I will have to agree with the question mark as our staff and campus crew have made the point of informing new keepers at every turn. Studying the TTX of Blue Rings is not new (or Roy et al have been VERY covert) so I guess the real news should be that they are considering studying the non-lethal toxins for medical use.
Hmm - is it hybrid news? i.e., personally, I was already aware that more than just the blue ring carried venom (even though the article seems to suggest that that in itself is news), but I did not know that every ceph carries venom (squid, cuttles, and all species of octopus). Perhaps the reporting didn't properly represent the story, but it sounds like a new paper is out...
All, or at least the vast majority, of the coleoids have "cephalotoxin" that can paralyze crustaceans, but doesn't do much to humans (or probably vertebrates in general, although one might think fish-eating squids would have a strong selection pressure to make venom that can effect vertebrates...) As far as I know, Nautilus has no venom. Eledone has some variant of venom that has been used for medical research already. I'm with Roy on this: not much news, although it's good that the medical community is taking a closer look at the possible benefits of these toxins.
Haggs saw the story as well: News item? with the same questions about why it is considered new and I agreed with Monty that perhaps the news should have been weighted toward the consideration for studying toxins other than TTX for medical possibilties and not that venom exists.
The media generally screws up good stories like this. They completely missed the point. The paper's topic is not that virtually all cephalopods are toxic (I don't really even know how they got that. They must have completely misunderstood the paper), but that there is high amount of conservation of what types of proteins are used between cephalopods and snakes in venoms, despite having independently evolved venom. The abstract of the paper can be found at Tentacles of venom: toxic protein convergence in the Kingdom Animalia - PubMed, and PZ does a good write up of the work at Pharyngula (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/04/cephalopod_venoms.php).
Taollan,
Thanks for the links, I miss-guessed the importance but knew the article had the significance wrong. From PZ's summary, I get the impression that most of the venom proteins are present in the digestive system. It would seem to make sense if I am correctly headed in my thinking since it would be less of a problem to the consuming animal to digest the inflicted poison.
Cephalopods share common toxic armoury - ABC Science Online
Cephalopods share common toxic armoury
[SIZE=-1]ABC Science Online, Australia[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]The discovery that all octopuses, cuttlefish and some squid are venomous has opened a new range of possibilities for future drug discoveries, an Australian researcher says. In a paper published in the latest Journal of Molecular Evolution, ...[/SIZE]
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