(ominous mus&ic)
- [Coyote Peterson] Wow.
Yep. That's about the size we're used to seeing
in Costa Rica.
Look at that.
- [Carl] Perfect. Good.
Don't change anything.
- Ooh, this is gonna be wicked.
Oh, wowzers!
(dramatic music)
Nature is riddled with dangers,
and to the untrained eye,
if you don't recognize one of its many biological landmines,
it's possible that your next step could be your last.
Spiders, scorpions, centipedes,
and even spiky plants can be considered explosively perilous
if they catch you off guard.
(Coyote yells in pain)
But nothing is more serious
than stepping on a venomous snake.
On this adventure,
we are going to take a look at Central
and South America's most notorious pit viper,
a snake that I am all too familiar with
and a reptile you should definitely be aware of,
lest you accidentally encounter it
while hiking in the rainforest.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
- [Mario Aldecoa] What do we got?
- We got a fer-de-lance right in front of us,
right under this leaf.
- [Mario] Where, where, where?
- Look at this,
right in front of me, right in front of me.
Look at that camouflage!
Holy cow! His head's coming right up past that leaf.
Oh my gosh.
That is the camouflage that you hope you recognize
before you step too close.
The snake literally just curled up underneath the leaf.
Its nose is just poking up right in the middle of the path
that we are walking down.
- [Mario] I don't see it.
- [Coyote] Right, right,
look at this bright leaf in front of me
See this?
It's nose is just sticking up on the top of it.
You see that?
- [Mario] Got it. Keep your light there.
- Completely hidden the fer-de-lance,
arguably the most dangerous snake in Central
and South America.
Yes! I was hoping we'd see one of these tonight.
One thing we've never done before
is tube one of these vipers
and take a closer look from that position.
So, I'm gonna slowly lift back this leaf.
I have no idea how big the snake is.
This is sometimes the funnest part.
What's the leaf going to reveal?
How big is this snake? It looks sizable.
- [Mario] Oh yeah.
- Oh yeah. That's a good sized snake.
Oh, buddy. Look at you.
Okay.
Right now it is still saying to itself,
"I'm hidden. Nobody sees me.
If I don't move, maybe you guys will just pass right by
and I'll continue about my night hunting for prey items."
But we definitely want to get a better look.
All right, Mario,
the snake is actually in a absolutely perfect position
for us to try to get it safely inside of a snake tube.
It's the safest situation for the snake
and it will put the least amount of stress on it
as possible.
Can't get your camera too, too much closer than that.
What's amazing about these snakes is that they can go
from completely gargoyle statue-still into explosive action.
And these snakes can launch themselves
two thirds the length of their body forward,
which is why they are incredibly dangerous to work with.
And just like that,
I dropped my snake tongs and the snake is on the move. Okay.
- [Mario] Okay. We need light.
(dramatic music)
- It's just kind of slithering slowly, which is good.
It's not being too explosive.
Like I said,
they can move incredibly quick when they need to.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Careful.
- [Mario] All right, Coyote. Gonna step in.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Here. I'll tell you what,
why don't you take the snake hook.
- [Mario] Okay.
- I'll take the tube. You got the right gauge?
- [Mario] You're gonna have you pick it up.
- [Coyote] Okay, good. Switch.
This ever gets any easier.
This is definitely the most dangerous part.
Angle down.
- Like...Yeah. Angled.
Not yet. Not yet.
Now!
Now.
- Okay. - We got him.
- Here we go.
Ooh, look at the fangs inside there.
Okay.
Be very, very gentle now.
Okay. (exhales sharply)
You just have to take a deep breath
after successfully getting control of a snake like that
because the bite from this species is extremely toxic.
Hematotoxic and mitotoxic.
It will break down red blood cells.
This is one of the most potent bites
of any venomous snake on the western half of the world.
And if you're a bitten by snake like this
and you do not get the proper care, it could take your life.
Now, when I turn the snake like this,
you can see the scalation is very, very defined.
It's very rigid, very bumpy.
It's got incredible texture to it.
And that texture also helps
to keep these snakes camouflaged.
One of the names that this snake is commonly known by
is the lancehead.
and that's because of the triangular nature of the head,
almost looks like the tip of a lance or a spear.
And like all pit vipers, they have a heat sensing pit,
which of course helps them to detect their prey.
And while they will take advantage of mammals,
at certain times of year,
these snakes primarily feast on amphibians.
And with all the rain
that just recently moved through earlier,
I'm guessing this snake is on the hunt
for any sort of creature they can possibly come across,
whether it's a mammal or an amphibian, it is fair game.
if you are a snake like this, out and on the hunt.
And one of the reasons I was so excited
to have come across a fer-de-lance tonight is
that I've always wanted to show you guys what happens
when you mix this pit viper' venom with blood, human blood.
But to safely do that, we're gonna need to head back
to Deland, Florida and connect with our friends
at the Reptile Discovery Center.
We can actually get hands on
with one of these snakes in captivity
and safely show you guys what it takes
to not only milk this species,
but also to mix its venom with human blood.
Stay tuned guys.
I promise the second part of this episode is going
to be wildly entertaining.
Interacting with a fer-de-lance
is like handling a loaded gun
and just a single mistake
could quickly turn into a medical emergency or worse.
This species is responsible
for 90% of the snake bites in Central America,
Milking them the most dangerous snake in their range.
Sounds horrific, but here's the good news,
if a bite victim is taken to the hospital in a timely manner
and anti venom is administered,
the survival rate is extremely high.
We have returned to the Reptile Discovery Center
in Deland, Florida.
Millions of you enjoyed the previous episodes
we filmed here,
so it's an absolute honor for us to return
and once again,
work alongside Carl and Mara,
this serpentarium is not only home
to dozens of the world's most dangerous snakes,
it is also the first step in the production
of life saving anti-venoms.
Yet in order for anti-venom to be created,
first, you need the snakes venom
and to get the venom you need to milk the snakes.
Behind us is a room filled with snakes
and in one of those boxes is the fer-de-lance,
Central and South America's most notorious snake,
and today we're going to milk it.
Are you guys ready for this?
- We're ready. - [Mara] I think so.
- [Coyote] Are you nervous?
- Never. - No.
- Let's bring out the snake.
- Beautiful. Okay, Coyote. She's coming up.
- All right.
(dramatic music)
Now, remember Carl and Mara are professionals.
They do this on a weekly basis, working with these snakes,
but it's gonna be really interesting
to see the fer-de-lance not in its natural environment.
I don't know what the snakes gonna look like,
how big it's going to be, so I'm ready to be surprised.
This is gonna get intense.
Oh, here we go. Okay.
Wow. Yep.
That's that's about the size we're used to seeing
in Costa Rica.
Look at that.
- [Carl] They are big, well adapted pit vipers.
They have highly developed venoms,
toxic venoms tend to be tremendously hemolytic.
And in other words, do lots of destruction to blood cells.
And so they account for a lot of bites in South America,
as you know, or Central and South America.
So it's really a formidable pit viper
- So a bite from this snake, without antivenom,
is almost guaranteed to kill you?
- I'm not gonna say always lethal because, again,
sometimes a bite from that snake
will result in a minor envenomation
He won't give you anything.
But a severe or a significant envenomation by that snake
without treatment would probably be a result in a fatality.
- [Coyote] Okay.
- Or perhaps the loss of a limb.
- [Coyote] Okay. So Carl, at this point,
the snake is looking right at us.
I feel like it's probably good point to milk this snake.
What's this process gonna look like?
- So the catch here's gonna be a little bit different.
If you start to really look at that snake's body language,
Coyote, he's starting to kind of get act up a little bit.
He's starting to get nervous
and fer-de-lance can be really flighty snakes.
- [Coyote] Now, have you ever had one jump off of the table?
- We have.
- [Coyote] Yeah. 'Cause I-
- Just not quite as far as you.
- I keep wanting to look off at the camera,
(woman laughs)
but then I keep my eye on the snake.
- [Carl] Very much.
- [Coyote] It looks like it's in launch mode. Okay.
- [Carl] Absolutely.
- [Coyote] I think this is probably the moment.
What do you guys need me to do?
- Just step off to the right a little bit.
We're gonna give Mara a little room
to kind of work her magic.
- [Coyote] Okay.
- Get him secured, and then I'll hand him over to you.
- [Carl] Nice. (dramatic music continues)
Look right at your tongs.
- [Mara] Pressure's coming down.
- [Carl] All wound up.
Ooh, there's a strike.
- [Mara] And there's full pressure on him now.
- [Carl] Perfect. Good. Don't change anything.
Perfect.
- [Coyote] Ah, that's a strong snake.
- [Carl] Good?
- [Coyote] So Carl,
this is the most important part right here, right?
- Yep.
And you'll see,
normally fer-de lance are good solid venom producers.
Ah, went light today. Okay.
Sometimes the snake's
gonna give us only a small amount of her venom
or his venom.
And the big difference here is,
you've heard the term milking snakes?
In the old days they used to press on those venom glands.
They'd squeeze that snake's head. We don't do that.
We just allow the snake to bite
and give us what he's gonna give us voluntarily,
and sometimes they don't give us a lot of venom.
He's, remember, venom to the snake is precious.
These are defensive bites
and he really has venom to obtain his food.
Great job on the body.
- [Coyote] Okay.
- [Carl] So I'm gonna go back into the cage now,
but even that little bit,
you're looking at about a hundred milligrams
of dry weight there.
That's absolutely probably multiple lethal doses venom.
- Wow.
- Good. - Okay.
- Beautiful job, Coyote.
- Okay if I let go? - I got him.
Yep. - [Coyote] Okay.
- [Carl] Perfect job. Thank you.
- Did you hear that?
So just that amount of venom, not even a full venom yield,
capable of killing multiple people when it's at dry weight.
Now Carl, question for you.
- [Carl] Yes.
- [Coyote] What is this venom going to do to your body?
- So the little thing in your bloodstream
that allows platelets to stick to it
and clot is actually being broken apart
by some of these venoms, that's being lysed into pieces.
And so that net there, that clotting net,
that's gonna allow the platelets to stick to it,
is being destroyed.
And so all of a sudden, you're beginning to hemorrhage.
You're beginning to bleed.
You go into shock, you've got all kinds of fluid problems.
Your kidneys are beginning to fail
because you've got all these things floating around
in your bloodstream that shouldn't be there.
And of course, like a all pit viper bites,
lancehead swell and they destroy tissue,
something they call metalloproteinases.
So it's a messy snake bite.
It's a painful snake bite.
They often result in amputations
because of a delay in treatment or no treatment.
So you'll see people missing fingers
or even bigger parts of their body with these guys.
So it's a dangerous snake.
- It is serious business if you're a bitten.
So you have to admire the snake from a safe distance.
Now the next thing yes that we want to do is take this venom
and mix it together with blood.
Of course, my blood and this time,
in less of a rudimentary situation,
and we're going to put it underneath the microscope
and see if we can see some of those blood cells
breaking down.
- That sounds excellent.
You're stepping up your experiment a little bit.
We really applaud that.
And as you said, maybe we'll get lucky
and we'll be able to see some of these toxins
at work under a microscope.
- Okay, stay tuned guys.
The next part of this episode is going
to get extremely scientific.
(dramatic 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 unscientific as science gets,
but boy was it entertaining!
Look how watery that is. That's crazy.
This time around, we are taking science to the next level.
So we have brought in microbiologist Dr. Hunter Hines.
See that impressive microscope he is 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 it begins to attack the cells.
But first we need some blood. My blood.
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 crybaby around the needle, Sonia,
and a lot of the Coyote Pack members wrote
in the comment section,
Coyote, you're so brave around these other things.
How are you not brave around needles?
(Coyote grunts in pain)
- It's not that bad.
- I know. You're gonna do an amazing job,
I can already tell.
Today, I'm going to be extra courageous
as I get 16 vials of my own blood
to mix together with venom in the name of science.
- Ready? - Mh-hm.
- We're in. - Didn't even feel it.
You're amazing. - Thank you.
- [Coyote] 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?
- [Sonia] No. - [Coyote] Oh.
And just like that,
I was exceptionally brave
during the process of having my blood drawn.
No problem whatsoever. Oh!
- [Mario] You get a cookie.
- You brought me a cookie!
- [Mario] Homemade cookie.
- Hey! Not gonna complain.
Draw your blood, get a cookie.
Mh! - [Sonia] Good?
- Yeah. It 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 a matter of seeing what that venom will do
once it's mixed with my blood.
And to set up this experiment,
we're gonna 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 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 at a cellular level,
we have to go to the microscope.
- Got it. Okay.
So the first step then would be
for 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.
- [Coyote] Ah, good call.
- [Dr. Hunter Hines] Even though it's your blood.
- [Coyote] Right.
- 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.
- Okay.
- [Hunter] Don't shake it, but just a little twist.
- Yeah.
- [Hunter] Yeah. Good.
- [Coyote] Here we go.
Wow!
That's Coyote blood right there, ladies and gentlemen.
Looks very liquidy.
- [Hunter] Yeah.
And so each one of those tubes is four milliliters.
So let's go ahead and put one more in there.
- [Coyote] There we have it.
- [Hunter] Just invert the dish a little bit.
See how that spreads.
- Okay.
Wow.
- [Hunter] It looks great.
- Great.
- So that's now eight milliliters in there.
- [Coyote] Okay.
- [Hunter] So we'll have to do probably one more vial
to fill it up.
- [Coyote] Okay. You 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.
- [Coyote] Okay.
- [Hunter] So nice and carefully pour that in.
- [Coyote] Yep.
Oh boy. Lot of pressure.
- [Hunter] You don't need to pour all it in,
but just enough.
Yeah that's perfect. - [Coyote] That enough?
- [Hunter] Yeah, perfect.
- [Coyote] Okay.
- And then we're gonna go in with the micro pipette here.
- [Coyote] Okay.
- [Hunter] We're just gonna get some of the venom up there.
There we go. So that's four microliters of venom.
- Wow. That's really all that we need?
Just that tiny bit?
- [Hunter] Yeah. - [Coyote] Amazing.
- [Hunter] All right. We'll just put that in here.
There you go. So you can mix it in if you want.
- So that tiny drip of venom?
- Pass me that. Biohazard.
- That's all that we really need.
Mad science here in Deland, Florida. Okay.
- All right.
Now we could close that.
- [Coyote] Okay.
- [Hunter] And we can just invert it a little bit,
like we were doing earlier.
- [Coyote] Mh-hm get the...
- [Hunter] Mix it around a little bit.
- [Coyote] 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 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 control.
Something is definitely happening visually
to the human eye right there.
- Yeah. It's certainly different
from our control over there. Yeah.
- That's crazy. Wow.
And just five minutes in.
That small amount of venom that went in there did that
to the blood.
- [Hunter] 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 the microscope.
- All right. So on the microscope right now,
we have just your blood.
There's nothing in it on the slide.
And then what we're gonna 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 gonna hopefully diffuse into it.
There!
So here's your healthy blood on this edge, right?
- [Coyote] Yeah.
- [Hunter] Now the venom has gone in
and look what it does to it.
- [Coyote] Whoa, 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.
And it's actually changing color across the screen, right?
You go from dark red to this almost light pink.
And that's the hemoglobin being released
from the blood cells as they're all exploding
as a result of this venom.
And this is in real time.
I mean, this has just been a minute and...
- [Coyote] Holy mackerel! That's crazy looking.
So what it is that you guys are looking at,
right now on screen, is the venom into the blood.
And 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?
- [Hunter] Yeah.
- 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.
- [Coyote] Wow. - [Hunter] Yeah. Super cool.
- [Coyote] We took, how much did we put in there?
- [Hunter] Two microliters. - Two microliters.
My brain can't even register what two microliters is.
Then when you think about a full grown fer-de-lance,
maybe near six feet in length,
biting onto 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 your red blood cells.
(soft dramatic music)
- [Hunter] All right. So that's 100 times magnification.
Coyote, we can go now to 200 times
and you can see, this is the edge right here,
where the venom was.
You can see it's just destroyed all the cells.
And 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,
they just kind of exploded from the venom
This is 200 times magnification.
We can go now to 400 times 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.
We can go over a little further,
we can see the colors.
This is all the hemoglobin,
which is lysed out of your blood cells.
That's how they carry oxygen, right.
We can see a few of the cells still hanging on, but...
- [Coyote] Oh, look at 'em struggling.
- [Hunter] Yeah.
- [Coyote] You can actually see 'em
like starting to spazz out.
- [Hunter] And have a look at,
so if you look in this area right here,
you can actually see, they kind of look spiky
and that's actually the venom
acting on those individual cells
and just completely destroying their morphology.
Nice, healthy red blood cells 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,
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,
I was like,
is that really going to do something that catastrophic?
Low 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 microscope,
mixed with my blood,
really gives you a new appreciation
for just how potent the venom of this snake is.
And I hope it serves as 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. Yeah.
- 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 land mine 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, they can be fatal.
However, it's important to remember
that snakes are not out to get us
and almost all bites are 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 land mine.
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.
Okay. You guys good?
Whoa!
(wolf howls)