When Glenn King milks centipedes, he is not going after nutrition. He is milking their poison, and it is no simple task. “We tie them down with elastic bands, bring a pair of electrical forceps up to their pincers, apply a voltage, and they expel the venom,” says King, a biochemist at the University of Queensland in Australia.
The microliters of fluid could hold the keys to a new set of pain-relieving drugs. Venoms are natural storehouses of nerve-numbing molecules, and with 400 different types of venom in his laboratory, King is at the forefront of efforts to identify analgesics in the stings of centipedes, spiders, snails and other poisonous beasts.
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