Reflections Underwater by Degany Oded;

Author:Degany, Oded;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pelagic Publishing

The beautiful blue-ringed octopus is among the deadliest animals in the sea. Its salivary glands host dense colonies of TTX-producing bacteria, providing the bacteria with ideal living conditions while using the toxin they produce for defense and preying purposes. Lembeh Strait, Indonesia.

Black-spotted pufferfish. Dauin, Philippines.

Between 1982 and 1984, a young Harvard ethnobiologist named Wade Davis traveled to Haiti in search of the secret of zombie poison. Davis interviewed a few bokes and collected samples of zombie powders. He found that these powders included TTX ingredients extracted from pufferfish and suggested that the symptoms of TTX poisoning are very similar to what Narcisse had exhibited when hospitalized; it induced a coma that mimicked the appearance of death. Moreover, Davis argued that there are similarities between the symptomatology of Haitian zombies and fugu poisoning victims.

The hypothesis that Haitian zombies are made through the use of TTX present in pufferfish was criticized by the scientific community, who argued that it was “bad science” that led Davis and others to rush to conclusions regarding the effects and traces of TTX as a zombie drug. Nevertheless, it seems that the question of zombification in Haiti should be left open, for many reasons, including the widespread Haitian beliefs in zombies, the appearance of TTX in some zombie powders that have been analyzed, the known effects of TTX to induce suspended animation that is almost the same as death, and the well-known effect of predisposed culturally induced drug experiences.

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