The Life Scientific: Mark O'Shea

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1:03Picture the scene. You've just been bitten by that most famous of venomous snakes, the King Cobra. The venom is already working its way through your system and will cause paralysis and potentially death within minutes, unless you're able to stay calm and take exactly the right steps to save your own life. Think he could manage that. To some, this might sound like the plot of the latest Indiana Jones movie. For others, an uncomfortably detailed nightmare. For today's guest, it's just one story in a career full of close encounters with the world's most venomous, rare and deadly snakes. Mark O'Shea is a professor of herpetology, the area of zoology focusing on reptiles and amphibians at the University of Wolverhampton, and also a scientific associate in herpetology at the Natural History Museum.

1:53After dropping out of college in his teens, Mark managed to turn a boyhood fascination with reptiles into his profession, studying and documenting snakes in their habitats around the globe. He's also helped medical scientists study the effects of and antidotes to some of the world's deadliest venoms, earning accolades including an MBE and having a snake species named after him. To top it all off, at the age of 69, he's about to get his PhD. So there may have been a few bites along the way, but overall it seems snakes have been pretty good to him. Professor Mark O'Shea, welcome to The Life Scientific.

2:30Thank you very much.

2:31Mark O'Shea:I'm honoured to be here. Mark, now I mentioned the King Cobra incident there. That was when you were working at West Midland Safari Park back in 2012. Some people might even remember this because it did make the headlines. What happened? Well, firstly, I wasn't bitten. The King Cobra bit my shoe. I was feeding her. She was generally a very docile snake, a 10-foot female. And I was feeding her with tongs, and she struck at the dead rat mist. And then as I stepped back, she hit the shoe. And the venom got into me, not through fang marks, but because all the venom went into my sock. I took my boot off and I wrung out the sock.

3:09Mark O'Shea:There was about 10 mils in there. It was a lot of venom. And I got rubbed toes because I'd been walking around in sandals. And that's how the venom got in. It got in through those wounds, but we went through the entire snake bite protocol, which is practiced six monthly in collections, and I ended up in hospital, but not for long. I was discharged the following day. Wow. And I gather the big problem is not that kinkobras have especially toxic venom, but as you say, it's the volume that they give out. It's quantity, not quality, if you like. It is quantity, and they're not amongst the big killers around the world, because they generally stay away from humans, and so very few snakebites are caused by them, compared to common cobras or crates or some of the other species.

3:56Mark O'Shea:But because they're so big and impressive, they sort of get demonised. And they have this iconic status, doesn't it? They do, indeed. Very iconic. Well, we're going to talk more about your various venomous experiences later on, but it's probably about time that I'll let listeners know we have two additional guests here in the studio with us today, two venomous snakes. Although, to be fair, they are dead and in jars. Tell me about these specimens you've brought in, Mark. Well, one of the things that I do is I work on the taxonomy of snakes, and my particular areas are New Guinea and eastern Indonesia and East Tebow.

4:31Mark O'Shea:And these are preserved specimens, one from the Paris collection, and one from the Australian Museum. And they're both new to science, they haven't been described, and I'm working on those now. I've got colleagues doing the DNA, and I'm doing the physical morphological descriptions. The one over here is a genus Toxia calamus, since 115 years old. It was collected just before 1910. And this one here is a Micrapecus, and it was collected in 1876 by two famous French naturalists in New Guinea, and it was labelled as a particular species, which it isn't. And you can do some sort of genetic... Yes, we have got tissues from these, but as soon as I saw them, I knew from their head shape, their patterning, the number of scales around the body, etc., all these clues that you look for when you're identifying snakes.

5:23Now, they are fascinating, but as you'll know, a lot of people find snakes quite frightening. What's your counter-argument to that? What, in your mind, makes them such interesting creatures?

5:34Mark O'Shea:well first off i wouldn't want to make people blase about snakes snakes are dangerous around the world every year up to 138 000 people die of snakebite some 400 000 are permanently disabled they are a big public health problem in many parts of the tropical world so i wouldn't want to say oh snakes are all great but what i would prefer is a healthy respect and i would like people to stop killing harmless snakes. They're actually nature's rat traps. If you've seen the damage done in the paddy fields in India and Sri Lanka, it looks like crop circles. And that's caused by rodents. And rodents also pass on a lot of diseases.

6:15Mark O'Shea:And yet in the paddy fields are venomous snakes that are eating the rodents. And it's this difficult balancing act between which kind of public health, snake bite, rat-borne disease or starvation. So they are an important part of the ecology. Right. Well, Mark, I mentioned in the introduction that this all started for you as a boyhood fascination with snakes. I gather your first encounter was on a family holiday in Ireland. Yes, not many people can say they handled their first snake in Ireland. It was Dublin Zoo and I was probably about seven or eight years old. and as we went into the reptile house, somebody said to my mother, if you ask the keeper, he'll get a snake out for your lads.

6:58Mark O'Shea:And so she did. And the keeper draped this boa constrictor over my shoulders and it seemed to be twice as long as I was. But that was just, I was meeting a real live snake and that was magical. Well, your parents not only supported this new hobby of yours, they even allowed you to start keeping snakes as pets. They must have been pretty open-minded then. My parents were both teachers. Teachers tend to be open-minded. I think if they'd known that I would end up having so many snakes in the house over time, they might have balked at it. I know the answer, but tell us how many. When you say so many snakes.

7:39Mark O'Shea:Well, at one point, I think I'd probably got about 200. But mostly they were garter snakes and water snakes. And mostly it was a smaller species. Where do you keep them? Well, I had an outbuilding. I converted and kept a lot of them there. Some were in the loft. I had cages up there as well. So, yes, I was maximising as much space as I could get away with. I don't keep snakes anymore. I stopped keeping them myself decades ago. And do they make good pets? I mean, can they be loyal or affectionate? Not really. It depends how you define a pet. If you're looking for a two-way relationship, you're not going to get it.

8:14Mark O'Shea:Most people that keep snakes keep them because they're interesting, not because they're expecting some sort of feedback from the animal like you would a dog. So that was your hobby. But on the education front, Mark, you describe yourself as a late developer. How did you get on at school? I quite liked school when I was a junior school, but I didn't pass my 11 plus. They say you can't fail it. You just pass it or you don't pass it. That's being kind. I failed it. And so I went to a secondary modern and I liked it. It was a small secondary modern. We'd only had up to the fifth year. And then I transferred to a comprehensive to do the two years for A-levels.

8:51Mark O'Shea:But I didn't like it. I didn't like it at all. And one Friday lunchtime, I thought, right, I've had enough of this. And I just walked out before my exams. And I went up to the hospital because I used to do voluntary work for the Royal Hospital. And I saw the hospital secretary and I said, I've left school. Can I have a job? And he says, you've worked in accident emergency. I said, yes. He said, OK, you start Monday. And I did that for seven or eight years. taking some time out to go and pick up A-level zoology at a local college of FE. But that still wasn't enough to go any further. So there you were working in A &E with this sideline interest in snakes.

9:30But you realised that if you were ever going to turn your love of reptiles and natural sciences in general into more than a hobby, you needed further education. So you went for an interview at a nearby teacher training college.

9:43Mark O'Shea:Why teaching? I thought, well, I couldn't get into doing, you know, a degree with one A level. And my parents had been teachers. So I went to the interview and they said, you don't want to be a teacher, do you? And I said, actually, no. They said, you just want to study biology. And I said, that's right. They said, well, hang on, because there's somebody we'd like to introduce you to. And there was a Dr. Linton Bon there on that occasion from the Polytechnical Wolverhampton. and I sat down with him for about 20 minutes and he said on the strength of this conversation I'll offer you a place on our BSc honours course in applied science at the Polytechnic.

10:22Wow, I mean it's a pretty dramatic change in direction from what you were planning that morning presumably when you woke up and went for the interview. Was it at all difficult getting your head around this new plan?

10:33Mark O'Shea:No, I embraced it. It was the most important decision I've made in my life. The Polytechnic is now the University of Wolverhampton and they market themselves as the university of opportunity. And it certainly was for me. And now I'm teaching there and I stand in front of the first years and I say, 40 plus years ago, I was literally sitting where you are. And if you want something so much you can taste it, if you work hard and make sacrifices, you should be able to achieve it. And I hope that I'm an example to them of what is possible in education. It is the key to everything. What do you think they saw in you then when you were offered that place at Wolverhampton Poly?

11:15Mark O'Shea:I think it was enthusiasm because I was so excited to go and do that. I never thought that was within my reach. But I graduated in 1985. Now, that's a year late. That's because I organised a seven-man expedition into Borneo partway through it. Not as part of the degree? No, no, no. I organised this expedition. and during planning of that expedition I came into contact with a major Wandy Squales in the war office and he said, look, when you get back, get in touch with us. You sound like just the sort of chap we want as scientific directing staff on Operation Raleigh. One thing leads to another, doesn't it?

11:53I mean, it is incredible. So this Operation Raleigh, now Raleigh International, this is an organisation running volunteering expeditions for young people and they offered you a role?

12:03Mark O'Shea:Well, yes. They knew I was keen on herpetology at the time. Nobody knew what herpetology was. But they ended up, I had teams of venturers, 17 to 23-year-olds, in Honduras first in 1985, Papua New Guinea in 1986, and Cameroon in 1989. And I had six or eight of these venturers on my team, and we'd be doing field work, and I'd be teaching them field techniques. And it really took off. So that was really exciting, because those were big projects. I was away three to four months, but it cost money. Yeah, yeah, because they're a charity, right? So you're not paid. No. You had to raise money for your own expeditions, even savings from your hospital job and support from your parents.

12:45Things must have been very tight financially.

12:47Mark O'Shea:Yes, they were. They were because I was spending all the money that I'd got on the next expedition. Well, while you were working with Riley, you got a call from the Royal Geographical Society about joining an expedition. they were putting together to conduct field work in the Brazilian Amazon. The RGS wanted me to be the herpetologist on the project. It was a 13-month project in the end. And, of course, it was fully funded then. I wasn't being paid, obviously, but that was the next step up from Raleigh where you're having to pay to go. Now I haven't got to worry about the money. And I recorded, I think, 33 species of snakes on the reserve.

13:26Mark O'Shea:It was a 100 ,000 hectare riverine island in Horaima, which was a territory then. Now, that's an island where the river splits and comes together again. It's a triangular island, and the only people living on there were us scientists. So it was a pretty wild place. It was also on this trip that you experienced your first serious infield snake bite. Yes. I was photographing some specimens. I'd caught a number of rattlesnakes, and some of them were as long as I am tall. I mean, they were big, but this was one of the smaller ones, and I was getting very detailed head photographs. There was a head escalation which I needed to be able to draw it afterwards.

14:05Mark O'Shea:And I slackened my grip slightly and it bit me in the thumb. The nurse was there, Sarah, and we decided, oh dear, this is a bit serious. We're six hours from Boa Vista, which is the nearest town, and it's now half past six in the afternoon. Now, in those days, we didn't have mobile phones. we were using shortwave radios, just like they'd done in the 30s and 40s. And we used to do sit reps with Boa Vista, six in the morning, six in the afternoon, and I was bitten at half past six. So that's 20 minutes after the radios had been turned off and 11 and a half hours before they're going to be turned on again.

14:42So I moved into the medical quarters, and we did have rattlesnake antivenom, and it's supposed to be kept between two and eight degrees. but our fridge didn't always work because we hadn't always got power and so it's what they call cold chain broken. No Western doctor would ever administer it. But we had to. And so what Sarah did, she set up a drip with a slow infusion into my arm and that's when the fun started because I started to get gumboils coming up in my mouth.

15:14Mark O'Shea:My hair was all like as if I'd been plugged into a Vanegraaff generator. It was all electrified. But the worrying thing was I went blind. and I don't know if it's for 10 minutes, 10 hours, 10 days or forever. I've gone blind and I told Sarah what had happened and she stopped the infusion and she gave me a large dose of adrenaline. That gradually alleviated all the unpleasant symptoms so we started the antivenom again but at a slower rate of infusion. And then in the morning they got on the radio and they arranged my Medivac. Now a normal person would go back home and think I need to do something else with my life.

15:52That didn't put you off. Because weren't you worried about going back into the field to find more snakes? I was back on the station in two days.

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17:06Well, you were, if we can call it enjoying, you were enjoying this expeditionary life when in the late 80s the West Midlands Safari Park decided to set up a reptile house and they came to you for help. Yes, I knew some folks there and they said, look, we're going to build a reptile house and we'd like to talk to you about design and what would be suitable to go in it. And then in 1987, when it had been built, they said, well, look, would you be interested in running the reptile house as first curator? And I was at the Safari Park for 33 years. I loved it. And I hear a lot of specimens in the then new reptile house came from your own personal collection?

17:47It didn't take me long, but I moved my whole collection in because three reasons, really. One, I got some very nice specimens that I would like to share that people would see. Two, you don't want to clean out animals all day and then go home and clean them out at home. And three, my food bill, electric bill and veterinary bills just plummeted. Suddenly, they're all not my concern financing. So it was very reciprocal. Well, you mentioned earlier you don't keep snakes anymore, but I hear you do still allow the occasional house guest. In fact, one of the park's most famous residents, Sleeping Beauty, the King Cobra that we talked about earlier, she stayed with you when she was convalescing from an operation.

18:31Yes, she had an osteochondrosarcoma on her spine. Now, they metastasis in mammals. It's a tumour. It's a tumour, yes, but they don't in reptiles. so I had a vet operate to remove this but it was so close to a spinal cord he said we won't be able to remove it all there'll be a small amount so it will ultimately come back but the operation was successful except that they used ketamine to put her down under an aesthetic because they didn't want to waking up and attacking everyone she wouldn't have done that but they were concerned about having her wake up during the operation and ketamine's bad with snakes and when the operation was over her respiration was so slow that I knew if I left her she would just go to sleep and die and I didn't want that to happen so I decided that what I had to do was when somebody comes out of an operation to hospital they'll often pinch your earlobe and that little pain stimulus it'll start to bring you out of the anaesthetic well with snakes you you can tweak the tail like that and so I had her in a locked box at home and every hour day and night for four days and nights i tweaked her tail and brought her out to the anesthetic she was fine and she went back on to display but some years later the tumor came back and we had another operation done that was very successful and she got a plaster on her back and i had to explain that so i brought up sleeping beauties had an operation to remember oh went for the general public when they visited yeah and children started sending in homemade get well cards get well sleeping beauty and so I'd put them in there where she slept and she'd be curled up asleep with all these get well cards.

20:12Or the fan mail. Yeah, and that brought more. And I must have had about 30 get well cards, all hand-drawn by children for Sleeping Beauty to get well, which she did. This is the same King Cobra, obviously, that bit your shoe. And it was a mistake. So you'd forgiven her for that? Oh, of course. Getting back to your work at the safari park, Mark, as you said, you'd taken on the role of curator of reptiles and a big part of that was to demystify and raise awareness of snakes with public talks, interactive experiences and so on. Did you feel like you were making inroads, convincing a few more people that snakes are more fascinating than frightening?

20:50I think so. I mean, certainly in Western cultures where snake bite is a rare occurrence, they're not demonised as much as they once were. Yes. But you mentioned earlier, Mark, that so many people in many parts of the world die of snakebite or have near-death experiences? Yes, a huge number of people. It's a big public health issue, and it is one with a cure. If you can get somebody to hospital in time and you've got antivenom, you'll save their lives. But there's been an antivenom drought because a lot of the big biopharma companies are pulling out of making antivenom. The countries they need to sell it to can't afford to buy much, and they are doing Western drugs, you know, obesity drugs, heart disease drugs, cancer drugs, upstep the real heroes, the Instituto Claudio Mirapicado in Costa Rica, and they produce antivenom for Costa Rica, they produce antivenom for Latin America, and now for Russell's Viper in Sri Lanka, they're producing for Africa, and they produced Taipan antivenom for Papua New Guinea.

21:54You send them the dried venom, and they raise the antivenom on horses and save lives. In fact, you also started working with international teams researching snake bites and antivenom yourself, including Oxford University's Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine and the Australian Venom Research Unit at the University of Melbourne. Well, yes, and it also involved Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine,

22:20Mark O'Shea:which has a very important part to play in snake bites, especially in Africa. So what did they want you to do? If you're going to start doing venom research, I'm not a toxinologist. I'm a field herpetologist. And the first thing you need is the snakes. So when I was working in the 90s out in Papua New Guinea, I'd be working alongside the Oxford clinicians who were treating snake bite and malaria and things. And when there were bites occurring in a certain area, I would go off down there and try and catch them as snakes and bring them back and milk them. And when the Australian Venom Research Unit took over that project in the noughties.

22:57I had a fellowship from them and I was working with them catching taipans. And tell me, how exactly do you milk a snake?