In the 1970s, University of Utah researcher Baldomero Olivera heard stories of Filipino fishermen dying after pulling in their nets. Their catches turned out to contain Conus geographus, a marine mollusk that produces some of the most potent venom of any cone snail species. The ultimate cause of death, then, seemed clear. But the details of how the cone snail toxin had killed the fishermen were more curious. According to medical reports, the men were not writhing in agony as their lives slipped from their grasp, leading researchers and clinicians to dub the tragic outcome a “painless death.”
“They didn’t cry out in pain, they weren’t doubling over, they weren’t getting swollen like you kind of do from a wasp sting or from a snakebite, where you get this massive inflammation,” says Mandë Holford, a biochemist at Hunter College and CUNY Graduate Center and the American Museum of Natural History ...
