ArticleToxins2017
How the Cobra Got Its Flesh-Eating Venom: Cytotoxicity as a Defensive Innovation and Its Co-Evolution with Hooding, Aposematic Marking, and Spitting.
Article in Toxins, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 52 papers.
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Who cites it
52 citing papers in PubMed, 95 citations in OpenAlex.
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- The gene regulatory mechanisms shaping the heterogeneity of venom production in the Cape coral snake.Genome biology · 2025Article
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- Significant Serpents: Predictive Modelling of Bioclimatic Venom Variation in Russell's Viper.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2025Article
- Ritualistic Male-Male Combat of the Northern King Cobra (Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Hooding cobras can get ahead of other snakes in the ability to evoke human fear.Die Naturwissenschaften · 2024Article
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- Snakebite Envenoming in Avian Species: A Systematic Scoping Review and Practitioner Experience Survey.Journal of avian medicine and surgery · 2023Article
- Intrageneric cross-reactivity of monospecific rabbit antisera against venoms of the medically most important Naja spp. African snakes.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2023Article
- Unveiling the functional epitopes of cobra venom cytotoxin by immunoinformatics and epitope-omic analyses.Scientific reports · 2023Article
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- Molecular and Functional Characterization of a Novel Kunitz-Type Toxin-like Peptide in the Giant Triton SnailMarine drugs · 2022Article
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Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
26 authors at 6 institutions in 5 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The cytotoxicity of the venom of 25 species of Old World elapid snake was tested and compared with the morphological and behavioural adaptations of hooding and spitting. We determined that, contrary to previous assumptions, the venoms of spitting species are not consistently more cytotoxic than those of closely related non-spitting species. While this correlation between spitting and non-spitting was found among African cobras, it was not present among Asian cobras. On the other hand, a consistent positive correlation was observed between cytotoxicity and utilisation of the defensive hooding display that cobras are famous for. Hooding and spitting are widely regarded as defensive adaptations, but it has hitherto been uncertain whether cytotoxicity serves a defensive purpose or is somehow useful in prey subjugation. The results of this study suggest that cytotoxicity evolved primarily as a defensive innovation and that it has co-evolved twice alongside hooding behavior: once in the
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.