February 16, 2014

SuNature: Evolution - The Evolution of Venom

I've always been fascinated by venom, what more with venomous animals. I stumbled upon this wonderful documentary, Evolution - The Evolution of Venom and learnt a few interesting things:


  1. The adorable male platypus is actually venomous. It has a spur on its hind foot which delivers venom, capable of killing small animals. The venom also causes strong pain to incapacitate humans affected.
  2. Venom = Evolution of proteins. The proteins mutated.
  3. The awesome emerald jewel wasp that what seems to me, a perfect biological weapon to get rid of cockroaches. The wasp injects its venom into the cockroach which stops the prey's dopamine activities, hence its neurone system is shut down. The cockroach doesn't die but turns into a zombie. The wasp then lays her egg (only one egg) in the body of her victim. So imagine this, the larvae actually will feed on its host alive (ouch!). The larvae then grows into a young wasp, emerging out of the cockroach's dried and dead body. The coolest part about the emerald jewel wasp: There are only female wasps, no males. The mother passes down a copy of her exact DNA, including the female gene to her offspring. So you'll get clones of their mothers who are clones of THEIR mothers and so on.

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