{"id":101798,"date":"2020-02-02T22:53:22","date_gmt":"2020-02-03T06:53:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/02\/mongooses-immunity-to-cobra-venom-explained"},"modified":"2020-02-02T22:53:22","modified_gmt":"2020-02-03T06:53:22","slug":"mongooses-immunity-to-cobra-venom-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/02\/mongooses-immunity-to-cobra-venom-explained","title":{"rendered":"Mongoose\u2019s Immunity to Cobra Venom Explained"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/mongooses-immunity-to-cobra-venom-explained2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Why could the mongoose Rikki Tikki Tavi attack deadly snakes with impunity in Kipling\u2019s \u201cJungle Book?\u201d Because he has a uniquely mutated receptor for a brain neurotransmitter called acetylcholine, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.<\/p>\n<p>The toxins in many snake venoms, including that of cobras, bind to the acetylcholine receptors of their victims, blocking nerve-muscle communications. Molecular biologist Sara Fuchs and her colleagues found that the acetylcholine receptor in mongooses\u2014like that in the snakes themselves\u2014is slightly mutated so that the venom simply bounces off the muscle cells, causing them no harm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why could the mongoose Rikki Tikki Tavi attack deadly snakes with impunity in Kipling\u2019s \u201cJungle Book?\u201d Because he has a uniquely mutated receptor for a brain neurotransmitter called acetylcholine, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The toxins in many snake venoms, including that of [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101798\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}