The Most Expensive Liquid In The World—And Those Who Farm It

My spouse and I recently visited a friend in Arizona.

We were walking through his house, getting settled into our guest rooms. In one of the rooms, I saw a dead scorpion on the ground. It wasn’t alone. When you live in a desert area, you have to spray for scorpions, much like we spray for bugs here in Florida.

It even works like bug spray, drawing the scorpions out with a poison that baits and kills them. It was unsettling to see baby scorpions going belly up in random spots — but better them dead than alive and in my shoe.

What many don’t realize is that scorpion venom is the most expensive liquid in the world. One liter can be sold for around $10 million—and it provides an immediate benefit to humans.

Where they farm it

In Turkey, there’s a farm that has 20,000 live scorpions and a dozen employees.

If you worked as a “milker”, you’d arrive each day and sit across from a peer (they pair attendants for safety reasons).

You would slowly and very methodically work to get tiny drops from a quota of scorpions. It’s an extremely sketchy job—by some estimates, scorpions are one of the five deadliest animals in the world.

To milk it, you place a scorpion in between a pair of rubber tongs, triggering its defense mechanism. You might notice in the above picture that there are two boxes with wires attached to them.

The boxes are used to administer a light electrical charge that doesn’t hurt the scorpion, but does cause it to release venom.

Why they care about scorpion venom

It makes sense when you think about it. The venom is loaded with neurotoxins — which typically block ion channels that enable nerves to activate.

There is a list of drugs that do this exact thing on the market right now, which is why venom is so valuable for medical uses.

Venom is also used to make antivenom, which is extremely expensive and goes bad quickly. Each scorpion produces 2 milligrams of venom per day.

A farm typically only collects 2 grams per day. It’s currently used to make cosmetics and painkillers. After the venom is collected, it’s usually frozen (or turned into a powder) and then shipped abroad.

The facility in Turkey breeds its own scorpions because it is too tedious to find them in the wild. Fortunately, the scorpions have lots of babies.

One gallon of venom could sell for more than $37 million. I’d certainly like $37 million— but I’m not sure I can start a scorpion farm. One, because my girlfriend is terrified of critters. Two, because I am too.

Milking scorpions is an inherently dangerous job and employees are routinely stung. Facilities keep an anti-venom on them at all times.

This isn’t the only bizarre farm out there

One of the strangest facilities I’ve ever heard of is horseshoe crab blood farms.

Their blood is farmed before they are released back into the ocean. Why? Because their blood has saved millions of lives.

It has a superpower, amebocytes, which can find infinitely small traces of bacteria and trap them within “inseparable clots”. Pharmaceutical companies use it to test medicines for bacterial contaminations.

Here’s the crazy part: a huge number of clinical drug undergo this test. (also called the Limulus Amebocyte Lysate test). The market is enormous. There are huge horseshoe crab blood farms all around the the world—that make huge money.

Scientists typically take a sample of their blood and release the horseshoe crabs back into the water. As with the scorpions, I do feel bad these creatures are put under such stress. They are among the oldest species on earth. They’re 445 million years old and called “living fossils”.

Imagine your species’ blood is prized by some other dominant species. It’s not an ideal situation.

I will note that it’s slightly troubling we give a hall pass to animal testing on creatures that aren’t cute. I know that if we were farming dolphin blood instead of scorpion venom, we’d all be up in arms. I certainly would be.

Perhaps we draw distinctions along lines of intelligence, cute factor, and other qualities we find redeeming in other humans.

The truth is — there are many weird venom farms all around us. Sometimes, it is for science. Other times, for fake medicine.

Cobra farms are frequent offenders, as there are many in Asia that sell unproven medical treatments (though there is potential for this venom through medical research)..

There are other strange ways to make money with animal liquids.

A team of fishermen in Yemen collected 280 lbs of whale vomit and sold it for $1.5 million. The vomit was “floating gold” because it had a special substance, ambergris. It’s produced in crustaceans, which whales eat en masse.

The fishermen found the whale carcass while pulling up nets. it smelled of a strong fecal odor — which was a sign it might have ambergris inside of it. Ironically, this substance is used to make perfumes last longer.

The fishermen all walked away much richer — buying themselves new cars and houses.

The takeaway

This world is rich with occupations one might never imagine and animals who benefit our health in surprising ways.

Lastly, while I might have scared you regarding deadly scorpions — know that most aren’t deadly. Only 30 of 1500 breeds can actually kill you. But tread carefully before launching your next scorpion farm.

This completes another chapter of weird articles by Sean.