Comment on Cone snails

• Redacted@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Hey so first off cool background, we can always use a better understanding of toxins.

  Second off there are iirc over a thousand types of cone snails and a lot of them hunt very differently. The one i was referencing floods the waters around it with insulin (or an insulin like substance, im no biochemist) that paralyzes the fish its hunting so it can go in for the kill. As far as im reading you are referencing the snails that hunt in a rather more straightforward manner, using their terrifying harpoon. That would make sense as a matter of study, as im sure many a wayward footstep was met with a 'pooning.

  They are fascinating little fellas.

  source

  • deranger@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    The cone snail referenced in the study you linked, Conus geographus, also has the same ion channel disrupting venom that is typical of cone snails. If you were bit by one, you’d die of paralysis, not hypoglycemia.

    It does appear to use an insulin-like peptide to initially stun the fish, but the coup de grâce is from typical paralytic conotoxins.

    A cool discovery nonetheless and TIL.

    pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25301479/

    Conus geographus is the most dangerous cone snail species known, with reported human fatality rates as high as 65%. Crude venom gland extracts have been used to determine animal LD50 and to aid the isolation of several potent paralytic toxins. […]The molecular composition of individual defense-evoked venom showed significant intraspecific variations, but a core of paralytic conotoxins including α-GI, α-GII, μ-GIIIA, ω-GVIA and ω-GVIIA was always present in large amounts, consistent with the symptomology and high fatality rate in humans.

    source

    • erev@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      i love that this ended in both of you acknowledging how cool this info is and that you can both be right in different ways, and everyone learning something new.

      source