Venom Doc

Steve Irwin meets David Attenborough in this jaw-dropping account of studying the world’s most venomous creatures.

Venomologist Bryan Grieg Fry has one of the most dangerous jobs on earth: he works with its deadliest creatures. He’s been bitten by twenty-six venomous snakes, been stung by three stingrays, and survived a near-fatal scorpion sting while deep in the Amazon jungle. He’s received more than four hundred stitches and broken twenty-three bones, including breaking his back in three places, and had to learn how to walk again. But when you research only the venom you yourself have collected, the adventures—and danger—never stop.

Imagine a three-week-long first date in Siberia catching venomous water shrews with the daughter of a Russian war hero; a wedding attended by Eastern European prime ministers and their machine-gun-wielding bodyguards and snakes; or leading a team to Antarctica that results in the discovery of four new species of venomous octopi. Bryan’s discoveries have radically reshaped views on venom evolution and contributed to the creation of venom-based life-saving medications. In pursuit of venom, he has traveled the world collecting samples from Indonesia to Mexico, Germany, and Brazil. He’s encountered venomous creatures of all kinds, including the Malaysian king cobra, the Komodo dragon, and the brush-footed trapdoor spider. Bryan recounts his lifelong passion for studying the world’s most venomous creatures in this outlandish, captivating memoir, where he and danger are never far apart.

Bryan Grieg Fry was born in 1970 to a Norwegian mother and American father and educated in the US, attending Portland State University before pursuing a PhD in Australia at the University of Queensland’s Centre for Drug Design and Development. His papers and articles have been published widely in academic journals and in the trade media, including Wired, Cosmos, and National Geographic, and he has appeared in documentaries and television programs. He is Associate Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Queensland where he is group leader of the Venomics Laboratory. He resides in Queensland, Australia.