Forensics of snake venom

Wildlife trafficking

Smuggling dried cobra venom has its challenges. First there’s the difficulty of milking these highly venomous snakes; it takes time, patience and skill. (It took the legendary snake wrangler Bill Haast three years and 69,000 milkings to produce one pint of coral snake venom, for example).

Then the smugglers have to furtively transport the stuff and find a buyer with deep pockets.

Trepidation is warranted: the authorities in Kerala, India, have made a number of arrests in recent years for venom trafficking, an activity they say is on the rise. It’s illegal to trade in venom from any snake species protected under the country’s Wildlife Act, including the Indian cobra. But how to prove that the substance came from an endangered cobra?

Now scientists have a way. After a recent raid on a hotel room in Kerala, the local magistrate sent venom samples to the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad. For the first time, scientists were able to analyse DNA within the venom to prove that it came from the Indian cobra, or Naga
The smugglers were charged with illegal hunting and trafficking of a protected animal, both of which are punishable by a prison sentence up to three years and/or a fine of Rs 25,000. The case is still pending. A study detailing the case and the genetic analysis was published recently in the Journal of Forensic Sciences.

Wolfgang Wüster, a lecturer in zoology at Bangor University in Britain who was not involved in the study, said it was not necessarily surprising that DNA would be recovered from the venom of a snake that has been milked, a process that apparently sheds epithelial cells. But nobody had really thought to look before — or at least to publish anything about it, he said.

Richard Thomas of the wildlife trade monitoring network Traffic said he hoped that the technique could be used to help fight trafficking in other kinds of snake material whose origins can be hard to determine without forensic analysis.

Illegal hunting of and trade in snakes and other reptiles is an enormous problem in South Asia, he said, with the animals typically desired for their meat and skin, which is used for food and traditional medicine.

It’s not entirely clear how big of a problem the illegal trade in snake venom is or where the bootleg venom ends up, the study’s authors write, although the practice is clearly growing.

(They did not respond to e-mails sent in recent days.) One odd use for venom is as a recreational drug.

There have been reports of people in India enduring actual snake bites to get high. In another recent case, the police caught smugglers with 600 grams of cobra venom worth an estimated Rs 20 million in a suburb of Mumbai.

On the black market, it is not guaranteed to fetch that much; such estimates are derived from the venom’s value in the legitimate marketplace, where it can be legally purchased to manufacture antivenom for use in drug discovery and even to make cosmetics.

The genetic analysis used in the study could prove useful in “consumer forensics,” as Dr Wüster puts it; pharmaceutical companies making antivenom, for example, could use it to ensure they’re working with material from the right species.