eli5: Why do some tiny animals contain enough venom to kill thousands of humans, isn’t that just overkill?
In: 356
First of all, I know that’s you Karl.
Second, I had some trouble articulating my thoughts here, so once it was written I asked ChatGPT to polish it for me. I don”t know if that’s against the rules? I looked but couldn’t find it mentioned. These are my thoughts, I just asked it to help me polish and clarify it.
Anyway…
In addition to what others have said, one thing I always try to remember is that nature is not fine-tuned and optimized like a video game. Evolution, often referred to as ‘natural selection,’ can be misleading in that sense. In reality, it’s kind of the opposite of what it sounds like – evolution is the process of elimination where nature selects the options that do NOT survive, and what remains is the result of THAT process.
When considering why some creatures possess an apparently excessive amount of venom, it’s not because they were deliberately chosen for their high venom levels. Rather, these creatures were not selected to die off due to their lack of defensive mechanisms. They possess enough venom to endure the rigorous culling process of evolution. Whether their venom levels are precisely sufficient, twice as much as required, or even enormously excessive, is not a factor considered by evolution.
Many natural systems may seem poorly designed due to this process. A common question that arises is why we are capable of experiencing such intense pain, where pain itself becomes a problem instead of just a warning. The answer remains the same – nature did not select an option for a positive outcome; it merely selected away from negative consequences.
There’s no threshold in nature that says killing humans is all you ever need to do so there’s no need to do more. The animal produces a toxin. It produces a certain amount of toxin. That might be enough to kill thousands of people or just enough to kill one. There’s no conveyor belt where these creatures are being assembled where someone looks at a checklist and says, “Nope, doesn’t need all that venom.”
It’s evolution, and assuming evolution happens for a reason is missing the point of evolution.
There are larger threats to tiny animals than humans. Lions, bears, elephants, etc. It not just about humans.
Venomous animals contain enough venom to do exactly what they need to do, when they need to do it. Let’s compare venom and horse power. Why do some cars have such high horse power and high speeds when everywhere we go there is a speed limit? Well being able to get to that speed limit very fast can be very beneficial if you’re trying to outrace something or pull out and not get hit by an oncoming car. It’s much the same way with venom, a single drop might kill the victim but it might not kill them in time to keep them from a. Escaping or b. Fighting back and injuring or even killing the animal.
A lot of time it’s just coincidence. A cacao tree contains enough chocolate to kill thousands of dogs, which is completely overkill considering that dogs are not a food source or predator. The venom they produce is intended to scare off predators or to kill their food sources, it just happens that humans are really sensitive to it.
I haven’t seen anyone else mention this yet, but venom can take a while to regrow in an animal. Oftentimes an animal will have the ability to control how much venom they use in each strike, but if they run out then they are left without one of their most useful tools. If you hear that, as an example that I DID NOT look up, a rattlesnake has enough venom to kill 10 people, they aren’t necessarily trying to inject all of it at once. That’s just their supply.
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