Deadliest Catch

Venoms That Can Kill Can Also Cure

- Kyle Dickman

Even as a boy plucking cone-snail shells from tide pools near his home beside Manila Bay, in the Philippines, Baldo mero Olivera knew that grabbing a living one could mean death. The magician’s cone, whose sting can cause extreme swelling, is the shape of a pointed hat; a tulip cone can trigger blurred vision and uncontrollable drooling, but it has ornate petal-like swirls. Mishandling a live geographer cone could stop his heart within minutes. But it looks like a Persian rug! Snagged.

“We knew even as kids,” Olivera says, “that this snail was capable of killing humans and that it has a 70 percent fatality rate.” It’s a foggy morning in Salt Lake City, and Olivera is near a bank of fish tanks in his lab at the University of Utah. Inside one aquarium, a white-and-brown snail is burrowed in the sand beside a small goldfish. The invertebrate extends its thick snorkel-like siphon and lightly sniffs the fish’s underbelly.