I'm going to show you the effects of the hemotoxin in venom on blood, OK?

STEVE LUDWIN: I'm going to show you the effects of the
hemotoxin in venom on blood, OK?
And you can already see pretty quickly, it's kind of
congealing. discovery channel animals
It's quite gloopy.
And I'm beginning to wonder if that's such a good thing to be
happening in my body.
Sometimes I think, god, that can't be good.
I don't have a medical background.
I have no fucking idea what it's doing to my body.
If I did die due to snake venom or whatever, I'm sure
it'll be quite funny to a lot of people.
And they'll go, you see?
You see?
And even to myself, as I was floating out of my body and
looking down below, I'm sure I'd be laughing my ass off.
Like, you idiot.
You're not supposed to inject snake venom, you fool.

My name is Steve Ludwin, and I've been self-immunizing with
various snake venoms for well over 20 years now.
I'm kind of embarrassed.
I mean, I don't know have that medical background.
I don't even have a proper
American high school education.
There's been quite a few doctors and scientists that
have been horrified by my lack of having things that are
sterile and stuff like that. discovery channel animals

We have our Lower Baja rattlesnake.

And bang.
You see that?
That's one unhappy rattle snake.
Relax.

I've always been in good health.
I haven't had something like the flu in
coming up on nine winters.
And as I've gotten older, people have started to
comment, oh wow, you don't seem like you're 46 years old.
I had some doctors do tests on my skin, and they were all
kind of a little bit baffled.
All right, buddy.
Up.
This girl doesn't really like it very much.
This is why I'm always nervous holding a viper because they
can spin their fangs around and actually go through their
lip to get your fingers.
This snake is not wanting to be milked.
Sometimes that happens.

I had quite an unusual sort of upbringing.
I'm the son of a Pan Am pilot.
I had a real "Catch Me If You Can" Leonardo
DiCaprio sort of lifestyle.
I had a credit card.
It just said Pan Am on it with my name, Steve Ludwin, and I
could get on any plane, as long as I was
wearing a tie, for free.
My father took me down to the Miami Serpetarium, when I was
about nine years old, and I got to meet this now famous
herpetologist called Bill Haast.
He was the first westerner to start injecting himself with
snake venom.
He started in 1948.
I was very young and impressionable.
I loved snakes.
From that moment on after meeting him, I was like wow,
you can become immune to snake venom?
This is crazy.
That's called vaccinology.
It's the oldest form of medicine apparently.
When I was about 17, I was like, I've got to get that
venom into me somehow.
This is called a Pope's tree viper, and I'm a little bit
wary of them.
But it's a beautiful snake.
Don't know if you can see those fangs.
Do you see that fang?
It's a hemotoxin and it's going to cause massive tissue
destruction.
People have died from these snakes, so you do not want
that on your finger.
I moved to London in 1987, and I started working in East End.
It was called The Vivarium.
And basically my job for 1 pound 60 an hour was to unpack
cobras and scorpions and tarantulas and reptiles for
zoos and laboratories.