Eli5: If spiders use their venom to kill or paralyse, how does the venom not kill them when they eat the prey?
In: Biology
Venom and poison are two different things. A poison is something that kills/harms you when you eat it, like the botulinum toxin that causes botulism. A venom is something that kills/harms you when it’s injected into your body/blood stream, like what spiders, scorpions, and bees have.
Since the venom is targeting stuff in the blood, it doesn’t have to be stable enough to survive stomach acid. So if you ingest venom, it’ll get broken down. This is not to say that it’s safe to drink venom, only that it’s not going to affect you the same way it would if you were bitten/stung with it. Logically, the only spiders that survived were the ones with venom that wasn’t hurting them when they ate their prey.
On the flip side, animals like cane toads are coated with a poison to deter animals from eating them, as any attempt to eat it would poison the predator.
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