SCORPION VENOM: The most expensive liquid on earth

Black scorpion

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Helo everyone, it’s your boy yet again here with yet another educative piece. One that I would love everyone to read and digest.

Ever heard of the scorpion venom? Well I guess you have. Ever been stung by a scorpion? Hehehe, I don’t think this is an experience encountered by many and I pray you don’t because it’s not funny.

Soon after this article, I will be writing about my first-hand experience with a scorpion sting and how I was able to give myself a first aid treatment which I would say kept me alive until I got a professional medical treatment.

Today, we will be looking at the scorpion venom and the chemistry of the scorpion venom that has placed it highly revered to be called the most expensive liquid on earth.

Scorpions are very small insects, sorry I meant arthropods.

Arthropods are said to be invertebrate animals, that is, animals without bones. They only have an exoskeleton which means external skeleton which obviously supports the internal organs and gives the body its unique shape. Their bodies are usually segmented with paired jointed appendages.

Arthropodes belong to the hierarchy of classification Phylum Euarthropoda under which we have four different classes which includes Insects, arachnids, myriapods and crustaceans.

Hierarchy of scientific classification

With this, I am pretty sure many of you now know why I refrained from calling scorpions, insects, because they are not. Scorpions fall under the class of invertebrate animals called Arachnids which also includes the spiders and all other eight legged animals with two segmented body parts.

Scorpions are eight legged animals with pair of jointed appendages and a body segmented into two parts, the head(cephalothorax) and the abdomen(opisthosoma).

Scorpions are known to be venomous animals, meaning that they have venoms just like snakes. They use their venoms as defence against predators and also kill preys with it. There are numerous species of scorpions but only 25 of those species are known to have venoms poisonous and lethal to man.

However, scorpion venoms have proteins which can be used to treat pain in humans suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and inflammatory bowels disease.

I really wonder how animals which inflict so much pain on humans can turn around to be of grave importance in the treatment of pain…what an irony.

WHAT IS SCORPION VENOM

The scorpion venom is a neurotoxin, meaning that it is a toxic substance which affects the nervous system of the body causing paralysis or killing its prey. Scorpion venoms are basically made up of a cluster of proteins known as chlorotoxins. Scorpion venoms are known to block chloride and sodium channels in the body which inhibits these ions from entering the muscles thereby causing muscle spasm, paralysis, irritability and even death.

Scorpion venom

These cluster of proteins in the scorpion venom are known as scorpion toxins and it is this toxin that actually affects the human body when stung by a scorpion.

The scorpion toxin are of two different types namely the Alpha type and the Beta type. The Alpha type are said to bind to the three(3) receptors in the sodium channels of vertebrates while the Beta type also binds itself to the receptors in the sodium channel of vertebrates but this time to four(4) and not three(3) as in the Alpha type.

Scorpion venoms are very dynamic. For the scorpion toxin to be able to block the sodium channels, the proteins will need to find the right shape to block the said channel as these said channels vary in different organisms so most scorpion venoms change into 256 different shapes so as to be able to block any given channel at any given point in time.

There are about 1750 species of the scorpions and most scorpion venoms are not life threatening. However, there are a few species that should be totally avoided as they can cause unbearable pain and their venoms can be very lethal. Example is the specie known as the death stalker(Leiurus quinquestriatus).

WHY IS SCORPION VENOM THE MOST EXPENSIVE LIQUID IN THE WORLD?

Scorpion venom is said to be the most expensive liquid in the world costing about $39m per gallon because of its great healing properties and difficulty in milking/extraction.
Though not all scorpion venoms are useful in the treatment of various diseases or have healing potentials but only a few of them.

Scorpion venoms are said to be used as pain relievers. They also find use in heart transplants to reduce the risk of failure during heart transplantation. They are said to be used as pesticides because of the toxins contained in them. They are also used in making drugs for cancer, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. They are also said to be used in tumour cleaning and prevention of venous grafts.

From all these, we can see that the scorpion venom finds a whole lot of use in the medical line and so are very important to man.

The next reason why they are very expensive is the difficulty in milking or the difficulty in getting the venoms out of the scorpions.

Scorpion venom extraction

Scorpion venoms are milked or extracted manually or by the electrical stimulation of the venom glands. Using these processes, the average yield per scorpion is about 0.5mg or might even be less under normal conditions. Now if we decide to take our average milking yield per scorpion at 0.25mg three times in a week for a whole month, we will get only 3mg and if we do this for 1000 scorpions, we will arrive at 3000mg per month. 3grams of scorpion venoms extracted in a month is by far very small and so more scorpions will be needed, more man power and obviously more machineries. All these cost money and considering all these and many other factors, it’s of no doubt that the price of scorpion venom should be as high as they say it is, placing it at the top as the most expensive liquid on earth.

Scorpion venom

CONCLUSION

I bet you never knew this fact. Well, now you know. Couldn’t get hold of the species which are actually used for medical purposes. That would be a research for another day.

If you found this educative and informative, please resteem so that others can read and learn and also do well to upvote if you so desire.

Thanks for reading…Till we meet again

ACKNOWLEDGMENT: Big ups to @greenrun and @acidyo

REF: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.