Tim Friede turned his body into a testing ground. Not for science, at first—but for survival. He was a truck mechanic in Wisconsin with a love for snakes. But Friede didn’t just handle them. He let them bite him.

Scientists identified antibodies that neutralized the poison in whole or in part from the bites of cobras, mambas and other deadly species.

Californian autodidact herpetologist Tim Friede has spent the last two decades deliberately injecting himself with hundreds of snake venom shots, all in an attempt to make him immune to fatal