How the scinks and the honey badgers fights Cobra’s venom

FOr most animals, being bitten by an poisonous cobra is a death sentence – and particularly unpleasant.

Cobra’s venom is a neurotoxin that hacates the nervous system of a victim, blurring electrical impulses that indicate the nerves and muscles what to do. An unpleasant bite can paralyze the skeletal muscles of an animal and the diaphragm, inhibiting their ability to escape or even breathe, explains Bryan Fry, professor of toxicology at the University of Queensland in Australia. But there are several species of creatures that can fight these horror responses to films – and the last people to discover are several species of lizards by searching known as a scint.

In new research published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, Fry and his team describe how, on 25 times, 13 species of scints studied out of 45 built molecular armor to prevent Cobra’s venom from immediately killing them.

Their discovery began with an intuition 30 million years ago, Elapid Snakes (the family which includes cobras, sea snakes, tiger snakes and hundreds of other slippery terrors) arrived in Australia for the first time in Asia, to the great horror of native scints which had never met such a predator, says Fry. “They would have been behavioral and chemically naive for venoms,” he adds. “It would have been an absolute carnage and the reason why Elapid snakes spread so quickly through the continent after their arrival.”

This immense pressure has essentially forced the scint to evolve or die – and to evolve. COBRA’s venom normally targets muscle receptors, but a mutation in the surviving scint has created a mechanism to deploy a sugar called n-glycosylation to physically block toxins. This happens to be in the same way that the cobras resist their own venom – and how the mongers protect themselves from cobra toxins when they make a hearty meal of snakes, representing repetitive solutions through extremely divergent evolutionary stories.

“It would have been an absolute carnage and the reason why Elapid snakes spread so quickly.”

“These are classic examples of the idea that there is a limited number of” good evolutionary tips “: the philosophical idea that in the face of similar selection pressures, there is a limited number of solutions,” explains Fry. “Basically, if the wheel will be reinvented, there is a good chance.”

The researchers discovered all of this without needing to test their hypothesis on the living scin. They used samples of museum specimens to recreate the main scints (Bellatorias Frerei) Receivers. Then, they used these models to imitate what is happening when they are bitten by the additional death of Pilbara Super-Veme (Acanthophis Wellsi). Remarkably, the scin receptors have resisted toxic effects and used the same evolutionary tip – a single change of amino acid – which allows honey badgers to escape a poisonous disappearance.

This research strategy makes reasonably simple to test their hypothesis on other types of animals, such as geckos and frogs that have also lived side by side with dangerously poisonous snakes for millions of years.

These results also have potential use for medicine. The way we are currently developing anti -noms has not changed much during the last century, says Fry, and this process can be incredibly expensive, requires animals like horses to act like antibody production facilities and always has a risk of allergic shock or discomfort for patients. “There is now a thrust for molecules designed in laboratory as cheaper, more effective and more ethical replacements of ancient antifles,” he adds. Find out more about animals that can fight toxins difficult by themselves – without having to submit creatures to laboratory work – is a step in a direction that can keep people in good health and safety, no matter what they meet in nature.

Head photo by I Wayan Sumatika / Shutterstock

• Sara Kiley Watson

  Published on August 22, 2025

  Sara Kiley Watson is a climate and scientific journalist currently based in the Netherlands.