Serpentine Fire

“The video is just under two and a half minutes long. A slim man with close-cropped hair walks into a room, pulls a long black mamba — whose venom can kill within an hour — from a crate and allows it to bite his left arm. Immediately after, he lets a taipan from Papua New Guinea bite his right arm. ‘Thanks for watching,’ he calmly tells the camera, his left arm bleeding, and then exits.” But maybe we should be thanking him. This nearly two-decade hobby of his helped create a blood mix that contains antibodies that can neutralize the venom of many snakes. “More than 600 species of venomous snakes roam the earth, biting as many as 2.7 million people, killing about 120,000 people and maiming 400,000 others — numbers thought to be vast underestimates.” NYT (Gift Article): Universal Antivenom May Grow Out of Man Who Let Snakes Bite Him 200 Times. (Universal Antivenom is also a pretty great name for a band.)