STOEP CHAT

at Action Ads

9 March 2023

A Sting in this Tale

Here’s a queson: What is the most expensive liquid on earth?

I quizzed some people just for fun and got a variety of answers, from perfumes to water.

Dong! All wrong.

The answer is the venom of the deathstalker scorpion. It sells for $39-million dollars a gallon - around R711-million for 3.7 litres. Astronomical!

I learned this from One Good Fact that comes to me daily from Encyclopedia Britannica. I love learning new stuff, no maer how irrelevant to daily life, and open these short emails with a smile.

I found the scorpion mail parcularly fascinang, and wanted to find out more about this creature, parcularly why its venom was so expensive.

Well, it appears that part of the reason is that the venom has some medical uses, including treang brain tumours. Who would have thought? Pharmaceucal and biotech companies really need it.

Another reason is because there is so lile of it available. Not because there are so few deathstalker scorpions, but because each scorpion holds just a ny drop of venom. To make a gallon, you would need to “milk” 2.64 million scorpions – each one by hand.

Obviously companies milk their own collecon of lab scorpions many mes during the poor creatures’ lifemes. Sll, collecng it is slow work, rather like collecng a gallon of water from dewdrops on leaves, one drop at a me.

Scorpion venom is not just one substance, but a “complex cocktail” of many different toxins. Each species has its own disncve type. If you took all the scorpions in the world, their collecve venom would comprise about 100,000 unique molecules.

Turns out that the deathstalker’s venom has a substance in it called chlorotoxin that has been found to be very effecve in stopping the growth of tumours in the brain and spine. A deadly poison normally, but it can help cure brain cancer No wonder pharmaceucal and biotech companies will pay so much for this venom.

But the deathstalker is not the only scorpion with venom that can treat diseases.

Researchers found that a substance in the venom from a different species of scorpion can kill malaria parasites. This has been developed into a safe drug for malaria paents.

Then there are viruses. The venom of yet another scorpion species can kill three viruses: one that causes measles, another that causes H5N1 flu, and the third that causes severe respiratory syndrome from Covid.

And finally we come to bacteria. Overuse and incorrect use of anbiocs has meant some bacteria have become resistant to anbiocs. No maer how many you take, the bugs don’t die. So along comes scorpion venom and sorts them out. Well, not all bacteria, but enough to make it worthwhile for pharmaceucal companies to manufacture a drug from the venom that kills at least some of these drug-resistant bugs.

And as a spin-off, these drugs can also cure some fungal infecons. The deathstalker scorpion is one of three scorpion species considered to be the deadliest on earth. Only 17.5mg of a deathstalker’s venom can kill an adult.

Isn’t it wonderful that something so lethal contains something life-giving as well?