Releasing toxins, for animals, is either an offensive means of active attack or a self-preservation method of passive defense, the defender sticks the venom to the hair like a caterpillar, and the attacker smears the venom like a snake with fangs.
Whether the toxin is synthesized on its own or extracted from other organisms, animals can eventually use the chemical effectively to allow the toxin to enter the opponent's body and work.
Opponents, on the other hand, often only after the physical reaction, only to find themselves poisoned, some can recover on their own, most of them are screaming for their lives, such as fish preyed on the ground snail, basically are doomed.
The snail is small, only 10 to 15 cm in adults, and the tapered shell is pink with a mesh pattern on it. In terms of appearance alone, the ground snail is cute and beautiful, even a bit like a cone ice cream.
It is not an exaggeration to describe them as "harmless to humans and animals", but anyone or animal who underestimates them will have to pay with their lives, because the venom it spews is thousands of times more toxic than cyanide.
The first person recorded to be "taken away" by the snail was an Australian fisherman, who caught a snail in the 1930s, who curiously took the snail in his hand and played with it, and tried to scrape the cuticle off the shell with a knife, resulting in the snail mercilessly firing a stinger into the fisherman's palm, who fell unconscious after 30 minutes and died 4 hours later.
We don't know what the fisherman who died of snail thought at the time, but he was clearly a light enemy. Because most snails that look similar to ground taro snails, although they have the ability to prey with toxins, only ground snails are toxic enough to endanger human life. Of course, the toxins of the ground snails were not evolved to attack humans, they "used poison" just to fill their stomachs.
Ground snails feed on fish, worms and molluscs, and once they enter predation mode, they change their usual slow-swallowing style, quickly stick a tube out of their mouths, and spray toxins at the fish, and under the influence of the toxins, the fish lose their resistance and become motionless.
At this time, the snails will launch a final attack, they approach the already weak fish, wrap the fish with their mouths, and then shoot stingers at the fish's body, injecting venom into the fish's body and finally devouring it.
In order to understand what the snails do to the fish, scientists studied the composition of the venom of the snails, and found that the venom they sprayed contained a lot of insulin, and when the snails sprayed toxins into the water, the insulin caused the fish's blood sugar levels to drop sharply, so they had no ability to move; and the stingers they eventually shot into the fish also contained several polypeptides, so that the cells and muscles of the fish stopped working and became a meal of the snails.
This method of first paralyzing the prey and then hunting the prey seems troublesome, but it reduces the risk of being killed by the prey, and the toxin of the ground snail also has the ability, effect and effect of surpassing the same kind.
For the snail, the toxin it sprays means plenty of food; for humans, the toxin of the snail can be very useful. In fact, many animal toxins have been used by humans, such as snake venom, bee venom, but to use the toxin of the ground snail, scientists need further research.
Finally, remind friends who love to eat snail meat, although the snail is delicious, in addition to worrying about parasites, you must also beware of "poison masters" such as ground taro snails.