Toxin Crew

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Goons Are Gifts

Finally, it's the toxin crew thread!!
The ant crew built a couch out of sand so now we will live stream this thread to the colony and enjoy some toxin crew posts :anttony:

# ¿ Apr 19, 2019 11:41

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 13:53

Goons Are Gifts

One question that came to my mind while reading and might be of certain byobian interest are psychoactive substances in regards to them being a kinda-venom.

For example, the for byob entirely unknown hemp plant produces THC, magical mushrooms produce Psilocybin, claviceps purpurea produces lysergic acid and papaver somniferum produces opium - stuff that we humans for some reason looked at and thought, neat, let's inject it and have fun with drugs!!

Do those organisms produce this stuff that we use as drugs as a form of toxin to defend themselves against something else, or does this not directly count as toxin? If it does count as toxin, isn't it generally the case that toxins are always sort of dependent on relation? Stuff that is toxic for predators that want to eat the organisms are shooed away by its effect, while we humans use it as drugs specifically to induce the (somewhat?) toxic effect.

If so, would that mean that a toxin is generally only defined as such towards a certain target organism? Not only the dose makes the toxin, but also the target, then.

I was not intoxicated while asking this, don't judge me.

# ¿ Apr 19, 2019 14:05

Goons Are Gifts

War of the gangtags

# ¿ Apr 20, 2019 00:01

Goons Are Gifts

As officially elected spokesman of the ant crew, I can announce that we as Ant Crew Tncorporated Registered Trademark can offer a collaboration project to cover similar grounds if desired.

Actually I did want to look that up again for more details, gonna throw a few books on my head real quick!!

# ¿ Apr 20, 2019 03:18

Goons Are Gifts

Stoner Sloth posted:

Anthropologists have documented widespread use of red ants as a ritual intoxicant among many ethnic groups of indigenous Californian Indians before the 20th century.

The red ants being used were California harvester ants, Pogonomyrmex californicus, with very painful, long lasting stings - like other kinds of harvester ants these are among the most toxic to vertebrates of any insect venom. In this case the LD50 is 0.6mg/kg - this puts them gram for gram on the same level as many dangerous snakes including mambas, cobras, kraits and vipers!

https://imgur.com/DFwAogG

So how did they make use of these ants?

The indigenous tribes of southern California considered venom to be a conduit to the spirit world. They believed that animals such as rattlesnakes, harvester ants and black widow spiders could transfer shamanic powers through bites or stings and give access to dream helpers in the spiritual realm. Everyone who hoped to live a long and healthy life required one of these dream helpers and the way to find them was through vision quests.

To induce these hallucinogenic vision the indigenous Californians could choose one of a sacred trinity of powerful ritual medicines: tobacco, toloache or harvester ants. Tobacco smoked or ingested in sufficient quantities can produce a trance like state. Toloache is a plant, [i]Datura wrightii[i], in the nightshade family that is known to produce auditory, tactile and visual hallucinations when ingested. Now smoking tobacco or ingesting toloache might sound to you a good deal more attractive than getting high on ant stings. If you assumed that then you would be correct.

The harvester ant ritual was considered so unpleasant that only men and boys who had gone through puberty were allowed to attempt it. The basics of the procedure went something like this:
For three days prior to undertaking the ritual the would be spiritual traveller prepared by fasting and nightly vomiting to purge and purify their body, mind and spirit. Then, guided by a tribal elder, the traveller would lie down on his back before being semi force-fed large numbers of living harvester ants that were rolled in balls of moistened eagle down to make them easier to swallow.

One had to be careful not to chew the ant balls (lol). Then after eating as many as they could - up to 90(!) each containing about 5 ants - the traveller was ready to embark on their spiritual journey. The attending ant doctor would then startle, poke and otherwise agitate the traveller in an attempt to rouse the ants to action. The ingested insects would bite and sting at the traveller's innards until he would lose consciousness. This was the result they were aiming for. Having been rendered unconscious by the venom a successful traveller would experience powerful hallucinations in which the traveller would meet his dream helper, usually in the form of an animal spirit, a force of nature personified or a dead relative.

This loss of consciousness was interepreted as a kind of quasi death, one in which the traveller was 'killed' by the supernatural entities he sought to contact in order to gain access to the spirit world. it's been calculated that 90 ant balls with 4-5 ants each would correspond to about 35 percent of the LD50 dose for a human of about 45 kilograms (100 pounds) if all the ants were to sting. Such a dose would be enough to undoutably cause horrific, mind-numbing pain and a loss of consciousness.

After waking from the vision quest the spiritual traveller would drink hot water to induce vomiting so as to purge the ants from their system. He would then seek guidance from his tribal elder about the meaning and interpretation of the visions he'd experienced and receive further instructions about how to continue to build up the relationship with their dream helper - often through prayer and ritual offerings of seed, shell beads, tobacco and eagle down.

These ant rituals were widespread and quite similar between different ethnic groups with widely divergent cultures and languages. Members of some tribes would repeat this agonizing procedure many times over several days and those who sought to acquire shamanic powers themselves would undergo this ordeal many, many times over a period of months or years.

Ritual ant ingestion was also used for medicinal purposes witht he number of ants adjusted to the severity of the illness and with the regurgitated ants playing a role in establishing the prognosis for a patient. They were also used as a sort of preventative medicine or spiritual protection - as a sort of spirtual prophylactic to neutralize bad omens. They were also used by parents to contact a dream helper in order to try to help cure a sick child.

Given the method of administration combined with the dramatic physiological effects of envenomation this probably qualifies these spiritual rituals of the native Californian people as the most extreme use of venomous animals on the planet.

*much of this is sourced from the work of Kevin Groark, an anthropologist studying these rituals over many years. If there's anything incorrect, ignorant or otherwise disrespectful to indigenous Californian people then my apologies and feel free to PM or correct me ITT - I'd love to learn more if you know it!

Heh, those guys were quite certain really insane doing this stuff.
I read once that the ant balls were already less poisonous than the actual sting of those ants would have been though, which means that the venom was already less potent the moment he swallows the things, as the ants start stinging everywhere as soon as they are forced into the ball. As ants have very limited carrying capacity of their venom in their abdomen, the venom was already weakened a fair bit until it was actually swallowed - imagine if he would actually directly have all of this venom injected, that would be either one hell of a trip, or even a serious problem for his body!
Now, it may be that the venom can stick inside the ball and does not spread and evaporate already, SS may correct me here, as I don't know how quickly sprayed venom fades away.

A similar situation is given when those south american guys stick their hands into gloves filled with bullet ants biting and stinging the poo poo out of the hands. As the ants already spread most of their stored venom into the gloves, the actual pain caused is much, much, much weaker than having one or several ants stinging you directly with a full buttload (get it??) of venom, which is the reason challenges like this are even biologically possible.

# ¿ Apr 20, 2019 13:25

Goons Are Gifts

Stoner Sloth posted:

Oh drat - I missed this post earlier, sorry mate!

But certainly a toxin is also defined by the target in a sense - we just usually think about that in human terms - many things are toxic to arthropods but not toxic at anything like an imaginable dose to mammals. LD50's in fact usually specify not just a dose but what animal it was tested in and using which method of delivery: ingestion, inhalation, subcutaneous injection, intravenous and so on.

But the toxins we have drugs usually are still toxic to us - though sometimes it's possible to isolate a similar chemical compound that has the desired effect without the side effects - it's just there is a dosage at which the benefits outweigh the costs and/or they're not very toxic at low doses.

The toxins we use as drugs are basically refined chemicals from an often complex mixture (venoms can contain hundreds or thousands of different components in complex cases but even simple ones often contain more than a dozen components) so we often are able to reduce the nastier effects of the crude venom that way too.

But a toxin is essentially any toxic compound produced by or derived from a living organism so defensive stuff is certainly a toxin - regardless of the species targeted any biologically created or derived toxic substance is still a toxin after all. And we make use of things that doesn't directly effect humans in things other than drugs - naturally derived pesticides for example!

Hope that answer your question, if not happy to add to it

It does! I find it funny to think that stuff that we love and happily digest is incredibly toxic to other animals, while stuff they do is fine for them and potentially deadly for us. After all, toxins seem to never be omnipotent and deadly for all living things, but only for a few.
Do you know how this corresponds to the venom injecting animal is vulnerable to its own venom? We had this already in the ant crew for a short bit, but is it generally speaking safe to assume that poisonous animals are immune to their own stuff - or immune to other animal's stuff as long as they are the same or a similar species, or is this a one way ticket to hell, no matter if you're in a snake fight or hunting for rodents?

# ¿ Apr 20, 2019 13:30

Goons Are Gifts

That's really dope!!

# ¿ Apr 20, 2019 17:45

Goons Are Gifts

The ant crew is getting outnumbered :ohdear:

# ¿ Apr 21, 2019 01:45

Goons Are Gifts

prepuce repurposed posted:

toxic aunt: you wore one of the two sweaters I made you for christmas!

me: yep I love it (lying, lol)

T. A. : where's the other one

me: I can only comfortably wear one sweater at a time it's April for christ's sake

T. A. : you hate it don't you

# ¿ Apr 21, 2019 03:17

Goons Are Gifts

Meanwhile, some scary toxin stories of a wasp injecting venom into a cockroach brain (not really a brain, because you know, insects don't have those, but an important thing in the head called supraesophageal ganglion) to turn it into her servant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ySwuQhruBo

Goons Are Gifts fucked around with this message at 14:46 on Apr 22, 2019

# ¿ Apr 22, 2019 14:43

Goons Are Gifts

Nah I think spiders were problematic sometimes, but ants should be fine. Didn't have any complains in the ant crew about posting pictures there and we even had nasty parasites and body snatching monstrosities.

This even gives chills despite Attenborough narrating it. Fungi are absolutely insane organisms in almost every way, really. Resilient and large in numbers like plants, but cunning and adaptable like animals.
I don't think it's fully known how those fungi work, especially the mind control part is largely a mystery, as we can't even really know how this kind of stuff works for humans, not to say about animals that do not have a centralized nervous system. It is very much likely that the fungus produces some kind of toxin to, similarly to the cockroach part, induces some kind of stroke situation in the brain, causing neurological damage that leaves only the basic functions alive, while triggering movement towards a certain direction. However, brain science is one hell of a science and pinning that kind of stuff down on insects seems like a really tough challenge, so who knows what magic works there!

# ¿ Apr 22, 2019 22:09

Goons Are Gifts

Those are some drat sexy corals. That's SpongeBob porn

# ¿ Apr 24, 2019 11:05

Goons Are Gifts

Personally I'd be very down with c

# ¿ Apr 24, 2019 11:06

Goons Are Gifts

Took me a while to catch up here, but I really like thisw details! Since I have some academical history with biology this stuff naturally attracts me and reading how this stuff works in detail is so fascinating.

brb injecting myself tons of snake venom to prepare for my next australia visit

# ¿ May 1, 2019 20:48

Goons Are Gifts

Stoner Sloth posted:

Octopus are pretty metal.

I love octopus. I'm like 80% certain that they are aliens from another world who came to poison us all, while secretly being our overlords.

I love to hear more about their venom, too!! I don't plan to hug one in the near future but maybe actually I do want to do that, because look how amazing they must be at hugging.

# ¿ May 9, 2019 14:35

Goons Are Gifts

In general I'm a huge fan of not underestimating non-centralized nervous systems. We humans with our huge rear end brains think that size matters here, but as with many invertebrates, there are other concepts that do not involve having a big center of nerves in one place, which may be efficient in some cases, but very hindering in others, not to say about the vulnerability of having all the vital stuff in one spot.

Especially squid prove that they can be massively intelligent from whatever point of view we define that term, while also having a lot of arms for the important jerking off challenge, plus amazing venom and jet propulsion!! Think about how long it took us to invent that.

I could say Cthulhu here as obvious proof of concept, but also that might summon him and we are not yet ready for him yet, also if he got venom I'm sure it's very unhealthy for us!! :cthulhu:

# ¿ May 9, 2019 15:19

Goons Are Gifts

Poison us!!

# ¿ May 20, 2019 11:31

Goons Are Gifts

Pumped. Gonna write an ant crew effort post right now to compensate.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2019 14:49

Goons Are Gifts

Ah no worries, just resurrect toxin crew whenever you feel like posting. Ant Crew made it to byob page 3 like, thrice, already, too.

Also, I read about tetrodotoxin a while back as well, super cool stuff

# ¿ Aug 1, 2019 16:16

Goons Are Gifts

Wait are Ramen a kind of ghost?? If they are toxic

# ¿ Aug 2, 2019 03:14

Goons Are Gifts

A fly crawled into the ant's nest yesterday by accident, not aware of what it was entering, and I saw three ants jumping on it, sounding the intruder alarm and they immediately covered it in venom. The fly was dead after less than a second.
Poor fly, but drat it was fascinating to see this work on something else than my too thick to hurt hand skin! I could even see the drops of liquid shooting out of the ant butts onto the fly. I wish I had filmed that in slow motion.

# ¿ Apr 23, 2020 12:18

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 13:53

Goons Are Gifts

Alright, sorry guys we jammed the chat thread with venom chat, I'll import it here where it belongs and also bump this glorious thread!

I posted about this a bunch of times across Ant Crew and the chat thread, but recently I got a new friend into my home, his name is Hector:

Androctonus Australis, the black fangs and stinger is called the color variant "Hector" (hence why I came up with this creative name for him, also because it's a great name for a scorpion if you ask me).
He's still a baby, roughly four weeks old now, and small with ~2cm in length, including the tail. The name Androctonus is Greek for "Man-killer" and Australis is Latin for "South" so it's the southern man-killer and the name really fits. He's got the more or less most potent venom in the order of Scorpions and his species causes a lot of human deaths every year, mostly in the Mexican desert and a few in northern Africa, where he originally comes from.

SS already posted a bit about the venom in question, called aaHIT (Androctonus Australis Hector Insect Toxin), or AaTX1 for the general mixture of toxins they produce in the stinger:

Stoner Sloth posted:

thanks again friend, and please feel free to bump the thread - i'll try and get around to doing a post soon but i do know a little about Hector's venom, for starters it led to some interesting (well ymmv for most people lol) research. also amusingly the venom is referred to as Andronoctonus Australis Hector venom so it appears in toxicology writings as Aah venom! seen a fair bit of research being done into using components of their venom as a natural insecticide over the last few years

also Hector's species is the most lethal of any scorpion in terms of numbers of people actually killed so please stay safe GAG! (seriously it's often recommended that this kinda scorp is only handled by professionals - so please be extra, extra careful, several people a year die from their sting) LD 50 is definitely below 1 mg/kg so doesn't take much to ruin you're day

In my own research and in the most recent publication I could find from 2019, researchers calculated an LD50 dosage of 0.44mg/kg. Given that a fully grown scorpion can inject up to two drops of venom, worst case scenario up to 10mg, this can be fairly lethal for humans, especially for children and the elderly. A healthy adult human might not immediately die from it, plus the venom takes a few hours to really get into action, but it causes MASSIVE pain and can lead to serious, even long term complications, that in themselves already can be lethal depending on the overall condition of the patient.

Stoner Sloth posted:

oh yeah, the research that Hector's venom elucidated was about how certain potassium voltage channels work in the nervous system in laymans terms, in more technical terms one component of the venom is a specific K_v4.3 blocker

this affects cardiac function and while potentially lethal it also provides a potential treatment, or at least avenues for treatment, for at least some cases of a genetic condition called Brugada syndrome that increases the risk of abnormal heart rhythms and sudden cardiac arrest - responsible for an estimated 8 percent of sudden cardiac deaths.

there are a number of other conditions caused by irregularities with the K_v 4.3 channel too, including some forms of cancer since potassium voltage gates (or at least the genes for them or indirect effect on other things) can effect cell proliferation signals

You can imagine what this type of venom can cause for the main prey of Hector's species, mainly insects (roaches, crickets) and smaller mammals (mice, small rats and the like), killing them almost instantly.

I'd be dying to learn more about this poison, the literature I found in our library on this particular toxin is rather scarce and the internet mostly covers the general details. There are some really cool abstracts about the venom Hector produces that I didn't get to read yet, though, so feel free to expand on this if you or anyone else got any further knowledge of how these magical deadly things work!

Also, I think I qualified myself to get the toxin crew badge now. I was so jealous of it before already. :sun:

# ¿ Jun 13, 2020 13:35

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