tradeoff.
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, but it would be really cool if that
Speaker 3: was the whole story, right. But recently, actually, just earlier
Speaker 3: this year, in twenty eighteen, there was a study again
Speaker 3: in two species of skinned newts that suggest that they
Speaker 3: showed that individuals that were more toxic also had fewer
Speaker 3: parasites than less toxic individuals.
Speaker 1: We just both got so excited.
Speaker 3: I thought you would like that one.
Speaker 2: One more time, just for emphasis.
Speaker 1: Please say it again, please, So.
Speaker 3: Rough skin neuts that are more toxic have fewer parasites
Speaker 3: than they're less toxic counterparts.
Speaker 1: My god.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it seems like they're actually there's the possibility
Speaker 3: that not only does it help them in defense against predators,
Speaker 3: but it may also help them defend against infection.
Speaker 2: Amazing. What kind of so parasites meaning like ectoparasites or
Speaker 2: are we also talking like bacteria, viruses, et cetera.
Speaker 3: So, if I remember correctly, they looked mostly at sort
Speaker 3: of larger parasites, so things like parasitic worms, and even
Speaker 3: they looked at fungi as well, like parasitic fungi for
Speaker 3: you know that effect newts, things like cattrid fungus for instand.
Speaker 1: Oh oh oh, that's going to probably have to be
Speaker 1: a whole own episode.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, for sure, that's.
Speaker 3: Won't dive too deep into that one.
Speaker 1: That's amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so this brings me back to this original
Speaker 3: question Aaron Welsh, that you pose of like why like
Speaker 3: why do we care, like, you know, why do we
Speaker 3: want to get into like the mechanisms of all this stuff?
Speaker 3: I mean, obviously hearing these stories, it's it's actually it's
Speaker 3: really cool, you know, just on its own, but there
Speaker 3: is I think some utility and really trying to understand
Speaker 3: the mechanisms either, you know, when it comes to zombie powder,
Speaker 3: or when it comes to you know, these crazy creatures
Speaker 3: across the tree of life that are using totort to toxin,
Speaker 3: there is some inherent utility there, you know, when it
Speaker 3: comes to our understanding of basic biology and medicine. So
Speaker 3: back in I think it was like nineteen twenty nine
Speaker 3: and there's this guy, August Crowe, you know, he has
Speaker 3: this what became a pretty famous quote, and he said
Speaker 3: that for some large number of human related problems, there
Speaker 3: will be some animal of choice for which that problem
Speaker 3: can be most conveniently studied, right, And this is you know,
Speaker 3: this became his principle, and that's based on this sort
Speaker 3: of fundamental observation that evolution by natural selection has produced
Speaker 3: a vast array of diversity and form and function. And
Speaker 3: because of this, some species are really well suited for
Speaker 3: understanding human related problems, right because they've evolved extreme characteristics
Speaker 3: that mimic human disease states, or they allow us to
Speaker 3: conduct experiments that would be otherwise impossible, and this gives
Speaker 3: us fundamental insights into the diseases that plague us and
Speaker 3: help us to design effective treatments for those diseases. So
Speaker 3: in the case of totroto toxin resistance right in these species.
Speaker 3: Understanding how their ion channels allow them to live with
Speaker 3: tatrota toxin may provide really valuable insights into many diseases
Speaker 3: that are thought to result from ion channel dysfunction. And
Speaker 3: this includes, you know, things from like color blindness and
Speaker 3: night blindness, to cystic fibrosis to Alzheimer's to Parkinson's to schizophrenia.
Speaker 3: You know, so they potentially provide some really fundamental insights
Speaker 3: into understanding how you know, these really basic aspects of
Speaker 3: biology can be modified and improved upon.
Speaker 1: That was so gorgeous.
Speaker 2: It was so perfectly put and fascinating, and we were
Speaker 2: both at the same time form our hands.
Speaker 1: And we were putting them to the computers.
Speaker 2: We were like, oh my god, you guys, stop that. No,
Speaker 2: but that is Oh that was just really well set
Speaker 2: and really well put. And I think that you made
Speaker 2: a really good point that it's not just driven by
Speaker 2: this curiosity, but there is a function and a season,
Speaker 2: an application for doing this type of research and for
Speaker 2: being even just interested in it and learning about it
Speaker 2: from a comparative angle or from a historical angle or
Speaker 2: from a medical angle, Like there's a reason the Angle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh cool, I know it's science dude. That was great.
Speaker 2: That was a great episode. So should we do sources?
Speaker 1: Probably? Okay?
Speaker 2: Uh So I read a few books or sections of books.
Speaker 2: I would recommend Invisible Powers, which is edited by Claudine
Speaker 2: Michelle and Patrick Bellgarde Smith, and also Passage of Darkness
Speaker 2: by Wade Davis, American Zombie Gothic by Kyle William Bishop,
Speaker 2: which kind of details the transformation of the evolution of
Speaker 2: the zombie genre in movies. Cosanba or the Congress of
Speaker 2: Santa Barbara to which is like a place to learn
Speaker 2: about and to have scholarship on vodo. I don't have
Speaker 2: we'll post all of these.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the thing is minor, always way too long.
Speaker 1: I have a bunch of articles that were cool, but
Speaker 1: you can find them on our website This podcast will
Speaker 1: Kill You dot com. We have every single one of
Speaker 1: our episodes. We have all of our sources listed there. So, Shane,
Speaker 1: do you have any things you'd like to shout out
Speaker 1: beside your brain? Oh?
Speaker 3: I guess what I will shout out is the last
Speaker 3: paper I mentioned about poisons and parasites in Newts was
Speaker 3: published earlier this year in the Journal of Animal Ecology.
Speaker 3: The lead author's last name is Johnson. Johnson at all
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: Sweet. That's right cool. Also, Shane, tell us where everyone
Speaker 1: can find you and stalk you and listen to your podcast.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you can find me at s Campbell Stayton
Speaker 3: on Twitter. You can also hit up at Superbio podcast
Speaker 3: to check out new episodes.
Speaker 2: Shane, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Yes, it is awesome for fun.
Speaker 3: I had a great time. Thank you guys so much, and.
Speaker 1: Thank you everybody for listening. We love you. You're the
Speaker 1: number one greatest.
Speaker 2: Thanks to Bloodmobile for providing all of our music.
Speaker 1: We love you so much. And yeah, join us next
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