Notes

As usual, the research for stories such as these is difficult. We have no certainty about the first animal who became venomous. The further back we go, the less proof we can find, and the more different life on earth must have been to what we know today. As such, this story is loosely based on what we think we know.

The first sign of poison was found at the order of the Conodont. These small, worm-like fishes lived around 500 million years ago. They had sharp teeth that are well-preserved, which is why they’re often found at excavation sites and used to date other fossils.

Then, we really only find venomous traits again at the order of Euchambersia, which lived around the same time as the dinosaurs. They were a mix between a lizard and a dog. Not the smallest species, but certainly not the biggest.

Snakes only appeared around 150 million years ago, halfway the dinosaur age. But we have no idea from whence they came. Maybe they came from the land, maybe from the sea. Maybe snakes were lizards who lost their legs … or lizards are snakes who gained legs. Most proof points to the theory that snakes entirely lived on the land. So they used to have legs, then lost their front legs, and eventually lost their hind legs too.

Sometime during that process they became venomous. And the way that happens is pure coincidence—as everything in evolution—and what I tried to explain in this story.

How poison appears

This is the step-by-step plan.

• Our body constantly reads our DNA to create proteins. Sometimes, because of a mistake, the location of the protein can change. Something that was supposed to be in your stomach, for example, now ends up in your mouth.
• At first, that protein won’t do much.
• But over time, that protein can collect even more mistakes, until it truly becomes dangerous for whoever receives your bite.
• Now it’s become an advantage to survival! You can win against larger animals by biting them. And so your venomous offspring stays alive—and your other offspring has more trouble.
• Repeat this cycle for millions of years, and now your entire species has the DNA for a very venomous bite.

Still, we have numerous examples of animals who lost their venomous bite. Why? Because it also has a very high biological price. You have to constantly spend energy and resources to make those extra particles. So, if the price is higher than the gain, it will be an advantage not to have it. So you lose it again.

Similarly, we see that poison evolved several times in several, unconnected places. Animal species who have never met or lived in the same area, received the same capability for poison all the same. That’s how strong this advantage is, especially during a time when almost all animals are bigger than you. (Think of the dinosaurs, of course. But following their time, the world was still populated by many larger versions of animals we know today, such as giant wolves.)

Despite every version of poison using a different particle, the effect is always the same: it either paralyzes your nerves (so you can’t move or defend yourself) or it prevents blood from clotting (so that wounds never heal). This was apparently easiest to accomplish or gave you the biggest chance of killing your attacker.

The idea for this story

This story talks about a sort of reverse evolution: how the venomous version of Connido was purposely singled out, creating a situation in which only the non-venomous ones survived. And so the animal species regressed.

This is inspired by what people cause in the real world. We often hunt venomous animals as a precaution. A snake that is “not that dangerous” is left alone. A snake known to be very venomous is dealt with.

And this can always go in two directions. Either the snakes develop an even more potent poison (because that’s the only way to survive now), or only the snakes without poison are left. Well, humans have guns and snakes do not, so what we see in practice is that many snake species are losing their poison.

Besides that, the story is about intergenerational trauma: negative experiences passed on between parent and child. This really happens. Animal species who have lived around venomous or dangerous animals for a while, have a part of their brain dedicated to rapidly recognizing this animal and creating a response (which usually starts with fear). Even … if they have never seen a snake in their life. Maybe that species hasn’t seen a snake in many, many generations.

Think of cats who go wild when they see a cucumber. Something in their brain, from long ago, creates instant fear and response at this shape. Even if it makes no sense now. (Which makes it slightly immoral to test this “for fun and jokes”, but oh well. It’s like you’re terrified of spiders and friends like to test your response by drawing spiders on your arm all the time.)

Leftover Notes

This story was a challenge—and that was on purpose. I wanted to play with structure, in this case by making leaps forward in time. Because I wanted to be correct (about the first species with poison and how that evolved by pure chance) and get a tense story. That’s hard to do with something as intangible as “poison that exists because of tiny mistakes in proteins over millions of years”.

In general, I try to write a few stories every cycle that are clearly different from the others. This will usually be around period 3–4 and period 7–8, but that’s no certainty.

To decide if an animal is/was venomous, they usually look for three things:

• A place that makes the poison
• A place to deliver the poison ( = usually some pathway to your mouth)
• A way to create an open wound in your victim ( = usually sharp teeth)

We obviously lack a living example of that 500 million year old Conodont. But by looking at the structure of teeth and skull, you can recognize patterns between all venomous animals.

General wisdoms:

• Venomous animals are usually primitive and barely change or evolve afterwards.
• Poison only works after the fact as a defence. That’s why many venomous animals also evolved to be brightly colored, to also indicate beforehand that they should be left alone. (Otherwise you had to rely on a species having developed this “trauma” and knowing you were venomous and likely to kill them too if they attacked.)
• Other animals then gained an advantage from imitating this and pretending they were venomous, such as the milk snake (non-venomous) looking almost identical to the coral snake (venomous). Or the wasp and the hoverfly.
• Venomous = if it eats you, you die.
• Poisonous = if you eat it, you die.

Cold-Blooded vs Warm-Blooded

• Cold-blooded animals (e.g. reptiles, snakes) do actually change their temperature. The difference is that they don’t do it constantly from the inside. (Their body doesn’t “work for it”.)
• When they’re cold, they just move to lay in the sun. When they’re warm, they find a spot in the shade. Usually they apply an arsenal of tricks to regulate warmth anyway using their environment.
• Chemical processes happen faster when there’s more heat. That’s why a mammal (for example) can go from 0 to 100 in a very short time. But a cold-blooded animal needs more time to “warm up”, and until that time they almost move in slow-motion or they can barely move.