Fish Venom and Creation

Several years ago, I stopped into a sandwich shop in East Lansing, Michigan. Things had changed a bit since the last time I was there, and one of those changes was the cute little pickle they speared with a toothpick and shoved into the sandwich. Okay, I'll start with the pickle. That was how I learned about a jalapeño pepper on a stick. It took many years before I came close to them again, and made sure that small pickles were indeed small pickles. Unpleasant surprises are educational.

Great Barrier Reef Near Whitsunday Islands, International Space Station, credit: NASA
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In a similar manner, a fish commences to chowing down on a fangblenny, a fish the size of your finger. Munchie discovers that the fangblenny is one of many venomous fish in the deep blue sea and gets himself bitten from the inside. Although there's no pain from the venom, it causes his jaw to drop open and the fangblenny swims away. Later, Munchie decides to leave similar fish alone. That's right, there are nonvenomous fangblennies that mimic their brethren.

In the original perfect creation, venom did not exist for the purpose of killing or extreme defense. Evolutionists conjure the uninformative, unscientific magic of "convergent evolution" that explains nothing, including various types of venom. Scientists who want to do something useful are studying the fangblenny's venom as a way to reduce blood pressure — the same stuff that made the predator fish's jaw dropped open. Other kinds of venom are also being studied to see if they can be beneficial to us.

Venom is produced by many sorts of animals. It usually contains a variety of biomolecules, many of which have other nontoxic physiologic functions. And those toxins act in a variety of ways—causing pain or inflammation, dropping blood pressure, inhibiting or stimulating blood coagulation, paralyzing or overstimulating nerves, and so forth. Some—like certain unusual components of mamba venom—even inhibit pain with narcotic-like efficiency.

The study of venom toxins provides medical science with clues to help in the pharmaceutical industry. Some cone snails, for instance, release a super-fast-acting form of insulin into the water near potential prey. The insulin is rapidly absorbed through the gills, and as the target fish’s blood sugar level plummets so does its ability to flee from danger.

To read the entire article, click on "Origin of Fangblenny Fish's Unusual Venom".
  



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