Sure, the first thing that comes to mind when we hear about the most expensive liquid in the world is molten gold or something similar, but in reality, it is the poison of an extremely rare and dangerous creature.
In addition to its valuable properties, this liquid is very difficult to obtain.
The bite of the golden scorpion, known as a death stalker, can be deadly, but also generate an astronomical amount of money. A liter of its poison costs more than 10 million dollars.
In addition to its valuable properties, this liquid is very difficult to obtain. These scorpions are almost always milked by hand and a specimen produces, at most, only two milligrams of venom at a time .
Thus, with $130 you can get a drop of poison smaller than a grain of sugar and you also need to order it in advance. By doing the calculations, it is necessary to milk a scorpion more than 700,000 times to get a liter of poison.
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Specialists point out that the super valuable liquid is more likely to kill a child or an elderly person than a healthy adult person, but it is true that the bite of a golden scorpion is a hundred times more painful than the sting of a bee.
Tons of useful components
As for its unique properties, which make it so expensive and exceptional, it saves tons of useful components for innovative medicines and treatment methods.
One of them is chlorotoxin, which adhere to the surface of cancer cells in the brain. With a molecular flashlight that marks the chlorotoxin with an infrared dye, doctors illuminate all the cancer cells, which must be removed.
“You can truly see the tumor almost cell by cell. This will let surgeons get more cancer out, maybe even 100 percent,” says James Olson of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington state (USA), cited by National Geographic.
The method could also be used for the treatment of prostate, colorectal, lung, breast, pancreas, and skin cancers, as well as glioma, which could save or prolong millions of lives every year, the researchers say.
In addition, the venom of the golden scorpion could be the basis of cardiac medications, analgesics, anticonvulsants and antimalarials. They’ve already used it to eliminate malaria in mosquitoes. And another component of the poison, kaliotoxin, has been given to rats to fight bone disease. Scientists expect it to work in humans as well, according to a Business Insider article.
More poison faster
Specialists point out that they are just some of the medical benefits stored in scorpion venom and they are finding more and more useful components. This means that the demand for this wonderful poison continues to grow, and that makes researchers look for ways to get more of the substance and do it faster.
To this end, the first remote-controlled scorpion milking machine was invented. According to its creators, it is capable of milking up to four scorpions at a time, which is four times faster than a human.
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Scientists hope to hit the market with the miracle poison within a few years, making the extraction process faster and safer.