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There's a certain group of
compounds, which 
I'll refer to as toxins,
and this is a special group of poisons.
These are natural substances which are
produced by living species
and like the poisons that we have already
discussed, they will also attack
important biochemical mechanisms.
One example is the poisons produced by
jellyfish
such as this creature here, the box
jellyfish.
This is one of the most poisonous of all
jellyfish, and is one of the reasons why
it's dangerous to go swimming in the
waters of Queensland at certain times of
the year.
Spiders are also famous for being
poisonous.
Here's one of the most famous,
that's the black widow spider.
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And here's a poisonous fish.
This is the fugu fish, and there's
somewhere 20 to
more than 40 cases of fugu fish poisoning
per year.
Now the fugu fish is quite interesting as
a source of poison
because it typically only poisons Japanese
people.
This is because this fish is considered a
delicacy in Japan.
So, how come then, there aren't more fugu
poisonings?
And the reason is that the poison, which
is a
chemical called tetrodotoxin, is
concentrated
in the fish's internal organs.
And the amount of tetrodotoxin in the
actual
meat of the fish is very, very little
indeed.
So fugu fish chefs go through extensive
training
on how to carefully remove all of these
highly toxic internal organs,
and those parts are then locked in a
special box.
The poisonings that do happen typically
come from amateur fugu fish chefs.
People who have one of these fish, and
want to have a go at cooking it
themselves.
The tetrodotoxin is extremely poisonous.
But most of the people who get poisoning
in this way
don't actually get a lethal dose.
The fatality rate is only a few
percent, fortunately.
Well, if we're talking about poisonous
creatures,
probably the most famous are the snakes.
Many snakes from all around the world are
poisonous.
One of the most famous stories concerning
poisoning
by the snake concerns the Egyptian queen,
Cleopatra.
Now, Cleopatra had been seriously playing
politics in the Roman empire.
She had a torrid affair with the Roman
dictator, Julius Caesar, even providing
him with a son.
After Caesar's assassination,
she linked herself up with Mark Antony.
Unfortunately Mark Antony lost the
subsequent Roman Civil War,
and Cleopatra, like him, was on the losing
side.
So what's she going to do?
She's in her palace,
the troops of Augustus Caesar are marching
towards the palace to catch her.
Now, in Roman times, in Roman culture,
if someone had gone into politics and
lost
then the honourable thing to do would be
to commit suicide
and go and meet the gods.
So Cleopatra was going to do this.
But, she thought, according to the legend,
that if she was going to
meet her ancestors and to meet her gods,
she wanted to look nice.
So according to the legend, what she did
was to
get her servants to try out different
means of suicide
so that she could pick the best one, and
the
one she chose was to be bitten by a
poisonous snake.
In particular, according to the legend,
it was this snake, the asp.
So, when the Roman soldiers got to her
palace, Cleopatra was already dead.
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Microorganisms also produce toxins.
This, for instance, is the organism that
is responsible for botulism.
And it produces one of the most toxic
substances on the planet.
Now, ironically, people will pay very
large
amounts of money to have this highly
toxic substance deliberately injected
into their head,
as you can see in the picture here.
This is the so-called Botox treatment.
So, how come people will actually pay to
have this stuff
injected into their head, and it doesn't
do them any harm?
Well, what Botox does is to paralyse the
muscles, but
because it's localised only in the area
where the injection
is given and it is not carried through to
the
rest of the body, it only paralyses that
particular region
and doesn't actually paralyse any vital
muscles.
Another extremely nasty organism is this
one,
which is responsible for the disease,
anthrax.
Now, even in the Second World War, anthrax
was recognised as a potential weapon.
Though it wasn't used in that conflict,
weaponised
Anthrax has been available to certain
people ever since.
So, the most famous outbreak of anthrax
poisoning was during the 9/11 crisis.
So, at the same time that the World Trade
Centre in New York City was destroyed
by airliners, various people in the United
States,
including members of the U.S. Senate, were
receiving letters.
And when they opened these letters, white
powder would come out.
Several people died because of this,
because that white powder was
anthrax.
Well, after a long investigation,
suspicion turned to a man called Bruce
Ivins, who was a U.S. Army microbiologist,
and in his lab he had
this kind of anthrax.
Well, this investigation never came to a
complete conclusion,
because as the investigators closed in,
Bruce Ivins committed suicide.
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