- [Coyote] We have drawn my blood,
and now it's matter of seeing what that venom will do
once it's mixed with my blood.
Holy mackerel, that's crazy looking.
(angry guitar chord)
(intense music)
In our previous venom episode,
we performed a very crude experiment
where we took vials of my blood,
added in snake venom,
let them sit,
and then dribbled them down a plexiglass board
to see what visual differences we could make out
with the human eye.
There we go, wow, look at that.
It was gross and about as unscientific as science gets,
but boy, was it entertaining.
Look how watery that is, that's crazy.
This time around we're taking science to the next level.
So we have brought in microbiologist Dr. Hunter Hines.
See that impressive microscope
he's tinkering around with?
That beast is going to provide us with
the ability to see what happens on a microscopic level
when our Fer-de-Lance venom is mixed with blood
and begins to attack the cells.
But first, we need some blood.
My blood.
(sighs) Brace yourself, Coyote,
it's time to be brave.
You know the last time we did this episode,
I was a little bit of a cry baby around the needles, Sonya,
and a lot of the-
Coyote Pack members wrote in the comments section
"Coyote, you're so brave around these other things,
"How are you not brave around needles?"
(straining)
- It's not that bad.
- I know you're going to do an amazing job,
I can already tell.
Today, I'm going to be extra courageous
as I give 16 vials of my own blood
to mix together with venom in the name of science.
- You ready? - Mm-hmm.
(adventurous orchestral music)
- [Sonya] One two three.
We're in. - Didn't even feel it.
You're amazing. - Thank you.
I'm actually watching the process this time
to sort of see how it goes.
I feel pretty good about it.
Now, if we don't use all this blood,
can I drink it back into my body and absorb it?
- No. - Oh.
Just like that,
I was exceptionally brave during the process
of having my blood drawn.
No problem whatsoever.
Oh, you brought me a cookie - [Man] You get a cookie.
Homemade cookie. - Hey.
I'm not going to complain: draw your blood, get a cookie.
Hmm, that was excellent.
So here's where we are at:
we have milked a Fer-de-Lance,
we have drawn my blood,
and now it's matter of seeing what that venom will do
once it's mixed with my blood.
And to set up this experiment,
we're going to do two different things;
a very rudimentary test, which is a control,
and blood with venom in it
that we'll just kind of look at it in a Petri dish, right?
- Exactly.
- And then from there we will do the same experiment
and put it underneath the microscope to see what's happening
to the red blood cells as the venom begins to break it down.
- Yeah, you'll see some stuff with the naked eye,
but really to get the idea of what's happening
on a cellular level, we have to go into the microscope.
- Got it, okay.
So the first step then would be me to take control blood,
right here and put it into the Petri dish, right?
- Yeah.
- Okay, and is that just like open this up
and dump that in there?
- Well, safety first let's put our gloves on.
- Ah, good call. - Even though it's your blood
So first off, let's start it
just dumping that first vial into the control.
- Okay.
- Maybe do a little bit of inversion
to mix it up a little bit.
Don't shake it, but just a little twist.
Yeah, good.
- There we go.
Wow.
That's Coyote blood right there,
ladies and gentlemen.
Looks very liquidy.
- Yeah, and so each one of those tubes is 4 milliliters,
so let's go ahead and put one more in there.
- There we have it.
- Just invert the dish a little bit.
See how that spreads.
- Okay.
Wow.
- It looks great. - Great.
- So, that's now 8 milliliters in there.
- Okay. - So we have to do,
probably one more vial to fill it up.
- Okay, want it all the way full.
All right.
That is an entire Petri dish filled with my blood.
Now we get a little more dangerous.
This is the Fer-de-Lance venom
and it may not look like a lot,
but trust me, that is very potent stuff right there.
Just that amount of venom could kill you.
- So let's just transfer that into
a little mini Petri dish there.
- Okay.
- [Hunter] So, nice and carefully pour that in.
- [Coyote] Oh boy, a lot of pressure.
- [Hunter] You don't need to pour all of it in,
but just enough. - About enough?
- Yep, perfect. - Okay.
- Then we're going to go in with the micro-pipette here.
- Okay.
- Just gonna get some of the venom on there.
There we go.
So that's four microliters of venom.
- Wow. That's really all that we need.
Just that tiny bit.
- Yeah. - Amazing.
- All right, we'll just put that in here.
All right, there you go.
- So that tiny drip
of venom- - Pass me that biohazard.
- is all that we really need.
Mad science here in DeLand, Florida.
- All right, now we can close that.
- Okay.
- We can just invert it a little bit,
like we were doing earlier. - Mm-hmm, get the-
- Mix it around a little bit.
- Get the venom moving around in there.
- Nice and carefully.
Great.
All right, perfect.
Now let's check the time and check back in a few minutes,
see how it looks. - Okay.
Okay, so five minutes has gone by,
and now we're going to take a look
visually at what's happened.
Obviously the control has no venom in it.
And, looks like my blood.
Okay, now we'll look at the Fer-de-Lance.
The venom that's been added to this blood.
Will we see any difference?
Whoa, there is definitely a difference.
- [Hunter] Oh yeah. - Holy cow, look at that.
It looks gelatinous,
especially right in the middle there.
You don't have all of that same fluidity to the blood
that you saw in the controls.
Something is definitely happening visually
to the human eye right there.
- Yeah, it's certainly different
from our control over there.
- That's crazy, wow, in just five minutes.
And that small amount of venom that went in there
did that to the blood.
- Yeah - Pretty crazy.
Now for you guys to truly understand
what's happening to these blood cells,
we need to move this experiment to the next step,
which is looking at it underneath a microscope.
- All right, so on the microscope right now.
We have just your blood, - Uh huh.
- nothing in it, on the slide.
And what we're going to try to do now
is take a drop of the Fer-de-Lance venom,
put it on the edge of the slide
and it's going to hopefully diffuse into it.
There, so here's your healthy blood on this edge, right?
Now the venom has gone in
and look what it does do it.
- [Coyote] Oh, what am I looking at?
- [Hunter] So you're looking at death at a cellular level.
So all of your red blood cells are exploding
because of this venom.
It's actually changing the color across the screen.
Right, you go from dark red to this almost light pink.
That's hemoglobin being released from the blood cells
as they're all exploding as a result of this venom,
and this is in real time, this has just been a minute.
- Holy mackerel, that's crazy looking.
So what it is that you guys are looking at
right now on screen,
is the venom seeping into the blood.
You'll see how it's starting to break apart
and almost look like cauliflower.
That is the venom literally killing the blood cells.
You can see the color changing
and you can see the blood cells are,
they're no longer flowing like a river.
They're just exploding essentially, right?
This is really exciting.
You've never seen snake venom before
under a microscope like this with human blood, correct.
- No, I've never had access to venom before.
So this is really exciting
to get to do this experiment with you.
- Wow. - Super cool.
- [Coyote] We took, how much did we put in there?
- [Hunter] 2 microliters.
- 2 microliters, my brain can't even register
what 2 microliters is.
Then when you think about a full-grown Fer-de-Lance,
maybe near 6 feet in length,
biting onto you and injecting a full yield of venom.
Forget about it.
You understand why these snakes are so dangerous
and why the venom is so destructive to red blood cells.
- [Hunter] Okay so that's 100x magnification.
Coyote, we can go now to 200x and you can see,
this is the edge right here where the venom was.
You can see it's just destroyed all the cells.
As we move in here,
you can see it's done a lot of damage, right?
You can see these cells here are still lysed
and just kind of exploding from the venom.
All right, this is 200x magnification.
We can go now up to 400x magnification.
We can really see the individual cells here quite clearly,
or what's left of them, right?
This is just destruction, right?
We can't actually make out any cells at this level here.
I can go over a little further.
We can see the colors, this is all the hemoglobin,
which is lysed out of your red blood cells.
That's how they carry oxygen, right?
We can see a few of the cells still hanging on, but-
- Oh, look at them struggling. - Yeah.
- [Coyote] You can actually see them starting to spaz out.
- [Hunter] And have a look at it.
So if you look in this area right here,
you can actually see,
they kind of look spiky, - Mm-hmm.
and that's actually the venom
acting on those individual cells
and just completely destroying their morphology.
A nice, healthy red blood cell is
you know, this donut looking oval
and these things are just destroyed, right?
- Wow, that is an absolute massacre.
And the area where the venom has
completely taken over the red blood cells
looks like a desolate wasteland.
What's all that white stuff that's kicked off to the sides?
- Yeah, that's all just the dead parts of the cells.
It just exploded, right?
Everything in your blood has been just completely destroyed
by this venom,
and that's the remains of it there.
- There you have it,
Fer-de-Lance venom, insanely potent.
Just a tiny drop destroying those red blood cells.
I have to admit, Hunter,
when you took such a small amount and added it,
I was like, "Is that really going to
"do something that catastrophic?"
Lo and behold, those cells are just getting wiped out.
Massacred.
- Extremely powerful venom, so,
have to treat it with respect for sure.
Wow, okay, well, we have learned a lot.
From encountering a Fer-de-Lance in the wild,
to then being here at the Reptile Discovery Center
where we got to milk one of these snakes
and then to get its venom
underneath the microscope mixed with my blood,
really gives you a new appreciation
for just how potent the venom of the snake is.
And I hope it serves as a warning
to everybody out there watching
that this snake is dangerous and potentially deadly,
if you were bitten by it.
Hunter, thank you so much
for giving us this up-close look
at what venom does to blood.
It was amazing.
- Awesome, for sure.
- I'm Coyote Peterson.
Be brave, stay wild.
We'll see you on the next adventure.
Let's take another look at this blood.
A landmine is defined as an explosive device
that is concealed under or on the ground,
which is designed to destroy or disable enemy targets.
So it's pretty easy to understand
why we call venomous snakes "biological landmines".
Their bites have the ability to be incredibly destructive
and if not properly addressed, can be fatal.
However, it's important to remember
that snakes are not out to get us,
and almost all bites are a result of self-defense.
Pay attention to your surroundings.
If you stumble upon a venomous snake on your next hike,
simply give it space,
walk on and share the exciting story
of how you bravely managed to dodge a biological landmine.
If you would like to visit the reptile discovery center,
make sure to check out their website
and reserve your chance to witness the snake milking action.
I promise it's an experience, you will never forget.
Whoa!
Hey, Coyote Pack,
are you interested in learning more
about our planet's bizarre biological landmines?
If so, you can sign up for a free Varsity Tutors class
with me as the instructor,
just check out the link in the video description below.
But the second that lamprey tasted Coyote Peterson's blood,
(mimics vomiting) spit me out like I was a rotten potato.
(ominous animal sounds)