CASABLANCA, Morocco (Reuters) – Extracting venom from scorpions can be a dangerous, but rewarding, task. <\/p>\n
The poisonous secretion, while fatal to humans, contains hundreds of components that have potential uses in the health sector when they are broken down to a molecular level. <\/p>\n
In a bid to remove the venom safely, for both scorpion and extractor, a group of scientists in Morocco have developed a remote-controlled ‘milking machine’, which straps to the scorpion’s tail and uses an electric impulse to stimulate the venom glands for the poison to be released. <\/p>\n
“What makes it special is that it is safe and fast,” said Mouad Mkamel, a researcher at Ben M’sik Hassan II University in Casablanca who, along with a group of university scientists, developed the machine. <\/p>\n
“If we were able to extract venom from ten scorpions daily in the past, today we can do it with up to 150 of them in a day.” <\/p>\n
According to the researchers, the business of scorpion-milking can be lucrative. They said that a gram of venom can be sold for around $8,000, with venom from rarer scorpions selling for up to $12,000 per gram. <\/p>\n
The team are now waiting for their patent to be approved and to start mass-producing their machine. <\/p>\n
Writing by Mark Hanrahan in London; Editing by Richard Balmforth<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CASABLANCA, Morocco (Reuters) – Extracting venom from scorpions can be a dangerous, but rewarding, task. The poisonous secretion, while fatal to humans, contains hundreds of components that have potential uses in the health sector when they are broken down to a molecular level. In a bid to remove the venom safely, for both scorpion and Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191897\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}