Will the natural enemies of highly toxic organisms be poisoned if they eat the highly toxic organisms?

We all know a lot about highly venomous creatures, such as venomous snakes, jellyfish, and even the recent hot search - blue-ringed octopus, and some frogs, etc. Do these highly venomous animals have natural enemies? The animal world has given us a lot of popular science. All animals have natural enemies, otherwise the food chain will be broken and the ecological balance will not be maintained!

Some people are confused. What will happen if the natural enemies of highly toxic creatures eat these highly toxic creatures? Will they be poisoned to death? Let's talk about it today!

Let's assume that organism A can produce toxin X, and its natural enemy is organism B. Then there will be three situations.

01. B has the same toxin mechanism as A

Since A secretes toxin x and A is fine, it can be imagined that A must have a mechanism to fight against its own toxin, and B may have exactly the same mechanism.

This is a very common situation in nature. For example, the beautiful creature in the picture below is called a sea slug. It increases its toxicity by ingesting toxic algae.

In this case, toxin x is actually its tonic.

02. Since the conditions for the toxin to exert its toxicity are not met, it has no effect on B.

Most poisons are complexes of proteins and small molecule peptides, and the activity of proteins requires sufficient conditions, including temperature and pH value. As long as you destroy the temperature and pH value, it will be meaningless.

So, why can many peptide drugs only be injected and not taken orally, such as insulin? Similarly, if you heat snake venom, it will become ineffective. The most intuitive example is boiling eggs.

03. Toxin X has an effect on B, but B avoids it.

This situation is very common.

It is rare to find a creature that is full of poison. Although some toxins are used for hunting, some are used to fight natural enemies. This is a luxury for most creatures, so most creatures will not synthesize this substance. Only a small number of creatures have venom glands to secrete toxins, such as clams and snakes.

But you just need to avoid this venom gland when hunting.

Just like the venom glands of a snake, when an eagle catches a snake, it will focus on destroying the snake's venom glands and then swallow the snake's body.

So, what if the eagle is poisoned by the snake? Then it dies .

As for synthesizing a certain antibody, unless it is the kind that has been eating this natural enemy , otherwise, there is no need for it to synthesize it.

Living things are very precise and will not waste their energy endlessly. Take humans and venomous snakes as examples:

For our species, humans, evolution will choose a stable strategy, which is the "evolutionary game theory or strategy theory" proposed by some scholars. Simply put, the gain of a certain function should be proportional to the input, rather than an investment regardless of cost .

First of all, you can't encounter snakes or be bitten by venomous snakes every day (extremely small probability), and as advanced organisms, we are almost at the top of the biosphere in terms of stress resistance. We can also try to stay away from areas where snakes live, or for practitioners, wear special protective equipment, which means that the probability of us being bitten by snakes or venomous snakes is extremely small.

Secondly , if you keep your stress level high and alert, your body will continue to synthesize snake venom antibodies, which is not worth the loss for humans. You will consume a lot of energy and lose your focus on your own affairs, so you will naturally be screened out by nature.

Therefore, we do not synthesize snake venom antibodies. In fact, in most cases, our ability to synthesize is targeted, rather than extensive. There are so many species on Earth, and we can synthesize all kinds of antibodies, so we don’t have to do anything else.