Venom isn’t just a feature of some animals; it’s found across the living world, from plants and fungi to bacteria and viruses, says a new study. Lead author William Hayes, an ecologist at Loma Linda University, U.S., has long studied venomous rattlesnakes. It was while teaching a course on the biology of venom that he and his students began thinking about the various definitions of venom and examples of non-animals that satisfied those definitions. “The deeper we dug into those examples, the more convinced we became that venom wasn’t invented solely by animals. It’s a remarkable adaptation that is far, far more widespread and ubiquitous than currently recognized,” Hayes told Mongabay. All venomous animals have one thing in common, the authors write: They introduce toxins into another organism using structures like fangs or spines. However, different animals acquire, store, deliver and use venom in different ways. Some like jellyfish and anemones make toxins inside specialized stinging cells. Scorpions and snakes produce venom inside special glands, delivering it through stingers or fangs. Others borrow toxins: boxer crabs (Lybia tessellate), for instance, carry venomous sea anemones on their claws like boxing gloves for defense, while the anemones likely get food in return. Some marine worms store bacteria-produced toxins in glands, which they inject into their prey or predators through a wound. The non-animal world has analogous examples, the authors found. For instance, tiny, single-celled organisms called ciliates contain toxin-filled, harpoon-like structures that can inject toxins into larger, single-celled prey, causing paralysis or…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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