- Today, I am going to take
eight vials of my own blood and add to that blood, venom from three of the
most potent pit vipers here in the United States. We have a medic that is going
to stick me with a needle and draw out these eight vials of blood. And right now I'm
feeling very very nervous and a little squeamish and I might pass out during this process. Okay, here we go. Giving my blood for science. (yelling) (energetic music) Today, we are at the
Reptile Discovery Center located in Deland, Florida. This serpentarium is home to several of the world's most dangerous snakes. And earlier today, I assisted in milking the
venom of three pit vipers that are frequently encountered in the Eastern United States. The Copperhead. Wow, that was fantastic. The Water Moccasin. Gonna go mouth down, okay. And the Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake. Whoa! That was a serious
venom yield right there. Normally this venom is sent to their med
toxin venom laboratory where it is turned into
life-saving antivenom. But today, we're going
to perform an experiment unlike anything you have ever seen. Okay, crew is all set up. (sighs) All right guys, so today's experiment is
going to show us what happens when snake venom mixes
together with human blood. I've always been curious what happens when a snake bites you and that venom enters
into the bloodstream. So today, what we're gonna do is take eight vials of my blood, we're gonna create a control, and then we're going to mix
venom into three different vials and show you exactly what happens. I know, it seems like Coyote,
get to the point already. I'm only prolonging this because I'm so squeamish around needles. You guys have no idea how
nervous I am right now. I could take bullet ant stings, I can take bites from
giant desert centipedes, when it comes to sticking
a needle into my arm, nothing makes my skin
crawl more than that. We've got a medic on set with us and she is going to
safely draw out my blood. - [Medic] I need you to just
keep your arm very still. - Very still. - [Medic] Don't jerk it back. And if you feel like you're
gonna pass out, tell me. - Okay. - [Medic] If you get lightheaded or you start to feel really hot. - Okay. I'm already hot, I'm
sweating bullets right now. Like more nervous than I
was for ants, centipedes, like (grunts) worst day ever. - [Medic] Well even hotter
than you are right now. - Okay, yup. - [Medic] Okay are you ready? - Yes, I can be ready. - [Medic] 1, 2, 3. (yelling) - Find a happy place, find a happy place. Is this considered a lot
of blood for one sitting? - [Medic] This is an okay amount. It's certainly not gonna harm you. - Okay. I'm gonna put the GoPro
down at what this is to see what's happening. I can't look with my
own eyes, I can't bear. I can't feel my arm. Like, should I be doing
anything with my arm? - [Medic] No. (breathing) Okay, you ready? - For what? - [Medic] I'm gonna take out the needle. (yelling) Are you ready? - Is it out? - [Medic] No. - Yeah, I'm ready. (yelling) Oh my gosh, is it gonna
like squirt blood if you, oh my God, look at all
those tubes of blood. Holy mackerel. But what we're going to do now is head down the hallway, meet up with Carl, and move to step two of this experiment. Holy cow, look at all
of these vials of blood. That is so much Coyote that is spilled out in the name of science. Okay Carl, I am back with
eight vials of my blood. Now we're only gonna need
four for this experiment so I'll put these other
four over here as a backup. And we've got the entire
experiment set up. We've got three vials that contain Copperhead, Water Moccasin, and Eastern Diamondback venom. Eventually that blood is going
to trickle down this board that we've created. But before we get there, let's talk about these venom's and why they're so potentially dangerous. - Okay, so Coyote, all
three of these snakes cause you to bleed, cause you to hemorrhage, and hemorrhaging is dangerous
for a host of reasons. Your blood doesn't clot, you're losing blood
from your blood vessels, your blood corpuscles
are being broken apart, your red blood cells are being liced, they're not carrying
oxygen to your tissues. They all cause you to hemorrhage. They do it a little differently. The mechanisms that work
do it a little differently, but they all cause that significant bleeding
coagulopathy problem. - Okay, man that is complex, but sounds very painful at the same time. Obviously a lot of pain is experienced with a bite from any one
of these snake species. Okay, so I'm definitely going
to put on my safety goggles for this part. I am going to open up this
vial and expose the venom. Now, I have this one labeled Copperhead, and you'll see, I also
have a blunt tipped needle. The reason for that is if this was sharp and I were to accidentally prick myself, that's just like a snake fang. What you don't want to
do is envenomate yourself while working with venom. So, I'm gonna just, oh man, makes your hand nervous just to pick up and hold
what that is right there. That is some very potent venom. Now, Carl I'm gonna need your assistance. If you can just tilt that a tiny bit until I'm able to get some venom. I think that's enough. - Yep. - That's probably more than a
full snake bite right there. - No question. - Okay, so there is our Copperhead venom. Woo, one down. Our next one is going to
be the Water Moccasin. Wow, look at that venom yield. - Gives you a sense of how
dangerous Cottonmouths can be and part of that equation again is yield. That's three snakes of
course, but even still. Here we go. Ooh, that is a toxic
little mix right there. Oh, got a little drip coming. Okay, I'll just put that there. And now we are going to bring up the most potent of them all, the Eastern Diamondback. Woo, this is the big one
right here, all right. There we go. And that right there would be enough venom to
kill you, wouldn't it? - Probably. - Okay, so we've got our three
syringes of venom lined up. Thank you, Carl. Woo, this is, keeping your hand
study is not an easy thing. Okay, so the first one, our green is going to be the Copperhead. Okay. There we go. Dangerous little tube right there. Okay, moving on to the Water Moccasin labeled yellow, caution Water
Moccasins can be deadly. Definitely not a snake you
ever want to trifle with in the wild. Admire these guys from
a very safe distance. Okay, there we go. That is moccasin venom
going into my blood. And last but certainly not least, will be the Eastern
Diamondback Rattlesnake. Okay, it's still a very very
dangerous syringe right there. There's still some venom residue. Okay, here we go. That is Eastern Diamondback
Venom going into my blood. Okay, well let's take 15 minutes. We will return and step
three of this experiment will tell us exactly what happens from a visual perspective when you add snake venom to human blood. But I know a lot of you
out there have said before, Coyote, you've been bitten
and stung by so many things, get bitten by a venomous snake. Now Carl, I want to open
up this conversation to you to say to everybody out there watching how crazy is that notion of
intentionally being bitten by a venomous snake. And just so we're clear guys, I'm never going to
intentionally take on a bite, like something from a Copperhead or Water Moccasin or Rattlesnake. And tell us why this is so damaging. - Because insect stings and snake bites are very different things. And so insect venom's to a large degree evolved to cause pain and basically what they're trying to do is get you away from perhaps their nest or something of that nature. Snake venom's evolved
to immobilize and kill the food that they eat. And so snake venom's are destructive on a whole host of different levels. So you've got blood chemistry problems, you've got neurological issues happening, you've got cardiac issues happening, a depolarization of the
muscle cells in your heart, you've got maybe all of these things, nephrotoxicity, miotoxicity, cytotoxicity, cardiotoxicity,
neurotoxicity. A snake bite can be very dangerous event. In fact, it can be a lethal event and on a cellular level it's catastrophic. It's nothing to be fooled
with or taken lightly. There's no question about that. - Okay, it has been roughly 15 minutes that the venom has been
percolating inside of my blood. And that was the big moment, what I'm curious about, what I know you guys
are all curious about, what exactly happened to my
blood with that venom inside. So the first thing that we're gonna do is put on my safety glasses. Always important to have on safety glasses when you're doing science experiments. So we've got another blunt tipped needle, that is the control. That's the blood that's in here and when I hold it up and look at it, yep that's still looks super liquidy. So what we're going to do is pull blood from each one of these vials and I'm gonna make a little streak just like that on the top
of this plexiglass board, we're going to see what happens. Does it run down? Does it turn into jelly? We don't know, right? - It'll be interesting. - I guess we'll see. And I'm just going to try to make a nice little streak across here just like that. (yelling) What! That is some coagulation
right there, isn't it Carl? - Can see that coagulation,
yep, that's great. - Well, that looks like a
zombie film right there. So Carl tell us what happened 'cause there was no venom in there yet you got these chunks of blood that just looked like they
vomited themselves down this plexiglass plate. - When you expose blood to oxygen, it's gonna begin to clot. - Right. - And so that's what we're seeing there. - And that's healthy blood then. - Absolutely. - Healthy blood exposed to
oxygen is going to coagulate. So for the most part
looks like I'm healthy. So, now we're moving on to the Copperhead. That is our green vial here. And I'm just gonna give that a tilt left and right. Now like you were saying, Carl, that anticoagulant makes this look like it's a whole lot, - Very hard to say if
we're gonna see anything to the naked eye, but I assure you what's going
on in that tube right now, cellularly, is as we talked
about earlier, catastrophic. - Okay. - So let's see if we can see
anything with the naked eye. - Here we go, Copperhead blood coming up. Wow, look at all those bubbles. I did not really see that on the control. Okay, here we go. Oh, wow, look at that. It's just dripping right out of it. I'm not even applying any
pressure yet and look at that, it's just dripping right
out of the syringe. - Whoa, look at that. - Boy, it's certainly to the naked eye looks like it's less coagulation
going on there, right? I mean to the naked eye, I mean that just ran down to where now, I saw a couple of little
micro maybe clots in there, but to the naked eye, I don't know about what you saw, but anyway, interesting. - That was blood running
down that incredibly fast. I mean just the pace at which it slid down and off the plexiglass, you can see that a lot of the blood here is still not streaking. This was, yeah. Look, you can almost see the
more watery consistency of it. So that's the blood cells breaking down and not being able to hold onto each other - Again to the naked eye, that's what it would look like. - Again guys, we can't stress enough how the internal aspects
of what's happening on a micro level, that if we had a super
powerful microscope, we'd be able to see are happening. I mean, this is just explosions of blood cells and everything breaking down apart inside. - All those little cell
walls are being effected. - Okay, here we go. Water Moccasin. You can see there. the blood definitely
looks very thin as well. Again, a whole cocktail
of proteins and toxins that are just turning this
blood into who knows what. I get it, oh wow. So that's having trouble
actually sucking the blood up into there. - See a little more
clotting in this sample. - There we go, okay. And my glasses are fogging up. I'm gonna do my best
to keep my hand steady, but even interacting with venom and blood definitely gets your heart
rate going that's for sure. That is my blood mixed together
with water moccasin venom. And again, you can see that that blood just wants to come out
of the tip of the needle without me applying any pressure. It's just dripping out on its own. So I'm going to very slowly apply a little bit of pressure. There we go, wow, look at that. - Now there's certainly some
clots visible in that sample. - Oh yeah. - More so than the Copperhead venom. - Yeah, that is true. Look at that, you can
just still see all that. It looks like a worm going down to the side of the plexiglass. - But certainly the Copperhead venom appeared thinner than
the Cottonmouth venom in relationship to the control. Tough to say, but maybe we're seeing some anticoagulant activity there, maybe. - Okay, so here we go. I've got the Eastern Diamondback
venom in my blood there. Top coming back off. There we go. Syringe going in, again guys, flat tipped needles, even if I were to prick myself
with a needle with venom, that is just like suffering envenomation. Oh yeah, look at that. Look how thin that blood is. That pulls up way easier than the Copperhead or the Moccasin. Wow, look how watery
that is, that's crazy. What does human blood look
like once it's been envenomated with Eastern Diamondback
Rattlesnake venom? Here we go, one, two, three, oh there is a little bit
of coagulation there. Whoa, look at that. - Some significant clotting and remember on this, Coyote, Eastern Diamondback venom, we think there are both anticoagulant and pro-coagulant activity happening. But that's interesting. - Okay, well there we have it between the control, the Copperhead, the Moccasin and the Eastern
Diamondback Rattlesnake, visually across the board, it looks like there's quite
a bit of difference, right? Even with the control, I don't see any speckling in the blood as compared to these three. But from your expert perspective, Carl, what is it that we're really seeing here? I mean, it looks like a horror film, but it's tough to tell with the naked eye. - Yeah. So Coyote, I think we need to point out that this experiment is a
really crude experiment. You know, what we're seeing, we're kind of speculating a little bit and based a little bit on what we know about these given snake venom's, but this really needs to
be done under a microscope in a really controlled setting where we don't have this
time difference going on and we're not sure that the
amount of venom being used is exact to get a real sense of this. But I think it's safe to say that what's happening here, whether or not we can
see it with the naked eye is serious and catastrophic
damage on a cellular level. - And I think for everybody
out there watching, not only did I hear you say
that we need to do this again, which means there will be
a sequel to this video, but that the big takeaway is the pit vipers in the United States have the potential to be very dangerous. This is not a species you would ever want to
interact with in the wild. And for everybody out there that's asked, Coyote, will you get
bitten by a venomous snake? The answer is no. You guys can see that this
is again catastrophic. If you're bitten by one of these snakes, it is a medical emergency and with all of our content, we want to encourage the
viewers to admire these animals from a safe distance. Don't try to kill them. Don't try to catch them. Don't ever experiment with yourself to see what would happen if
you tangled with these things. - No question. I think that's an excellent synopsis. And hey man, are you gonna clean this up? - I will, yes. I will clean up all of the mess that I have made here in the lab. But for everybody out there watching who's wanted to see what would happen if Coyote Peterson was
bitten by a venomous snake, there ya have it guys, my
blood tangling with venom. I'm Coyote Peterson. Be brave, stay wild. We'll see ya on the next adventure. Every year around the world, people are bitten by venomous snakes. And it's probably accurate to say that each and every one of
these bites happens by accident. Some species like the Copperhead
are likely to kill you, but a full on envenomation
from a Eastern Diamondback is certain to take your life without the administration of antivenom. Carl and Mora perform thousands
of milkings every year, risking their own lives just in case you were unfortunately bitten by one of these slithering reptiles. Yet that doesn't mean you
should be afraid of snakes. Almost all bites come as a result of humans trying to move, harass, or kill one of these animals. The best course of action is to always respect snakes
from a safe distance, ensuring that you do not have
a catastrophic interaction. If you would like to
learn more about snakes and the power of their venom, make sure to visit the Reptile
Discovery Center's website, where you can schedule a
snake milking demonstration. Hey Coyote pack, if you thought milking some of North America's most
deadly snakes was intense, make sure to go back and watch the episode where we milked Australia's
most toxic snakes. And don't forget, subscribe, click the notification bell and join memberships
so you can follow along with me and the crew on
our next wild adventure.
