The delta-hexatoxin peptides in the venom of funnel-web spiders have barely evolved in 150m years
spiders have a fearsome reputation. People bitten by these Australian arachnids suffer extreme pain, breathing problems, confusion, convulsions and dangerously high blood pressure. Left untreated, the venom can kill within hours. For years, researchers assumed this lethal effect was an evolutionary accident. The venom, they presumed, evolved to help the spiders kill their prey—normally insects. Killing mammals was either just collateral damage or a form of protection against possible predators.
Putting these various facts together has led Bryan Fry of the University of Queensland to suggest, in a paper published in the, that the role of delta-hexatoxins in funnel-web venom is not to kill prey but rather as a sophisticated form of defence—and that, paradoxically, its deadliness to humans is because neither they nor their primate ancestors were, until recently, a threat to the spiders.
That, though, is not true for defensive venoms. Taking a single type of spider off its menu diminishes a predator’s potential to survive and reproduce only slightly. From this predator’s point of view the requirement to evolve resistance to a venom, particularly one that is not lethal, is therefore low. The spider’s interests, too, may be served by the evolution of non-lethal venom.
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