For a 2-foot-long lizard, the Gila monster has had an outsized impact on modern pharmaceuticals. Gila monsters have natural hormones, called GLP-1 inhibitors, that allow the animals to fast all winter long. Research into those inhibitors helped spawn recent blockbuster GLP-1 medications, like Ozempic, for diabetes and weight loss.
So when a local Gila monster needed help fighting off a nasty gastrointestinal parasite, it only seemed fair that a pharmaceutical expert stepped in to help.
Pebbles the Gila Monster has lived for nearly a decade at the Creature Conservancy, a nonprofit wildlife education organization and rescue-animal refuge just south of Ann Arbor…