How come venom (from spiders or otherwise) affects the victim, but not the predator once the prey is eaten?
In: Biology
Venoms are injected directly into your blood stream where they’re toxic. For food to get into your blood stream, it’s got to get through your digestive system, which can break some really nasty venoms.
Now that I think about it, heaps of my diet would probably fuck me up if it was injected directly into me.
Generally most types of venom have to be directly injected into your bloodstream or tissues, or in some cases the eyes or other sensitive areas intended for it in the case of animals like the spitting cobra
The walls of your digestive tract are anything but sensitive, and usually anything that doesn’t get degraded by acids and enzymes simply passes through without harm or absorption.
Unlike poisons, the active ingredients in various venoms are specialized proteins and peptides (peptides are very similar to proteins, but tinier).
The digestive system uses enzymes and acids to break down these proteins into smaller non-venomous amino acids.
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