Let It Bleed

Someone asked me if I were a Herpetologist, and I said that my religion was none of their beeswax.

That's my little joke.  A herpetologist is one who studies reptiles and amphibians (not the two-legged variety). Their services are often in demand, especially at this time of year.

A local meteorologist, new to town, posted on Instagram the other day that he and his wife were looking for a house here in Baltimore, and to his horror, he saw an Eastern Ratsnake (Pantherophis alleghaniensis) slithering around in the clubroom of one of the houses they looked at.

You will notice that we can see pictures of little kids seeing snakes without running down the street with their hands over their heads, screaming, "Run for your lives!" That's because Ophidiophobia - the fear of snakes - is not something we are born with. No no, we get it from seeing fully grown adults running down the street with their hands over their heads, screaming, "Run for your lives!" 

Eastern Rat Snake

Unless you are a rat (four-legged) you don't have a thing to fear from the rat snake. He is not going to "get" you or bite you or wrap himself around your torso, squeezing the last breath of you like the last pea-sized drop of toothpaste in the tube. In fact, the very reason he is in your house in the first place is that he has advanced chemosensory skills that allow him to spot his prey from quite a way away. Just think of him as free rodent control and let him do his thing. All eight feet of him.

I brought up snakes this morning because I want you to know that Biomaterials researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia have come up with a marvelous way to stop bleeding, and it's 100% natural.

It's a gel that gets blood to clot in less than a minute. That will be a boon to paramedics, doctors, nurses, and home power tool enthusiasts. 

And, the gel comes from the venom of Australia’s eastern brown snake (Pseudonaja textilis) and the saw-scaled viper (Echis carinatus) from the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Proteins from the two venoms, in combination, form a wound sealant that promises to revolutionize the first aid industry.

 “As many as 40 percent of trauma-related deaths are the result of uncontrolled bleeding, and this figure is much higher when it comes to military personnel with serious bleeding in a combat zone,” said Amanda Kijas, who is a bioengineer at Queensland.  “Nature has created the most elegant and sophisticated mechanisms, and we can repurpose them to save people from dying due to uncontrolled bleeding.”

Since the first caveman nicked his hand slicing Brontosaurus Ribs (it's a joke: we

know that cavemen and dinosaurs did not co-exist because dinosaurs were known to be picky about the company they kept) man has put gauze and medicated goo on cuts and waited and waited and waited for the clot. 

It will be faster because of the new gel, which uses ecarin from the viper venom to promote clotting, and textilinin from the brown snakes to prevent those clots from breaking down.

The odd thing is that these pro-coagulant proteins will kill you when delivered to your body in a venomous snake bite because it stops blood from flowing in your veins and arteries. So you don't want it IN you, but it's ok ON you.

  

The gel is currently undergoing pre-clinical testing and should be available worldwide in the future. 

And these noble scientists are continuing their research, studying other combinations of ingredients that may be beneficial to mankind. They have already concluded that the inclusion of pineapple on a pizza makes no sense at all.