>Come across smol newt
>Take pic rel
>Touch it. It runs away.
Hehehe funny.
>Later look up its Red spotted newt, but also it releases deadly neurotoxin.
Am i gonna die Waufons?
>Come across smol newt. >Take pic rel. >Touch it.
>Come across smol newt
>Take pic rel
>Touch it. It runs away.
Hehehe funny.
>Later look up its Red spotted newt, but also it releases deadly neurotoxin.
Am i gonna die Waufons?
You are fine. I have held these many times with no problem. You have to eat them or something like that.
When they say deadly neurotoxin it's in massive sarcasm quotes
it's the same toxin found in puffer fish and blue ring octopus. Licking or eating the newt could result in death, and it's best to handle them with gloves or wash your hands after touching them to avoid ingesting poison.
a person could argue that they're relatively safe since they're commonly sold in pet stores, but then so are puffers and blue ring octopus. Your average fish store probably has a couple animals that could kill you if you ate them.
it's possible that tank bred newts aren't poisonous, because newts, puffers, and octopus get their poison from their food or their environment. But personally I wouldn't bet my life on it.
>t's possible that tank bred newts aren't poisonous,
wild caught newts, just like wild puffers and blue ring octopus, are very certainly poisonous.
also the bacteria that produce tetrodotoxin in fish, newts, and octopus are found in every aquarium in the world. They're a group of flesh eating bacteria.
The bacteria alone cause many injuries and a few deaths every year, often injuring and killing people that keep fish tanks. They're everywhere.
so just because a newt is raised in an aquarium doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't have the bacteria it needs to produce tetrodotoxin.
those bacteria are in every fish tank.
> they're commonly sold in pet stores, but then so are puffers and blue ring octopus.
Blue ring octopus are sold in stores? Where?
I saw this in a movie, but is it true that while it paralyzes you can still feel pain and stuff?
>Blue ring octopus are sold in stores? Where?
US. They're one of the more common tropical octopus sold for the home aquarium trade. They may be available on LiveAquaria, they often have a few for sale.
>is it true that while it paralyzes you can still feel pain and stuff?
nah, any dose high enough to cause paralysis should cause numbness.
that's the reason people eat fugu, it makes your face pleasantly numb.
one example here in pic
I haven't kept a reef tank in years so I'm not sure how it is now. But when I was keeping saltwater, blue ring octopus were by far the most common octopus in fish stores in the US.
saltwater tanks can have quite a few venomous, poisonous, or sharp animals. Some of them can kill a person.
Freedom!!!
>$200
>for something that you will not have in a year
I would guess the average person buying that animal earns more than $200 per hour. Probably true of people who keep large reef tanks in general.
I wouldn’t mind getting some provided they aren’t giga venomous
>provided they aren’t giga venomous
huh
I think they're usually considered the deadliest venomous animal in the ocean. Some people might rate them second after box jellies.
roughly equivalent to keeping a cobra or something. But not particularly aggressive usually unless you touch them.
>When they say deadly neurotoxin it's in massive sarcasm quotes
TTX is extremely toxic. The Material Safety Data Sheet for TTX lists the oral median lethal dose (LD50) for mice as 334 μg per kg.[47] For comparison, the oral LD50 of potassium cyanide for mice is 8,500 μg per kg,[48] demonstrating that even orally, TTX is more poisonous than cyanide. TTX is even more dangerous if administered intravenously; the amount needed to reach a lethal dose by injection is 8 μg per kg in mice.[49]
it's among the deadliest neurotoxins known to man.
tetrodotoxins are generally listed as the second deadliest natural neurotoxin known to man after botulin toxins.
as to how many red spotted newts a person can lick or eat before dying, the answer is about one. You might get two down but it'll kill ya.
a fun fact about tetrodotoxin is that it kills by paralysis. So what happens is the body becomes paralyzed, and then over the next half hour or so the poison causes the lungs and heart to stop.
meaning you can't move a muscle, can't speak, but are completely aware of what's happening as you die.
>meaning you can't move a muscle, can't speak, but are completely aware of what's happening as you die.
unless of course you drown on your own saliva or choke on your tongue, but you'll be aware of that happening too, and there isn't anything you can do about it.
there is no antidote to tetrodotoxin, the usual treatment is to put the person on a ventilator, hope their heart doesn't stop, and wait a few days to see if they make it.
I didn't know there were newts with TTX. Neat
Another fun fact: if the dose is just right, it can surpress breathing and heart beat to a point where you appear dead, but might still recover after a few days. If you get buried in that time, you wake up in the coffin.
Thats also how a voodoo witch doctor makes zombies. Poison them with TTX, then steal the "corpse" and keep them dosed with nightshades after.
>brightly colored prey animal
>touch it
Humans are moronic
What even is the point of just having poison on your skin? Like yeah you kill whatever eats you I guess but you’re still dead
Makes you wonder how many prehistoric hunter-gatherers died eating innocuous animals and plants they had reason to believe were safe
animals that eat the poison die and some of them will die before they reproduce and eventually all that will be left is animals that for whatever reason WON'T eat the poison.
walla, you're now immune to predators!
>you're now immune to predators!
at least until one of them becomes resistant/immune to your poison and you have to start all over again
someone has to make the sacrifice I guess
This is too strategic for evolution.
>all newts that are eaten die, poisonous or nonpoisonous
>poisonous and nonpoisonous newts still reproduce at the same rate
All this does is facilitate future newt populations. It wouldn't explain how all of these newts became poisonous.
An ancient newt priest cast a spell that made them poisonous.
>became
That's not how evolution works. Some already were poisonous to some degree and were "selected". Some of the "selected" were even more poisonous and were selected further.
That was my point, homie. What natural selection would make them ALL poisonous? The poison would not help that individual procreate. It benefits the future wider species, but evolution only happens when the individual and offspring benefit in terms of reproduction.
>some newts get eaten and die
>some poisonous newts get eaten and die, predator also dies
How do we go from this state to them all being poisonous?
There will be less predators therefore there will be more of the poisonous ones.
and nonpoisonous newts still reproduce at the same rate
this is where you are wrong. The poisonous ones will thrive due to less predators.
cont.
Also this concept may be a bit hard to wrap your mind around because of the predator-prey dynamic. We are dealing with a dynamical system and that makes it complicated. However, you can ignore the dynamical system aspect of it to simplify it.
What stops the normal newts from thriving? How do the predators differentiate between the two if they look the same?
>What stops the normal newts from thriving?
The predators.
>How do the predators differentiate between the two if they look the same?
By dying to the ones that are poisonous. If already adapted, then the poisonous ones can have warning colors, or they can smell different.
>How do we go from this state to them all being poisonous?
basically we don't.
what happens is some newts are mildly poisonous which doesn't kill predators but makes them avoid the newt. This reduces predation on all newts, poisonous or non.
then over time the genes of the poisonous newt spread through the whole population, making them all mildly poisonous just by simple breeding.
next the predator evolves to become immune to this mild toxin, and we now have a population of mildly toxic newts being selected for greater and greater levels of poison.
the simple fact is these newts still have predators that have evolved immunity to their poison, and the back and forth between defense and offense results in greater and greater immunity and toxicity.
So you end up with a newt that will kill a human or a coyote in seconds flat, but still gets eaten by garter snakes daily because they're immune.
also the toxin itself isn't produced in the newt. Like most tetrodotoxins in nature, it's produced by bacteria. So presumably the evolution of toxicity also killed a lot of newts, and they also had to evolve to become immune to it.
>presumably the evolution of toxicity also killed a lot of newts
this is another important selection factor.
if a newt carries tetrodotoxin and is immune to it, and they mate with a newt that is NOT immune, that newt is likely to die.
so not only is the poison selected by predators (reduced predation) but it's also at the same time being selected by the newts (lack of immunity is killing off the nonpoisonous newts).
all of these things are happening at the same time. The newts are evolving immunity to environmental tetrodotoxins, the newts are evolving to carry tetrodotoxins, and their main predator is evolving immunity to the tetrodotoxins in the newts.
However garter snakes eat lots of different things, and perhaps the newts benefit by garter snakes eating them less often. They do still get eaten though, garter snakes are immune to their poison.
the bigger advantage to the newt is that it used to have hundreds of different predators, and now it only has one.
>it used to have hundreds of different predators, and now it only has one.
because the interplay between the newts' toxicity and the snakes' immunity has pumped the toxicity and immunity levels so high that any other animal that's not participating in the game is just going to die if they eat the newt.
also possibly die if they eat the garter snake. It's common for predators of poisonous animals to be poisonous as well. So the arms race benefits both the predator and the prey.
>but makes them avoid the newt
This right here is my confusion. Being toxic doesn't inherently make you a different color or smell bad, like
said.
It must just be a case of mass convergent evolution. This is the type of shit that makes me believe in the simulation more.
>Being toxic doesn't inherently make you a different color or smell bad, like
The predators.
>How do the predators differentiate between the two if they look the same?
By dying to the ones that are poisonous. If already adapted, then the poisonous ones can have warning colors, or they can smell different. said.
yes
but if I eat the newt and get sick I will avoid eating it in future. It's a learning thing. Over a long enough time period it becomes genetic- the predator instinctively knows to avoid newts even if it has never eaten one.
there's actually a whole next level to this that will blow your mind even more.
predators learn and eventually evolve not to eat the newt. So other newts that aren't poisonous evolve to look like the poisonous newt and also don't get eaten.
mimicry is the final chapter of this interplay. Other animals mimic the toxic animal to avoid being eaten.
>Being toxic doesn't inherently make you a different color or smell bad,
also over enough time, it almost always does.
poisonous animals often don't have camouflage, they don't generally hide. Because they don't need to. If a predator eats them, they will die. So instead of hiding they signal with bright colors and strong smells that they are toxic, and predators have evolved to sense these signals and avoid them.
I wonder if somewhere where all the animals are bright the poisonous ones evolved to be brown or dark green
that's a good question
the other one is how do brightly colored poisonous animals benefit in a world full of mammals that are mostly colorblind.
Another question is how toxins target predators. A lot of toxins are deadly to one species while having no effect on others. Sometimes even closely related species vary in how a toxin affects them.
It's likely that many cases of poisons evolving in nature are pure accidents. An animal for whatever reason evolves to accidentally be poisoned by some compound other animals have no problem with. Or an organism accidentally evolves a toxin that for whatever reason only affects certain animals. Including animals that don't normally prey on it, or animals it has never encountered in nature.
one good example of this apparent evolution of accidental toxins is the Sydney Funnel Web spider.
It has venom that's highly specific to primates, despite apparently evolving in a place and time where there were no primates.
another example is dogs being poisoned by chocolate, grapes, onions, etc despite these things being harmless to humans.
toxins seem to appear by accident at least as often as by evolution. Just an odd interplay between various animal physiologies and that of other organisms.
I enjoy your brand of autism.
And yeah, I think it's just the physiologies being similar in specific ways that allow seemingly distantly related animals to be targeted by specific poisons.
>I enjoy your brand of autism.
doubtful. But we aren't currently in a thread about a topic nobody here understands, so people are less likely to get butthurt about it.
>I think it's just the physiologies being similar in specific ways that allow seemingly distantly related animals to be targeted by specific poisons.
undoubtedly true in most cases.
do you suppose the Sydney Funnel Web evolved to target an animal that was physiologically similar to primates but is now extinct in australia?
The venom could have changed subtly over time. Maybe only a few chemical tweaks makes it more effective against primates vs whatever australian creatures they were trying to scare off before. Perhaps killing early aboriginals made them leave the spiders alone.
>doubtful
No I really do like it. Don't sell yourself short 🙂
>The venom could have changed subtly over time.
good point. They've had enough time around humans if the change wasn't too big.
>This is the type of shit that makes me believe in the simulation more.
Plenty of extremely intelligent people have had their minds broken by trying to understand biology.
so they werent extremely intelligent
to understand biology and evolution you gotta be able to let go from one of the strongest human instincts: trying to find a deeper meaning in everything. nothing has a meaning in evolutionary biology, there's no higher conscious entity selecting traits to fulfill an objective, everything happens by chance which is influenced by uncountable variables including how every celestial body close to earth is behaving. an evolutionary path that happened with a species might be completely invalid to others, everything is extremely chaotic and random, as every entity involved in life is acting according to their immediate surroundings and needs, being completely oblivious to everything else
>This right here is my confusion. Being toxic doesn't inherently make you a different color or smell bad
But prey preferences range from genetic to heritable memes and a predator population that either naturally goes for the motions of a newt, or learns to from their parents, won't last. One that's further away from the majority of the newts and never had interest in them will
Then you have garter snakes which developed an immunity at the same pace as as the newts developed toxins
You're oversimplifying.
>some newts get eaten and die
>some poisonous newts get eaten and die, predator also dies
>some newts leave their tail and escape, but have to deal with the predator again in the future
>some poisonous newts leave their tail and escape, killing the predator in the process
>some newts laid eggs before getting eaten by a predator, leaving their eggs unguarded
>some poisonous newts laid eggs before getting eaten by a predator, killing the most immediate threat to the eggs in the process
Life isn't a pass/fail game. There's outcomes in between thriving and dying, and that's where evolution has room to get weird with it.
>walla
prescriptivists are a diamond dozen
would you prefer bone apple teeth
>Makes you wonder how many prehistoric hunter-gatherers died eating innocuous animals and plants they had reason to believe were safe
probably very few since humans are able to pass on information in a single lifetime or generation. Grandpa died eating that mushroom? Don't eat that mushroom. Teach your kids and friends not to eat that mushroom. Problem solved fast.
Takes a few days to accomplish what other animals take millions of years to learn. That's part of the secret of human success.
only great drawback is that critical information can get lost and have to be learned all over again.
>only great drawback is that critical information can get lost and have to be learned all over again.
as OP proves.
Alternative take, information that is no longer relevant - or actually counter productive - is easier to remove
because if there were 100 hungry hogs and 900 neurotoxic newts the hungry hogs would die before being able to eat all the neurotoxic newts
OP is a goner guys.
Haha yeah
kek, I picked up a whole bunch of these with my bare hands when I found a pond full of them at the end of summer last year.
As long as you aren't ingesting their toxins (read: licking your hands or touching food before washing) after handling them, you're fine.
Although you should wash your hands ASAP after handling them (but that goes for any reptile/amphibian, really). It could still potentially irritate your skin.
cute!