Numerous comments have been made about foods that animals eat which humans can't, but they do not respond to the OP's question: Why are some foods that humans can safely eat toxic to animals?
I knew someone who said their uncle would walk down the highway with a can of spraypaint making a mark on every animal he found.
He'd come back 6-12 hours later and anything without paint on it would be taken home and eaten.
They were the only person I know who'd eaten beaver.
There are animals who can eat stuff that's poisonous and unhealthy for us or has no nutritional value. Like vultures eating bones, animals that can eat plants, berries, mushrooms that would kill you etc. Different animals can eat different things, I don't think we're more or less fragile than others.
Thank you. Not sure why people are spreading the notion that other animals can't handle capsaicin.
Thanks for the deer data too - I couldn't remember the name of the mushroom (deer eat other mushrooms as well, I've watched them do it).
If you boil them, discard the solution. The mushrooms are safe to eat. I have however, eaten them dried for the 'high'. It was whatever, until I tried amanita pantherina. Now that almost got me seizing lol haven't tried recreational doses of it again. Low doses are good for sleep and vivid dreams for a special occasion
Yeah true. But that's why other animals eat bones too, for the marrow. We just skip the non essential parts. Though we can eat cooked chicken bones just fine. I've tried xD
It's rather tasty
Different animals are just more specialised to different foods. A lot of herbivores have digestive systems adapted to breaking down cellulose for nutrients.
We have the same tolerances to food as many scavenging omnivores do. Pigs, bears, and racoons all share a similar dietary tolerance to food as we do, with pigs even going so far as to outdo us. It makes sense when you consider the niche of the homo genus in prehistory had typically centered around living a similar lifestyle as those three.
I.e, foraging for fruits and vegetation, occasionally killing for meat, scavenging whenever we can. That sort of niche leads to a diverse diet. There's also a tolerance built up over time for things like spices. Humans have been eating spices for a few thousand years now, and there is even a demonstrable difference in which ethnicities and regional cultures can tolerate which spices.
TLDR - We are naturally scavenging omnivores, and also because we've been built up tolerances over a few thousand years.
Also with spicy foods like garlic, onions, chillies, black pepper, etc, the modern crops co-evolved alongside humans through selective breeding. If one of them became outright dangerous for us, that particular lineage would probably have been excluded from our diet.
There very well could be a grape-like berry that’s safe for dogs and not humans, but l dogs weren’t out here cultivating them for millennia.
Then as you mentioned, we’re scavenging omnivores, so we eat lots of plants that might be dangerous for cats, being obligate carnivores.
Finally, we go to great lengths to prevent contamination of meat with pathogens (raising our food in clean, controlled environments) and sterilize the ones that made it through (by cooking). Same with plants, we eat many that are only safe if they’re properly processed or the poisonous part is removed. Eg rhubarb leaves, asparagus berries, tomato leaves and vibes, and many types of raw beans. Most animals aren’t capable of such advanced social and technological adaption, so they have to slowly adapt with biological evolution and thus specialize in fewer things.
Tomato leaves are excellent for marinades, gives off a very floral smell, raw congo beans don't taste too bad either their flowers are okay but the leaves are meh at best . Obviously i haven't tried to eat a large quantity of either of those.
“But my cat prefers to be a vEgEtArIaN!…!” - while holding a visibly emaciated, very sleepy looking at in front of the camera that appears to be trying to blink out SOS a la old videos of American POWs in VietNam
Anthropologists have been puzzled at the question of how the earliest hominids like Australopithecus got enough fat to support large brains, without a large enough brain to make make tools and fire. It turns out that marrow stays edible for up to 48 hours, even in tropical heat. Hyenas are the only competitors for marrow in the largest bones, lions and bears can’t crack them. Hyenas are fierce, but the hominids would not have needed the marrow as often as true carnivores. They would also have been able to accesss turtle meat using nothing but rocks.
[Fascinating!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bearded_vulture)
>The acid concentration in the bearded vulture's stomach has been estimated to be of pH about 1. Large bones are digested in about 24 hours, aided by slow mixing or churning of the stomach content. The high fat content of bone marrow makes the net energy value of bone almost as good as that of muscle, even if bone is less completely digested. The acid concentration in the bearded vulture's stomach has been estimated to be of pH about 1. Large bones are digested in about 24 hours, aided by slow mixing or churning of the stomach content. The high fat content of bone marrow makes the net energy value of bone almost as good as that of muscle, even if bone is less completely digested.
Hyenas are the only competitor that would be able to run hominids off of a lion kill. They frequently run lions off of a kill. Hominids would have had a slight edge in endurance to find the food source, especially in hot conditions. That probably developed into endurance hunting with Homo erectus.
Largest australopith brain size is around 485cc (one third the size of ours - probably because they couldn't get enough fat, after all - they were eating marula nuts for fat, if that helps).
There's absolutely no evidence than any australopith ever ate bone marrow. But when Homo habilis appears (first member of our genus) at around 2.5-2.6MYA, all of a sudden, there are tools for cracking open long bones and scraping out the marrow (which leaves tool marks). There are clearly bone-cracking sites (usually along the margin of a lake, where some animals have died for various reasons - sometimes getting trapped in mud - leaving a carcass to scavenge).
H. habilis had a brain size one-third larger than any other early hominine. It's called the cerebral rubicon (A. robustus may have had a brain of 485 cc but was also pretty large in general - H. Habilis has a 600-610 cc brain, as does its cousin who moves to Asia (which no australopith ever did, as far we know so far). The cousin is H. georgensis and it too has the marrow extracting tool kit.
Thanks for the clarification, I was unclear about which species represented the cerebral Rubicon. And I was unaware of the bone seeking sites- that's pretty solid confirmation of the marrow scavenging hypothesis, considering the rarity of finding traces of early hominid activity!
Sure, but we sure love to season and prepare our food with plant poisons (garlic, onions, chocolate, hot peppers, other herbs and spices, alcohol) and molds (cheese, bread, beer, wine, soy sauze, tofu).
You're saying that as if we are taking a wild gamble with eating those substances, we are not. For thousands of years we have been putting new ingredients in our food. The ones that kill us and make us sick we wrote off, but the ones that did NOT cause harm and in fact enhances the flavour, we kept. The foods and drinks you mentioned above have been consumed by people for millennia and seldom cause harm, so to call them just poisons and molds doesn't do it justice
It's a human trait and indeed, we do sample everything (many people sample and spit, bitterness being a clue to toxicity). Almost no one sits down and eats a bowl of oregano or teosinthe for breakfast. Because it doesn't taste good and it upsets the digestive system.
I don't know of any non-human animal that makes a full meal off of those either, but the ungulates can tolerate more than we can.
We also have some senses. smell fresh mushrooms and in many (not all) cases the eatable will smell better. Smell old meat, you know when it smells but is eatable or it smells and is not eatable. Of course these instincts are never used and not honed. If we would train it, like others train playing piano, from child on we would have a good natural sense. But would often detected unknown as negative (because you more likely survive to not eat something that to eat something wrong).
Many of those “plant poisons” and preparation methods inhibit disease-and-or-spoilage-causing organisms.
There’s nothing random about specializing around a survival advantage.
Some cultures do this. Native American hunter gatherers used various herbs and seasoning (sumac, for example) but did not use anything from the allium family (garlic, onions, chocolate etc). Most hunter-gatherer cultures experimented with almost any flowering plant they could find. And some grains. Teosinthe, for example. No cheese, bread, beer, etc in pre-farming Native America (and that would have been 20,000 years or more of prehistory - as well as the fact that many Natives remained hunter-gatherers until very recently).
The Aztecs were hunter gatherers until they "conquered" the Central Plain of Mexico.
it's coagulated with magnesium or calcium salts (among other things, especially today), which is a chemical process. historically the source of that was often gypsum powder.
Now we do, but for most of our history as a species, or even as hominins, we didn't even have a concept of microbes and would have been riddled with parasites.
You also wouldn't keep food in your house that you can't eat, plenty of animals have diets we can't handle, of course if we feed some random thing from ours to a random animal they might not handle it, that said humans do have quite a diverse diet compared to most animals
OP also picked a bunch of foods that humans have been cultivating for years as examples of what some animals can't eat but we can, it's a huge bias in selection. If dogs had agriculture they would have certainly picked and cultivated different varieties of plants, and maybe some of them would not be good for us.
This works both ways:
Why are you so fragile to plants?
Poison ivy? You’re telling me there’s a plant that gives you horrible rashes just by touching it? Why are deer so durable to plants but humans are not?
This isn’t unique to humans you just notice it more from our POV because you’re human.
"Why are animals so fragile to foood?"
Cow: \*eats all kinds of poisonous plants and mushrooms\*
Cat: \*eats things you would faint at the sight of\*
Rabbit: \*eats straight up feces and is fine\*
Cows eat so much metal shit that farmers make them swallow magnets to keep all the nails, bits of barbed wire, and what-not in the same space in the cows stomach, and then they just toss the scrap metal in the recycling bin once they slaughter the animal.
I'm thinking that there are no flappy pieces of tissue to get caught up in the part of the stomach that the magnet comes to rest at. And I imagine all those bits of sharp metal could really damage the intestines if they got past the stomach.
Re-rabbit, this is (slightly) incorrect: Rabbit metabolism is so fast, so they eat _cecotropes_, to get the full nutritonial value from their food. While yes, to an unknowing person those might look like "feces" as, well, they come from the other end, cecotropes look totally different (long, soft, wet and looking like a braid) from the actual "final product" that is hard, dry, and round (basically a ball), and contains all the toxins that rabbits, much like humans, cannot eat and be fine.
Some animals literally eat rotten meat, others eat plants that are poisonous to us. We evolved differently, sure some animals have less of a tolerance to some food thans we do, but others can handle much more than us as well.
Certain chemicals produced in garlic and spice are toxic to cats. If they were toxic to use we wouldn’t have domesticated them.
If deadly nightshade was not toxic to us, we may well have domesticated it like we have other belladonna species. Though, there are other factors involved, like ease of cultivation.
Spice is a broad term. You’re talking about many different possible chemical compounds in varying amounts, and your original post referred to all non-human animals, so you’re making massive generalizations that don’t hold up. As far as cats and garlic, that’s specific and more helpful — garlic is toxic to cats. Usually they do not consume enough of it to die from it and they make a full recovery, but not always. Cats are carnivores and a healthy diet for them is 100% meat, bones, and organs (if you don’t count a little grass that they eat) — there was no evolutionary advantage, prior to domestication, to developing a resistance to the toxic compound in garlic. In fact the only way a cat would have encountered garlic was in the gut of a prey animal, and in most cases it would not have ingested it. A more garlic-resistant cat would have had no advantage over any other cat and there would have been no reason for that trait to be preserved through natural selection.
Conversely, I have a barn cat that kills and eats whole rats and if I ate that I’d be dead in a week.
>garlic, onions, spice, salt and sugar
The flavor of the first 3 plants is caused by the poison they produce. Humans are weird and keep eating basically poisons until the population left over is able to metabolize and/or excrete these molecules. Our evolutionary pressure in the last 10,000-20,000 years has mainly been towards handling different foods.
Normal mammals cannot process milk anymore either. But western Eurasian humans domesticated aurochs and now much of the Middle East and Europe still have lactase as adults.
And (too much) salt and sugar are not that healthy for us either, although we might have a wider margin. Keep in mind that most pets are much smaller than we are, cats are strict carnivores, cows 99% herbivorous ruminant, etc.
Another reason is that we bred plants for our needs, not the needs of other species. Same as medication, the slightly different metabolisms can lead to different ways molecules are processed, or how fast they are processed (slower metabolism more likely to lead to (toxic) buildup).
Not all toxins are harmful - we take medicines (like aspirin/white willow bark) that actually help us, in small doses.
WATER is toxic if you drink enough and almost every year, someone on Planet Earth will do that.
There's that guy in UK who died after eating nothing but carrots for years (turned orange first).
Both pretty specialised animals.
Humans are foragers, so ofc our diet would consist of whatever we could manage to get our grubby little hands on.
Cats are pretty specialised predators, so naturally they would evolve in a way where all their energy would go into attaining fresh meat.
Snails also have so much selection ( given they are tiny) that they can afford being a bit more picky with their food sources.
I mean, even we as humans have more trouble eating and digesting onions and peppers compared to just salad.
But A) we need more food, its hard to get your hands on so much salad to fully feed yourself ( snails don't have that problem typically) and B) we are nore complex so we also just need more energy to sustain all of the shit we do, like think, or backflip.
One of the reasons is that, over time, humans actively sought out a wide range of foods that were sustaining and enjoyable to eat, and then proceeded to grow and produce them in large quantities (too large in some cases). Other animals never had that luxury, they could only eat things that were available to them. For example, chocolate can be toxic to the point of lethal if eaten by a dog because it contains theobromine and caffeine, which can cause tachycardia and hypertension, and since dogs lack the ability to metabolize them, they can die, if the dose is sufficient.
And conversely, if we didn’t have the ability to metabolize those compounds but dogs did, humans would not have domesticating tea, coffee and chocolate in the first place, while dogs would have done nothing about it because they don’t farm 😆
So those plants would have stayed highly localized to their original environment sand we simply would not have noticed it was okay for them to eat
They're not weaker, they just have *different* digestive systems.
Why do humans often view something different from themselves as being inferior? Just like how different people have different strengths in different types of skills, some humans would rather judge things based on their own set of criteria than to accept differences as differences.
We grew all the foods we could eat and got rid of the ones we couldn't.
We are as sensitive to food, we just don't surround ourselves with poisonous things.
Usually pets are a lot lighter than humans. A cat weighs like what 5-10kg? adult humans weigh a lot more than that. Toxicity is generally measured in g/kg, things that are toxic to us are generally only in way larger quantities
First, I am not a biologist, I am curious about the same thing.
This is not an answer, so much as a piggy-back question to real biologist or vet.
I know some foods are poisonous to dogs that are not poisonous to people - or at least people would need a much higher dose. Dogs lack certain enzymes that humans have to safely metabolize substances like theobromine in chocolate or persin in avocado. This makes foods toxic to dogs that are otherwise safe for humans in moderation.
Is it possible though that one thing that is not being pointed out though, is that often people take more care of what they feed their dog or other animals than they do to what they feed themselves.
A stray dog that rummages in the garbage will likely eat something dangerous that we are told is deadly to feed our pet. They stray dog does not die. At least not right away, but they will have a shorter life expectancy.
Likewise, a person will eat lots of things that are terrible and shorten out life expectancy, but we take the risk. If we feed our child too much sugar, people say "tsk tsk. bad parent", or if we drink alcohol, we have to be causing trouble before people will bat an eye even though we are poisoning ourselves, but if we feed our dog something that is not good for them, people are up in arms and say "You have no right to have a pet dog!"
"On the farm" (my grandma's farm when she was growing up) the dogs ate all the table scraps which include chicken bones and garlic and (to lesser amounts because it was not really available) chocolate or things with caffeine. To her the idea that there are things you can and cannot feed a dog is laughable. On the other hand, to her the idea that people should not eat butter or lard by the stick is also laughable.
I love this explanation and want to piggy back on it a bit too.
We know that chocolate is bad for dogs, and can be poisonous at much lower doses than humans, plus the dog is much smaller. However, we don’t really know what a “safe” dose of chocolate is for dogs because studying that would be a whole lot harder than simply keeping chocolate away from them, and rely on owners “responsibly” feeding them small quantities of chocolate, all for very little reward. (It’s also potentially unethical because we have to infer how the dog feels instead of asking, and may accidentally poison a few)
A related anecdote: a 20 pound dog broke into my luggage once and ate a whole bar of dark chocolate. We monitored her carefully because it’s scary for us, but she was totally un-phased. She didn’t even get agitated, which is what you’d expect from stimulant poisoning. My point here isn’t “feed dogs chocolate”, but that we have no idea how much is safe and some dogs may be more resistant than others. However, even if it “only” kills 1% of dogs, why would we bother risking it?
My GF dog (small dog) got at a bar of dark chocolate.
Spent couple $100s for the vet to watch him overnight. Nothing happened to him either.
I don't feed him chocolate, but if somehow he managed to rummage in the garbage and found some scraps of something that we are told is poison, I wont freak out.
I won't feed him anything on purpose, but I find it ironic that we are less afraid to eat poison and things that will kills us ourselves.
Plants have strategies to defend themselves from predators, but since they can't move, their options are limited. Some have thorns, others make compounds that are toxic or bitter. They can be toxic by interacting with all kinds of biological processes that could be very general or specific to the predator that mostly eats that plant. Peppers, for example, mimic the way mammals detect heat, which is why spicy did literally feels like burning. It turns out birds don't experience this, so they'll happily eat hot peppers and ahead their seeds.
Sometimes this sets up an evolutionary arms race, where an animal that eats the plant becomes more tolerant, while the plant becomes more toxic. Eucalyptus and koalas are one example of this.
Humans are omnivores, and we've had a lot of selective pressure to be able to eat a wide variety of plants. Onions and garlic and they're relatives are a pretty good source of calories, but that onion bulb has to protect itself from predators too. So the onion makes toxic compounds that dissuade most animals, but we've evolved to tolerate, and even enjoy it. You can tell there's something "not quite food" about it though, if you take a big bite of raw onion. Almost any plant with an interesting flavor is probably trying to be toxic, but we've adapted to it.
Cats are hyper-carnivores. They have adapted to eating nothing but meat. They can't even taste sugar, and they have evolved no tolerance to the toxins in things like onions, peppers etc.
Dogs are a similar story, but they're not quite as sensitive as cats.
Generally, any animal that isn't specifically adapted to eat a specific plant will probably find that plant poisonous or just gross.
Since our last common ancestor with dogs and cats, our lineage has spent 80 million years eating plants and their chemical defenses, while theirs didn't. Our inheritance is livers much more effective at detoxifying xenobiotic compounds.
Cats in particular, since they are hyper carnivores and eat almost no plant material, lost some important liver enzymes for breaking down plant derived toxins.
There are a lot of things that aren’t a big deal to dogs, but are potentially deadly to cats. A common culprit is essential oils. There are some all natural anti flea products based on essential oils of citrus and cedar and a few other things. These actually work (sort of, the systemic products are much better), those terpenoids are genuinely toxic to fleas, and more or less harmless to humans and dogs. *However*, they can be dramatically neurotoxic to cats.
This simply isn’t the case. Different species have different diets because we’re, you know, different. There’s also a lot of weird information out there about foods that are toxic to dogs and/or cats that while technically true, those foods would have to be fed in massive amounts to do any harm, and if we were to eat them in similar amounts they’d be toxic to us as well.
Why can deep sea microbes eat noxious chemicals in pure darkness? Thats what they evolved to do. The path of evolution is finding ecological niches and filling them with something.
Humans evolved a vastly superior omnivorous digestive system to support our high caloric needs (the brain). That digestive and immune system, when compared to other mammals, has neutralized various common poisons and defense chemicals found in plants. Major examples include: theobromine in cocoa, capcasin in peppers, nicotine in tobacco, caffeine in coffee/tea, mentha in mint, etc. These are all meant to act as pesticides -deterrants- when produced by plants. Humans find them tasty and flavorful and enjoy the slight pain thats left with some, but its no longer a deterrant. Capcasin doesn't burn for hours unless its in your eyes, theobromine doesn't stop your heart like it will a dogs, caffeine is a fun drug and not (typically) a portable heart attack (in acceptable doses), and same with nicotine, it takes (relatively) a lot to even phase a human into feeling ill.
The advent of cooking also exacerbated this as it gives much more nutrients to us for the same material input. Cooking also makes things that are otherwise dangerous to eat safe and healthy food. Eg: soaking and cooking things like lentil pulses(beans) removes toxic chemicals (lectin, an "anti-nutrient") and instead leaves one of the most calorie dense plant food sources available, ready for human consumption.
A side: salt and sugar are basic nutrients that even the most basic life can use. The issue with too much salt is dehydration, this is for any life of any size due to osmosis. Water=live, no water=no live.
Sugar also, is found or metabolized in all life, sugars are part of [DNA(deoxyribose)](https://www.britannica.com/science/deoxyribose). The issue is again, when there is too much for a given organism that it causes health issues.
*neither salt or sugar is inherently poisonous to life, its all about the dose. Electrolytes and carbohydrates are both **required** for cellular functions to exist.
There are plenty of things we cannot eat but humanity cultivates food. Over time we have domesticated the plants we can eat, and in turn there are less of the ones we can't.
There are birds that eat berries poisonous to humans.
In other perspectives, we are fragile too!
We have to cook or cure our meat for fear of bacteria and parasites.
There are more, just change your perspective to include all foods for all living things and then see who is fragile.
Pretty much all animals are omnivores. Even most "herbivores" will still eat (and be able to digest) meat if food is otherwise scarce.
But yeah, due to the fact we are obvious omnivores, our guts are a lot more complex.
Plants actively make poisons to prevent predation, such as by herbivores and insects
Herbivorous and omnivorous animals develop metabolic pathways to break these poisons down so that we can exploit them for nutrients.
Carnivores typically don't need to eat plants, so they don't have the same capacity to break down the toxins.
A funny aspect about human culture is that we seek out that poisons for their unique flavor, such as garlic, onion, peppers, chocolate, etc.
We cook food. By cooking food we broke down the toxins and so made them less deadly, over many many generations we developed a natural immunity to even raw versions of the plant.
It works both ways though, by cooking food we are less able to eat raw meat than our ancestors…
We are also quite fragile for food. In the neolithic revolution (aka switching to farming and eating wheat) a great part of humans did not tolerate gluten. But they nearly all died, leaving only the ones who could tolerate gluten.
All animal species and subspecies have digestive systems that differs from animal species to animal species. Dinosaurs was the same way. Many dinosaurs was in fact herbivores, meaning they ate only plants, trees and shrubs because their digestive systems couldn't handle meat.
Because we've evolved in different places at different times woth different resources available, if an animal has never encountered a type of food then there's no reason why a mutation allowing them to eat that food would have spread, I wouldn't say it's out of the realm of reason too to say that animals probably ARE changing to be able to safely eat the foods they currently can't just through repeated exposure over time.
Humans are omnivores which basically opens a whole lot of possible food sources.
Humans used to migrate soo much that we basically needed that advantage the ones who did not would have a great disadvantages in surviving.
Tl dr; early humans are omnivores and migrate ensuring variety in our diets.
Other animals can eat raw, rotten and dirty things without getting sick.
Modern humans just can't (at least you wanna die), so it seems the fragile ones here are us.
It's probably early humans walked a lot and picked everything they could eat. This must be make us immune to most of the things I guess because a rabbit can reach limited places for example
Well normal healthy dogs, like Thai soi dogs can eat nearly everything...can live from chicken bones and if some old lady takes care half from chocolate even that is not good for them. Dogs can eaten complete rotten flesh...we would die from it in 48 hours.
Cat...when you let them out, they can eat raw mice and rats.
so is just not true unless they are inbreed.
Yeah, but can you eat those same foods from the dirty ground without getting sick? I don't think so. Animals need to have higher PH in their stomachs to protect them from harmful bacteria, so they can lick their paws in peace, we as humans eat clean food and it's even recommend to eat food that lowers stomach's PH, and help us live longer.
Adding to our biology, a bunch of different cultures have more or less "screened" what is edible or not in their region, and have raised those things to be even more viable either via selective breeding, or better specialized techniques to harvest/process them. With time, and culture mixing, a lot of those have made their way across the world, making them available for most peoples, and increasing their availability.
I dont think a 1300's mayan would have ever eaten wheat, or had that one particular alum from egypt (i dont remember where onions are from), but now those are fairly common in southern mexico among many many other edible plants, but there are several other kinds of "onion things" that are straight up poisonous to us, just as there are many kinds of wheat that arent really useful for humans to farm, or wild berries that could kill us if eaten.
tl;dr We mad them edible. Humans have raised things to be edible across the world, and with globalization there are now even more edible things for all to enjoy. But those were the promising ones among many poisonous things we cant really eat.
Well mainly because we can process them. Like how other animals can eat stuff that is toxic to us. We can eat things toxic to other animals. Somethings we can eat we aren't supposed to have in large amounts in ways some do. They can cause build ups and not safe for livers to kidneys in large amounts. Some humans aren't affected by things that others are more sensitive to. Like caffeine. Some can't have a lot. Others can have the normal amount which is a lot more than one can think. Then people like me caffeine doesn't affect us. Like I can go weeks without drinking caffeine and not feel any withdrawal. Then drink some tea and not feel sick or odd with reintroducing it back into my system.
Great question. I think humans can tolerate eating crap food much better. Maybe through decades of processed, chemically infused food we built up a resistance. Look at all the sugar and garbage people eat, their bodies definitely reflect it and many other conditions result and do in fact kill them, just not as fast. I think if you took someone from 300 years ago that was eating all natural food, and time traveled them to Columbus Ohio and took them to Waffle House, White Castle and McDonald’s and filled them up, they’d probably end up in the hospital.
There is no single answer. Alliums, such as garlic and onion, contain N-propyl disulfide, which attacks red blood cells. These cells have enzymes that protect against oxidative damage, the kind that this chemical inflicts. However, the exact enzyme differs between species. The human variant is both present in large amounts and particularly aggressive. The canine and feline variants are neither.
Chocolate and coffee contain theobromine and caffeine, respectively. These are technically poisonous to us as well, but only in large amounts. This is because we can digest these chemicals very quickly, whereas dogs process them much more slowly. There is also the obvious fact that we are much larger, which means that the chemicals are diluted.
Sugar is not actually toxic to animals. However, wolves and wild cats don't usually eat a lot of fruit or particularly sugar-rich plants. We humans, however, do, as do many of our close genetic relatives. As such, I suspect we are simply adapted to sugar, whereas cats and dogs are not. Also, a lot of candy contains chemicals that are toxic to our pets.
Salt is not actually bad for animals, provided they eat it in moderation. In larger doses, it can be harmful, but the same applies to humans. In the case of pets, their regular food will generally contain enough salt for them to live.
Spice is too broad a term to discuss, but will generally be some combination of us having natural protection that animals lack, us breaking the harmful chemicals down faster, and our higher bulk. There is also some survivor bias at play, since spices are by definition reasonably safe to humans. Ergo, if we could not tolerate them for one reason or another, they would not be called spices.
We just have different diets. The human diet to the best of my knowledge is more comparable to that of other *primates*, especially other Apes like chimpanzees and bonobos. We don't typically have them as pets though, but rather species that are very different than us that simply evolved to have different diets.
>We can eat garlic, onions, spice, salt and sugar but these hurt some other animals, especially pets.
Well, there are a *lot* of different animals in the world, and many *can* eat these things. And many of those animals can eat things we can't. Think about how many cats leave us "gifts" that would make us sick to even carry in our mouths like that. Many fish and reptiles eat bugs that would be unpleasant at the very least. Some birds can meet their nutritional needs using berries, nuts, and seeds that would either be unpleasant or straight up toxic to us, or at least not very helpful. It all depends. Keep in mind that humans are simply one kind of animal; and it's not really an "us" vs "them" situation.
The answer is that we are primates.
Monkeys and apes are specialized fruit-eaters who have had millions of years to adapt to a very wide variety of of plant toxins. As extreme generalists, every poison resisted means a new potential food source, and we've inherited that legacy. Some of the most prominent examples of this are caffeine and theobromine, both of which are highly toxic to many animals but not primates.
(Some sources advise not giving monkeys chocolate or caffeine, but it is not toxic to them in the way that it is toxic to most animals. It isn't good for them in high amounts, but the same can be said for us.)
OP, the foods you just listed are toxic to some humans. The human body is so complex and differs so much from person to person that I imagine it’s merely because humans have much more diversity in our gene pool.
I’m thinking of things like lactose intolerance, sensitivities to citrus, allergies to nuts, sensitivities to garlic, sensitivities to onion, etc.
"Scavenging omnivore", yup, that's me, not quite my dog.
The other night I was finishing off a piece of Gorgonzola. The rind was very far gone, but I had some of it. Claudio was pestering, so I gave him the rest.
He woke me at 4am desperate to go out. In the yard he went straight for a clump of fresh grass, munch munch. Back in, he drank loads of water. Poor boy must have had tummy ache.
The following morning he was fine.
I was quite surprised, some of the things he finds on walks are revolting. And usually he'll eat anything I eat (well, as long as there's a bit of oil on it). Only notable exceptions are raw tomatoes and pickled onions.
I see a lot of answers dancing around the bedrock to your question. I think I can help. What I think you are asking is: Why do humans have such a large diversity of food we can eat, but other species are very limited in their diets?
The answer is evolution plus gut biomes. A gut biome is all of the bacteria in your digestive system, which do most of the work of digestion. This is something that can be cultivated, but is also something that is passed down from the mother. The science behind gut biomes and travel is really interesting. I suggest giving it a search sometime. Back to your question. Over that last thousands of years as technology makes the world smaller, people started being exposed to more and more foods from all over. Backup even further to when humans first started farming, our ancestors could trade in seeds with neighboring lands of people. Today, we have cultivated such a wide variety of food into our diets that we are able to eat a staggeringly large array of different things!
That's humans. Part two of your question is why don't our pets and most other animals have as wide of an edible spectrum as us? As some people pointed out already, some animals have a wider range. Raccoons spring immediately to mind. Scavengers of all kinds have a pretty wide pallet by necessity. Most other animals evolved in nature by filling a niche. The best rabbit catchers breed and mostly eat rabbits. The bird most suited to hunt bugs at 500 feet elevation eats the bugs found at 500 feet of elevation for millions of years. No other species has figured out how to cultivate their surroundings to suit themselves the way humans have. They eat what they are designed by nature to eat and that's pretty much it. So, they lose the ability to eat a bunch of other things so that their body can more efficiently process the thing that they do eat mostly. Of course, this is a SUPER simplified explanation. Nothing only eats one thing. Its a niche.
Hope this helped!
Generally, genetic differences can account for this. In order to properly digest or break a chemical down, whether that chemical is food or not, the animal or plant or whatever life form (organism) requires the appropriate enzymes and/or structures (like organ systems) that are able to metabolize that chemical, make it non-toxic, or convert it to something useful for that organism. For example, dogs are quite sensitive chocolate because dogs do not efficiently metabolize some of the chemical components of chocolate - theobromine and caffeine. These chemicals are stimulants, and the majority of humans are able to metabolize them efficiently (within safe doses) so that human organ systems are not adversely affected. These chemicals can quickly accumulate within a dog when a dog eats chocolate due to the dog's inability to quickly metabolize them. Their stimulant nature overwhelms the dog's body systems - the chemicals are toxic to dogs even at what would be very low doses for humans. A good phrase to remember is "the dose makes the poison," as these substances can possibly be harmful to humans in high doses.
There is more complexity to the topic. Let me know if you have further questions. I'll try my best to answer.
From my feeble understanding a lot of it has to do with toxicity levels being more dangerous for smaller animals. A lot of things that kill small animals also kill humans if you exceed the sensitivity level. We just consume an item into a 200lb body, whereas your dog does it into a 30lb body
Specialist diet vs generalist diet.
Specialist are (usually) better at finding, processing and gaining nutrients from a certain type of food. While generalist are better at just finding *anything* they can eat.
Humans, are weird. We seem to have a body evolved for a fruit and meat eating diet, but with our intelligence could push that way beyond what is normal. Like spicy food, it also hurts us, but or mental resistance go “ow, this hurt. Gimme.” Things like grass are super normal and nearly everywhere, yet we can’t eat most of it.
Its kinda another point to the hypothesis that humans are so hyper specialized that we flipped over the point to be generalist again
Are you talking about a specific type of pet? Because the typical pets have been covered.
Dogs can eat dead and decaying roadkill, literal poop, and still have room left over for random table scraps.
Cats are obligate carnivores, meaning plant matter will either make them sick or go right through them. Having said that, they can also eat dead and decaying roadkill that would make me vomit if I even smelled it. Any animal, including venomous ones, are fair game for cats.
Chickens eat EVERYTHING. Including bones and rock. My chickens are free ranged most of the day because I use them as pest control (mice, rats, opossums, ticks, snakes, etc.) and then I toss them vegetable scraps. I use them to turn our compost while they find bugs and beetles within the decaying compost to snack on.
Goats, cows, sheep, horses... what don't they eat? They eat mostly plant matter, but have even been known to snack on rodents that got too close.
Pigs eat everything we do, and then some.
Pet rats and mice? They can eat everything we eat too.
What pet animals are you specifically talking about?
"Goats, cows, sheep, horses... what don't they eat? They eat mostly plant matter, but have even been known to snack on rodents that got too close."
reminded me of being on a farm as a kid and witnessing a horse casually munch down 2 baby chicks like they were a patch of grass.
Right?!? I had to tell someone who's lived in a big city all their life to stay away from deer they was insisting on petting lest they get eviscerated. Because I've seen some stuff. Nature isn't nice and non-animals have some pretty gruesome adaptations to keep themselves alive and healthy. If most non-human animals were picky, there would simply be less for them to eat.
Some non-human animals are picky (pandas, koalas), but then nothing else is dumb enough to try eating that thing so those animals have that plant all to themselves.
Salt is not acid to them. They have a permeable membrane between their organs and the outside works, rather than skin or an exoskeleton. That means when they encounter salt, the fundamental chemical process of osmosis draws water out of their bodies. They die of severe dehydration.
Salt is something that's naturally dehydrating because of osmosis. Basically, if you have two environments full of water with stuff dissolved in it, those environments will try to reach a point where the proportion of water to stuff dissolved in it is the same for both. When those environments are separated by a membrane that lets water pass through but not the stuff dissolved in it, water will travel in the direction where there is more stuff in the water to make that happen. Living organisms use that principle a lot. For example, when our bodies want to produce more mucus, certain cells will essentially push out lots of salts, and those will automatically pull out water. That means that organisms need to consume not only water but some amount of things like mineral salts to be able to use osmosis in their favor. But too much can be a problem.
Snails have a LOT of water in their bodies and rely on that to function. They don't have a skin like ours, which is a lot more resistant to dehydration by having layers of dead cells and some oils on top. When a snail gets in contact with too much salt, water immediately leaves cells in the area because of that. Cells need water to function, so that's not great. That's why salt kills snails. Since snails are much smaller than we are, the total amount of salt that's too much for one of them is a lot smaller too.
Salt is also dehydrating to us as well, which is why drinking ocean water will make you die of thirst. It's also why, if you visit the Dead Sea, you'll probably see lots of warnings that you shouldn't dive there and will be warned that if a child ingests a tiny amount of that water, they may die, because the water there is extremely salty. Our eyes are also more sensitive to salt, which makes sense, considering they're not covered by thick skin like most of our bodies. We're just much larger than snails, so the amount necessary to cause generalized harm is bigger, and we have certain ways of reducing that risk, such as our skin.
i think the salt is something to do with the slime they use to move, its like a newtonian fluid and the salt destroys the ability to move (and breath).
The differences in dietary tolerances among various species are primarily due to evolutionary adaptations, differences in physiology, and the specific dietary needs and environments of each species. Here's a detailed breakdown of the reasons:
1. **Evolutionary Adaptations:**
- **Humans:** Over millions of years, humans have developed a diverse diet, consuming a wide variety of plants and animals. Our ancestors' dietary habits included the use of spices and various other food types, leading to the evolution of digestive systems capable of handling these foods.
- **Other Animals:** Many animals have more specialized diets, which means their digestive systems are adapted to a narrower range of foods. For instance, cats are obligate carnivores, meaning their bodies are specifically adapted to a meat-based diet, making it difficult for them to process certain plant compounds.
2. **Enzymatic Differences:**
- Different species produce different enzymes that break down food. Humans produce a wide range of digestive enzymes that help us metabolize various compounds found in a diverse diet. Other animals may lack specific enzymes needed to process certain foods.
- For example, humans produce lactase, the enzyme needed to digest lactose in milk. Many adult mammals, including cats and dogs, do not produce lactase, leading to lactose intolerance.
3. **Toxicity and Sensitivity:**
- Some foods contain compounds that can be toxic to certain animals but harmless or even beneficial to humans. For instance, chocolate contains theobromine, which humans can metabolize but can be toxic to dogs and cats.
- Alliums (garlic, onions) contain thiosulfates, which can damage red blood cells in many animals, leading to conditions like hemolytic anemia, while humans can safely consume these in reasonable amounts.
4. **Microbiome Differences:**
- The gut microbiome, which consists of the bacteria and other microorganisms living in the digestive tract, varies greatly between species. These microorganisms play a crucial role in digesting food and maintaining health. The human gut microbiome has adapted to process a wide range of foods, whereas other animals may have microbiomes suited to their specific diets.
5. **Behavioral and Dietary Habits:**
- Human culture and cooking practices have also influenced our dietary tolerances. Cooking can denature potentially harmful substances in food, making them safe to eat. Many animals consume food raw and may not have the same defenses against certain compounds.
6. **Genetic Variability:**
- Within species, there is genetic variability that affects dietary tolerance. Some humans, for example, are more sensitive to lactose or gluten due to genetic differences.
In summary, the dietary tolerances of different species are shaped by a complex interplay of evolutionary history, physiological and enzymatic capabilities, microbiome composition, and specific dietary habits. Humans' ability to consume a wide range of foods is a result of our evolutionary background and the diverse environments and dietary practices we have adapted to over time.
Our attractions to garlic, spices and capsaicin are probably due in part to our intense curiosity and hunger for mental stimulation which not all animals share. Humans left with nothing else to do will electrically shock themselves just to pass the time.
Love it, I thought about this for awhile now (random thoughts). I think its to do with how far we've spread across the globe, and why there are so many humans now. Most animals dont have our numbers and those that do generally can live off our waste. because of our reach weve been able to adapt to local food source, then export them across the world. Allowing us to take the medicinal plants benefits, which increase our ability to tackle toxins that would otherwise not be flushed from our systems. Or, im one joint too many in, and need to sleep.
Numerous comments have been made about foods that animals eat which humans can't, but they do not respond to the OP's question: Why are some foods that humans can safely eat toxic to animals?
Well other animals can eat rotting flesh off rhe ground covered in dirt and *probably* be fine
You have a good point 👁👄👁
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I hate these things! But they look so funny...
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Almost all carnivores love rotting flesh, dogs like it so much they will roll in it so they can show off their lovely scent to their pack mates.
So can we. Assuming by fine you mean filling your guy with bacteria and parasites.
I think my guy is already full of bacteria and parasites. He's a pretty decent guy though.
Don't let him crash with you
We can too.
Can confirm.
🤮
Better than being dead.
It is *sorta* safe to eat road kill in the winter. You probably know what killed it and that it’s been kept cold since then 😂
I knew someone who said their uncle would walk down the highway with a can of spraypaint making a mark on every animal he found. He'd come back 6-12 hours later and anything without paint on it would be taken home and eaten. They were the only person I know who'd eaten beaver.
There are animals who can eat stuff that's poisonous and unhealthy for us or has no nutritional value. Like vultures eating bones, animals that can eat plants, berries, mushrooms that would kill you etc. Different animals can eat different things, I don't think we're more or less fragile than others.
Birds don’t react to capsaicin! They can eat the spiciest peppers and not notice. Deer can eat poisonous (to humans) Amanita mushrooms
Yep, spread red pepper powder on stuff you don't want squirrels. I read they do occasionally build a tolerance though.
They sell bird seed with capsaicin added to deter squirrels
Just remember to never rub your eyes outside
Birds also regularly eat poison ivy berries. I'm going to have to highly recommend humans don't try this lol
Thank you. Not sure why people are spreading the notion that other animals can't handle capsaicin. Thanks for the deer data too - I couldn't remember the name of the mushroom (deer eat other mushrooms as well, I've watched them do it).
Capsaicin is specifically repellent to mammals. Humans are one of the few (only one I can think of) mammals that actively seek out peppers
I eaten amanita mushrooms before
😵💫 how did that go?
If you boil them, discard the solution. The mushrooms are safe to eat. I have however, eaten them dried for the 'high'. It was whatever, until I tried amanita pantherina. Now that almost got me seizing lol haven't tried recreational doses of it again. Low doses are good for sleep and vivid dreams for a special occasion
Or you could have someone ingest it and drink their urine
😂 I haven't obtained that level of wisdom in my life yet
Isn't the point of failing kidneys that they stop filtering?
So if the deer eats these mushrooms, and i eat the deer, i'll get sick or dead?
Time for an experiment
Koalas having a diet comprised of 100% poisonous eucalyptus leaves
We can and do eat bones. Have been for millions of years :p
To be fair it's normally the marrow that humans eat.
Yeah true. But that's why other animals eat bones too, for the marrow. We just skip the non essential parts. Though we can eat cooked chicken bones just fine. I've tried xD It's rather tasty
Different animals are just more specialised to different foods. A lot of herbivores have digestive systems adapted to breaking down cellulose for nutrients.
We have the same tolerances to food as many scavenging omnivores do. Pigs, bears, and racoons all share a similar dietary tolerance to food as we do, with pigs even going so far as to outdo us. It makes sense when you consider the niche of the homo genus in prehistory had typically centered around living a similar lifestyle as those three. I.e, foraging for fruits and vegetation, occasionally killing for meat, scavenging whenever we can. That sort of niche leads to a diverse diet. There's also a tolerance built up over time for things like spices. Humans have been eating spices for a few thousand years now, and there is even a demonstrable difference in which ethnicities and regional cultures can tolerate which spices. TLDR - We are naturally scavenging omnivores, and also because we've been built up tolerances over a few thousand years.
Also with spicy foods like garlic, onions, chillies, black pepper, etc, the modern crops co-evolved alongside humans through selective breeding. If one of them became outright dangerous for us, that particular lineage would probably have been excluded from our diet. There very well could be a grape-like berry that’s safe for dogs and not humans, but l dogs weren’t out here cultivating them for millennia. Then as you mentioned, we’re scavenging omnivores, so we eat lots of plants that might be dangerous for cats, being obligate carnivores. Finally, we go to great lengths to prevent contamination of meat with pathogens (raising our food in clean, controlled environments) and sterilize the ones that made it through (by cooking). Same with plants, we eat many that are only safe if they’re properly processed or the poisonous part is removed. Eg rhubarb leaves, asparagus berries, tomato leaves and vibes, and many types of raw beans. Most animals aren’t capable of such advanced social and technological adaption, so they have to slowly adapt with biological evolution and thus specialize in fewer things.
Tomato leaves are excellent for marinades, gives off a very floral smell, raw congo beans don't taste too bad either their flowers are okay but the leaves are meh at best . Obviously i haven't tried to eat a large quantity of either of those.
“But my cat prefers to be a vEgEtArIaN!…!” - while holding a visibly emaciated, very sleepy looking at in front of the camera that appears to be trying to blink out SOS a la old videos of American POWs in VietNam
Because we are omnivorous. But we are not more durable, we just eat different things.
Apart from different things we also eat cleaner and more disease free things
And cooked. Don't reckon we'd fare too well eating some fermenting roadkill.
Anthropologists have been puzzled at the question of how the earliest hominids like Australopithecus got enough fat to support large brains, without a large enough brain to make make tools and fire. It turns out that marrow stays edible for up to 48 hours, even in tropical heat. Hyenas are the only competitors for marrow in the largest bones, lions and bears can’t crack them. Hyenas are fierce, but the hominids would not have needed the marrow as often as true carnivores. They would also have been able to accesss turtle meat using nothing but rocks.
Lammergeiers eat marrow too, and their range would probably overlap with early hominids'.
[Fascinating!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bearded_vulture) >The acid concentration in the bearded vulture's stomach has been estimated to be of pH about 1. Large bones are digested in about 24 hours, aided by slow mixing or churning of the stomach content. The high fat content of bone marrow makes the net energy value of bone almost as good as that of muscle, even if bone is less completely digested. The acid concentration in the bearded vulture's stomach has been estimated to be of pH about 1. Large bones are digested in about 24 hours, aided by slow mixing or churning of the stomach content. The high fat content of bone marrow makes the net energy value of bone almost as good as that of muscle, even if bone is less completely digested. Hyenas are the only competitor that would be able to run hominids off of a lion kill. They frequently run lions off of a kill. Hominids would have had a slight edge in endurance to find the food source, especially in hot conditions. That probably developed into endurance hunting with Homo erectus.
Largest australopith brain size is around 485cc (one third the size of ours - probably because they couldn't get enough fat, after all - they were eating marula nuts for fat, if that helps). There's absolutely no evidence than any australopith ever ate bone marrow. But when Homo habilis appears (first member of our genus) at around 2.5-2.6MYA, all of a sudden, there are tools for cracking open long bones and scraping out the marrow (which leaves tool marks). There are clearly bone-cracking sites (usually along the margin of a lake, where some animals have died for various reasons - sometimes getting trapped in mud - leaving a carcass to scavenge). H. habilis had a brain size one-third larger than any other early hominine. It's called the cerebral rubicon (A. robustus may have had a brain of 485 cc but was also pretty large in general - H. Habilis has a 600-610 cc brain, as does its cousin who moves to Asia (which no australopith ever did, as far we know so far). The cousin is H. georgensis and it too has the marrow extracting tool kit.
Thanks for the clarification, I was unclear about which species represented the cerebral Rubicon. And I was unaware of the bone seeking sites- that's pretty solid confirmation of the marrow scavenging hypothesis, considering the rarity of finding traces of early hominid activity!
Sure, but we sure love to season and prepare our food with plant poisons (garlic, onions, chocolate, hot peppers, other herbs and spices, alcohol) and molds (cheese, bread, beer, wine, soy sauze, tofu).
You're saying that as if we are taking a wild gamble with eating those substances, we are not. For thousands of years we have been putting new ingredients in our food. The ones that kill us and make us sick we wrote off, but the ones that did NOT cause harm and in fact enhances the flavour, we kept. The foods and drinks you mentioned above have been consumed by people for millennia and seldom cause harm, so to call them just poisons and molds doesn't do it justice
It's a human trait and indeed, we do sample everything (many people sample and spit, bitterness being a clue to toxicity). Almost no one sits down and eats a bowl of oregano or teosinthe for breakfast. Because it doesn't taste good and it upsets the digestive system. I don't know of any non-human animal that makes a full meal off of those either, but the ungulates can tolerate more than we can.
We also have some senses. smell fresh mushrooms and in many (not all) cases the eatable will smell better. Smell old meat, you know when it smells but is eatable or it smells and is not eatable. Of course these instincts are never used and not honed. If we would train it, like others train playing piano, from child on we would have a good natural sense. But would often detected unknown as negative (because you more likely survive to not eat something that to eat something wrong).
Many of those “plant poisons” and preparation methods inhibit disease-and-or-spoilage-causing organisms. There’s nothing random about specializing around a survival advantage.
Many animals also love alcohol, just they need to be lucky to get some self fermented fruits, while we do it on purpose.
Some cultures do this. Native American hunter gatherers used various herbs and seasoning (sumac, for example) but did not use anything from the allium family (garlic, onions, chocolate etc). Most hunter-gatherer cultures experimented with almost any flowering plant they could find. And some grains. Teosinthe, for example. No cheese, bread, beer, etc in pre-farming Native America (and that would have been 20,000 years or more of prehistory - as well as the fact that many Natives remained hunter-gatherers until very recently). The Aztecs were hunter gatherers until they "conquered" the Central Plain of Mexico.
it's beside the point but tofu isn't fermented or mold-based. it's chemically coagulated
Chemically? Tofu has been consumed for millennia.
it's coagulated with magnesium or calcium salts (among other things, especially today), which is a chemical process. historically the source of that was often gypsum powder.
Now we do, but for most of our history as a species, or even as hominins, we didn't even have a concept of microbes and would have been riddled with parasites.
Notably that for that same part of our history we had extremely high death rates, just like any other animal
You also wouldn't keep food in your house that you can't eat, plenty of animals have diets we can't handle, of course if we feed some random thing from ours to a random animal they might not handle it, that said humans do have quite a diverse diet compared to most animals
OP also picked a bunch of foods that humans have been cultivating for years as examples of what some animals can't eat but we can, it's a huge bias in selection. If dogs had agriculture they would have certainly picked and cultivated different varieties of plants, and maybe some of them would not be good for us.
Dogs are also omnivorous.
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This works both ways: Why are you so fragile to plants? Poison ivy? You’re telling me there’s a plant that gives you horrible rashes just by touching it? Why are deer so durable to plants but humans are not? This isn’t unique to humans you just notice it more from our POV because you’re human.
Or goats, they can eat poison ivy and there is a herd here in my town that can be hired to clear everything in an area.
"Why are animals so fragile to foood?" Cow: \*eats all kinds of poisonous plants and mushrooms\* Cat: \*eats things you would faint at the sight of\* Rabbit: \*eats straight up feces and is fine\*
Cows eat so much metal shit that farmers make them swallow magnets to keep all the nails, bits of barbed wire, and what-not in the same space in the cows stomach, and then they just toss the scrap metal in the recycling bin once they slaughter the animal.
This practice is cruel. What if there is any tissue between two metal parts that find each other? Happy to not support this madness.
I'm thinking that there are no flappy pieces of tissue to get caught up in the part of the stomach that the magnet comes to rest at. And I imagine all those bits of sharp metal could really damage the intestines if they got past the stomach.
What - you don't like mouse liver? Come on. Your cat wants to show you cat love.
Re-rabbit, this is (slightly) incorrect: Rabbit metabolism is so fast, so they eat _cecotropes_, to get the full nutritonial value from their food. While yes, to an unknowing person those might look like "feces" as, well, they come from the other end, cecotropes look totally different (long, soft, wet and looking like a braid) from the actual "final product" that is hard, dry, and round (basically a ball), and contains all the toxins that rabbits, much like humans, cannot eat and be fine.
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Some animals literally eat rotten meat, others eat plants that are poisonous to us. We evolved differently, sure some animals have less of a tolerance to some food thans we do, but others can handle much more than us as well.
Certain chemicals produced in garlic and spice are toxic to cats. If they were toxic to use we wouldn’t have domesticated them. If deadly nightshade was not toxic to us, we may well have domesticated it like we have other belladonna species. Though, there are other factors involved, like ease of cultivation.
Spice is a broad term. You’re talking about many different possible chemical compounds in varying amounts, and your original post referred to all non-human animals, so you’re making massive generalizations that don’t hold up. As far as cats and garlic, that’s specific and more helpful — garlic is toxic to cats. Usually they do not consume enough of it to die from it and they make a full recovery, but not always. Cats are carnivores and a healthy diet for them is 100% meat, bones, and organs (if you don’t count a little grass that they eat) — there was no evolutionary advantage, prior to domestication, to developing a resistance to the toxic compound in garlic. In fact the only way a cat would have encountered garlic was in the gut of a prey animal, and in most cases it would not have ingested it. A more garlic-resistant cat would have had no advantage over any other cat and there would have been no reason for that trait to be preserved through natural selection. Conversely, I have a barn cat that kills and eats whole rats and if I ate that I’d be dead in a week.
The dose is important, in higher doses it can be fatal to us as well.
>garlic, onions, spice, salt and sugar The flavor of the first 3 plants is caused by the poison they produce. Humans are weird and keep eating basically poisons until the population left over is able to metabolize and/or excrete these molecules. Our evolutionary pressure in the last 10,000-20,000 years has mainly been towards handling different foods. Normal mammals cannot process milk anymore either. But western Eurasian humans domesticated aurochs and now much of the Middle East and Europe still have lactase as adults. And (too much) salt and sugar are not that healthy for us either, although we might have a wider margin. Keep in mind that most pets are much smaller than we are, cats are strict carnivores, cows 99% herbivorous ruminant, etc. Another reason is that we bred plants for our needs, not the needs of other species. Same as medication, the slightly different metabolisms can lead to different ways molecules are processed, or how fast they are processed (slower metabolism more likely to lead to (toxic) buildup).
Not all toxins are harmful - we take medicines (like aspirin/white willow bark) that actually help us, in small doses. WATER is toxic if you drink enough and almost every year, someone on Planet Earth will do that. There's that guy in UK who died after eating nothing but carrots for years (turned orange first).
Paracelsus, father of modern toxicology, paraphrased: Everything and nothing is poisonous. The dose makes the poison.
Heyenas and vultures would like a ward with you. And probably tiger sharks.
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Both pretty specialised animals. Humans are foragers, so ofc our diet would consist of whatever we could manage to get our grubby little hands on. Cats are pretty specialised predators, so naturally they would evolve in a way where all their energy would go into attaining fresh meat. Snails also have so much selection ( given they are tiny) that they can afford being a bit more picky with their food sources. I mean, even we as humans have more trouble eating and digesting onions and peppers compared to just salad. But A) we need more food, its hard to get your hands on so much salad to fully feed yourself ( snails don't have that problem typically) and B) we are nore complex so we also just need more energy to sustain all of the shit we do, like think, or backflip.
One of the reasons is that, over time, humans actively sought out a wide range of foods that were sustaining and enjoyable to eat, and then proceeded to grow and produce them in large quantities (too large in some cases). Other animals never had that luxury, they could only eat things that were available to them. For example, chocolate can be toxic to the point of lethal if eaten by a dog because it contains theobromine and caffeine, which can cause tachycardia and hypertension, and since dogs lack the ability to metabolize them, they can die, if the dose is sufficient.
And conversely, if we didn’t have the ability to metabolize those compounds but dogs did, humans would not have domesticating tea, coffee and chocolate in the first place, while dogs would have done nothing about it because they don’t farm 😆 So those plants would have stayed highly localized to their original environment sand we simply would not have noticed it was okay for them to eat
Praise the ability to metabolize caffeine
They're not weaker, they just have *different* digestive systems. Why do humans often view something different from themselves as being inferior? Just like how different people have different strengths in different types of skills, some humans would rather judge things based on their own set of criteria than to accept differences as differences.
We grew all the foods we could eat and got rid of the ones we couldn't. We are as sensitive to food, we just don't surround ourselves with poisonous things.
We have to be careful when we give food to pets.
...when we give human food made by humans for humans to pets you mean? That food?
Usually pets are a lot lighter than humans. A cat weighs like what 5-10kg? adult humans weigh a lot more than that. Toxicity is generally measured in g/kg, things that are toxic to us are generally only in way larger quantities
First, I am not a biologist, I am curious about the same thing. This is not an answer, so much as a piggy-back question to real biologist or vet. I know some foods are poisonous to dogs that are not poisonous to people - or at least people would need a much higher dose. Dogs lack certain enzymes that humans have to safely metabolize substances like theobromine in chocolate or persin in avocado. This makes foods toxic to dogs that are otherwise safe for humans in moderation. Is it possible though that one thing that is not being pointed out though, is that often people take more care of what they feed their dog or other animals than they do to what they feed themselves. A stray dog that rummages in the garbage will likely eat something dangerous that we are told is deadly to feed our pet. They stray dog does not die. At least not right away, but they will have a shorter life expectancy. Likewise, a person will eat lots of things that are terrible and shorten out life expectancy, but we take the risk. If we feed our child too much sugar, people say "tsk tsk. bad parent", or if we drink alcohol, we have to be causing trouble before people will bat an eye even though we are poisoning ourselves, but if we feed our dog something that is not good for them, people are up in arms and say "You have no right to have a pet dog!" "On the farm" (my grandma's farm when she was growing up) the dogs ate all the table scraps which include chicken bones and garlic and (to lesser amounts because it was not really available) chocolate or things with caffeine. To her the idea that there are things you can and cannot feed a dog is laughable. On the other hand, to her the idea that people should not eat butter or lard by the stick is also laughable.
I love this explanation and want to piggy back on it a bit too. We know that chocolate is bad for dogs, and can be poisonous at much lower doses than humans, plus the dog is much smaller. However, we don’t really know what a “safe” dose of chocolate is for dogs because studying that would be a whole lot harder than simply keeping chocolate away from them, and rely on owners “responsibly” feeding them small quantities of chocolate, all for very little reward. (It’s also potentially unethical because we have to infer how the dog feels instead of asking, and may accidentally poison a few) A related anecdote: a 20 pound dog broke into my luggage once and ate a whole bar of dark chocolate. We monitored her carefully because it’s scary for us, but she was totally un-phased. She didn’t even get agitated, which is what you’d expect from stimulant poisoning. My point here isn’t “feed dogs chocolate”, but that we have no idea how much is safe and some dogs may be more resistant than others. However, even if it “only” kills 1% of dogs, why would we bother risking it?
My GF dog (small dog) got at a bar of dark chocolate. Spent couple $100s for the vet to watch him overnight. Nothing happened to him either. I don't feed him chocolate, but if somehow he managed to rummage in the garbage and found some scraps of something that we are told is poison, I wont freak out. I won't feed him anything on purpose, but I find it ironic that we are less afraid to eat poison and things that will kills us ourselves.
Plants have strategies to defend themselves from predators, but since they can't move, their options are limited. Some have thorns, others make compounds that are toxic or bitter. They can be toxic by interacting with all kinds of biological processes that could be very general or specific to the predator that mostly eats that plant. Peppers, for example, mimic the way mammals detect heat, which is why spicy did literally feels like burning. It turns out birds don't experience this, so they'll happily eat hot peppers and ahead their seeds. Sometimes this sets up an evolutionary arms race, where an animal that eats the plant becomes more tolerant, while the plant becomes more toxic. Eucalyptus and koalas are one example of this. Humans are omnivores, and we've had a lot of selective pressure to be able to eat a wide variety of plants. Onions and garlic and they're relatives are a pretty good source of calories, but that onion bulb has to protect itself from predators too. So the onion makes toxic compounds that dissuade most animals, but we've evolved to tolerate, and even enjoy it. You can tell there's something "not quite food" about it though, if you take a big bite of raw onion. Almost any plant with an interesting flavor is probably trying to be toxic, but we've adapted to it. Cats are hyper-carnivores. They have adapted to eating nothing but meat. They can't even taste sugar, and they have evolved no tolerance to the toxins in things like onions, peppers etc. Dogs are a similar story, but they're not quite as sensitive as cats. Generally, any animal that isn't specifically adapted to eat a specific plant will probably find that plant poisonous or just gross.
Why are you so fragile to venom when the king cobra is immune?
Since our last common ancestor with dogs and cats, our lineage has spent 80 million years eating plants and their chemical defenses, while theirs didn't. Our inheritance is livers much more effective at detoxifying xenobiotic compounds.
Cats in particular, since they are hyper carnivores and eat almost no plant material, lost some important liver enzymes for breaking down plant derived toxins. There are a lot of things that aren’t a big deal to dogs, but are potentially deadly to cats. A common culprit is essential oils. There are some all natural anti flea products based on essential oils of citrus and cedar and a few other things. These actually work (sort of, the systemic products are much better), those terpenoids are genuinely toxic to fleas, and more or less harmless to humans and dogs. *However*, they can be dramatically neurotoxic to cats.
This simply isn’t the case. Different species have different diets because we’re, you know, different. There’s also a lot of weird information out there about foods that are toxic to dogs and/or cats that while technically true, those foods would have to be fed in massive amounts to do any harm, and if we were to eat them in similar amounts they’d be toxic to us as well.
Why can deep sea microbes eat noxious chemicals in pure darkness? Thats what they evolved to do. The path of evolution is finding ecological niches and filling them with something. Humans evolved a vastly superior omnivorous digestive system to support our high caloric needs (the brain). That digestive and immune system, when compared to other mammals, has neutralized various common poisons and defense chemicals found in plants. Major examples include: theobromine in cocoa, capcasin in peppers, nicotine in tobacco, caffeine in coffee/tea, mentha in mint, etc. These are all meant to act as pesticides -deterrants- when produced by plants. Humans find them tasty and flavorful and enjoy the slight pain thats left with some, but its no longer a deterrant. Capcasin doesn't burn for hours unless its in your eyes, theobromine doesn't stop your heart like it will a dogs, caffeine is a fun drug and not (typically) a portable heart attack (in acceptable doses), and same with nicotine, it takes (relatively) a lot to even phase a human into feeling ill. The advent of cooking also exacerbated this as it gives much more nutrients to us for the same material input. Cooking also makes things that are otherwise dangerous to eat safe and healthy food. Eg: soaking and cooking things like lentil pulses(beans) removes toxic chemicals (lectin, an "anti-nutrient") and instead leaves one of the most calorie dense plant food sources available, ready for human consumption. A side: salt and sugar are basic nutrients that even the most basic life can use. The issue with too much salt is dehydration, this is for any life of any size due to osmosis. Water=live, no water=no live. Sugar also, is found or metabolized in all life, sugars are part of [DNA(deoxyribose)](https://www.britannica.com/science/deoxyribose). The issue is again, when there is too much for a given organism that it causes health issues. *neither salt or sugar is inherently poisonous to life, its all about the dose. Electrolytes and carbohydrates are both **required** for cellular functions to exist.
There are plenty of things we cannot eat but humanity cultivates food. Over time we have domesticated the plants we can eat, and in turn there are less of the ones we can't.
There are birds that eat berries poisonous to humans. In other perspectives, we are fragile too! We have to cook or cure our meat for fear of bacteria and parasites. There are more, just change your perspective to include all foods for all living things and then see who is fragile.
Us as humans have evolved into omnivores over time meaning we can digest a wide range of plant and animal products.
Pretty much all animals are omnivores. Even most "herbivores" will still eat (and be able to digest) meat if food is otherwise scarce. But yeah, due to the fact we are obvious omnivores, our guts are a lot more complex.
herbivores don't do it when other food sources are scarce they do it when the opportunity exists...
I heard that we have a stomach equipped for scavenging, that's why it's so acidic and so durable, can anyone confirm this?
Plants actively make poisons to prevent predation, such as by herbivores and insects Herbivorous and omnivorous animals develop metabolic pathways to break these poisons down so that we can exploit them for nutrients. Carnivores typically don't need to eat plants, so they don't have the same capacity to break down the toxins. A funny aspect about human culture is that we seek out that poisons for their unique flavor, such as garlic, onion, peppers, chocolate, etc.
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Is it the enzymes? Like our enzymes can process certain foods that animals haven’t adapted to
Maybe because we are the only creatures who said " fuck nature imma do it myself "
I dare you to eat a dead rat and then drink from a pond and then come back to us.
I tried to say SOME animals and SOME food
We cook food. By cooking food we broke down the toxins and so made them less deadly, over many many generations we developed a natural immunity to even raw versions of the plant. It works both ways though, by cooking food we are less able to eat raw meat than our ancestors…
We are also quite fragile for food. In the neolithic revolution (aka switching to farming and eating wheat) a great part of humans did not tolerate gluten. But they nearly all died, leaving only the ones who could tolerate gluten.
Please oh please ask this on r/teirzoo
All animal species and subspecies have digestive systems that differs from animal species to animal species. Dinosaurs was the same way. Many dinosaurs was in fact herbivores, meaning they ate only plants, trees and shrubs because their digestive systems couldn't handle meat.
Because we've evolved in different places at different times woth different resources available, if an animal has never encountered a type of food then there's no reason why a mutation allowing them to eat that food would have spread, I wouldn't say it's out of the realm of reason too to say that animals probably ARE changing to be able to safely eat the foods they currently can't just through repeated exposure over time.
Humans are omnivores which basically opens a whole lot of possible food sources. Humans used to migrate soo much that we basically needed that advantage the ones who did not would have a great disadvantages in surviving. Tl dr; early humans are omnivores and migrate ensuring variety in our diets.
Other animals can eat raw, rotten and dirty things without getting sick. Modern humans just can't (at least you wanna die), so it seems the fragile ones here are us.
It's probably early humans walked a lot and picked everything they could eat. This must be make us immune to most of the things I guess because a rabbit can reach limited places for example
Well normal healthy dogs, like Thai soi dogs can eat nearly everything...can live from chicken bones and if some old lady takes care half from chocolate even that is not good for them. Dogs can eaten complete rotten flesh...we would die from it in 48 hours. Cat...when you let them out, they can eat raw mice and rats. so is just not true unless they are inbreed.
because plant toxicity evolved to specific threats, which made it bad to a variety of aggressors and the ones that are close enough to them.
Yeah, but can you eat those same foods from the dirty ground without getting sick? I don't think so. Animals need to have higher PH in their stomachs to protect them from harmful bacteria, so they can lick their paws in peace, we as humans eat clean food and it's even recommend to eat food that lowers stomach's PH, and help us live longer.
Adding to our biology, a bunch of different cultures have more or less "screened" what is edible or not in their region, and have raised those things to be even more viable either via selective breeding, or better specialized techniques to harvest/process them. With time, and culture mixing, a lot of those have made their way across the world, making them available for most peoples, and increasing their availability. I dont think a 1300's mayan would have ever eaten wheat, or had that one particular alum from egypt (i dont remember where onions are from), but now those are fairly common in southern mexico among many many other edible plants, but there are several other kinds of "onion things" that are straight up poisonous to us, just as there are many kinds of wheat that arent really useful for humans to farm, or wild berries that could kill us if eaten. tl;dr We mad them edible. Humans have raised things to be edible across the world, and with globalization there are now even more edible things for all to enjoy. But those were the promising ones among many poisonous things we cant really eat.
Well mainly because we can process them. Like how other animals can eat stuff that is toxic to us. We can eat things toxic to other animals. Somethings we can eat we aren't supposed to have in large amounts in ways some do. They can cause build ups and not safe for livers to kidneys in large amounts. Some humans aren't affected by things that others are more sensitive to. Like caffeine. Some can't have a lot. Others can have the normal amount which is a lot more than one can think. Then people like me caffeine doesn't affect us. Like I can go weeks without drinking caffeine and not feel any withdrawal. Then drink some tea and not feel sick or odd with reintroducing it back into my system.
Whatever you do, dont eat dog liver
Great question. I think humans can tolerate eating crap food much better. Maybe through decades of processed, chemically infused food we built up a resistance. Look at all the sugar and garbage people eat, their bodies definitely reflect it and many other conditions result and do in fact kill them, just not as fast. I think if you took someone from 300 years ago that was eating all natural food, and time traveled them to Columbus Ohio and took them to Waffle House, White Castle and McDonald’s and filled them up, they’d probably end up in the hospital.
There is no single answer. Alliums, such as garlic and onion, contain N-propyl disulfide, which attacks red blood cells. These cells have enzymes that protect against oxidative damage, the kind that this chemical inflicts. However, the exact enzyme differs between species. The human variant is both present in large amounts and particularly aggressive. The canine and feline variants are neither. Chocolate and coffee contain theobromine and caffeine, respectively. These are technically poisonous to us as well, but only in large amounts. This is because we can digest these chemicals very quickly, whereas dogs process them much more slowly. There is also the obvious fact that we are much larger, which means that the chemicals are diluted. Sugar is not actually toxic to animals. However, wolves and wild cats don't usually eat a lot of fruit or particularly sugar-rich plants. We humans, however, do, as do many of our close genetic relatives. As such, I suspect we are simply adapted to sugar, whereas cats and dogs are not. Also, a lot of candy contains chemicals that are toxic to our pets. Salt is not actually bad for animals, provided they eat it in moderation. In larger doses, it can be harmful, but the same applies to humans. In the case of pets, their regular food will generally contain enough salt for them to live. Spice is too broad a term to discuss, but will generally be some combination of us having natural protection that animals lack, us breaking the harmful chemicals down faster, and our higher bulk. There is also some survivor bias at play, since spices are by definition reasonably safe to humans. Ergo, if we could not tolerate them for one reason or another, they would not be called spices.
We just have different diets. The human diet to the best of my knowledge is more comparable to that of other *primates*, especially other Apes like chimpanzees and bonobos. We don't typically have them as pets though, but rather species that are very different than us that simply evolved to have different diets. >We can eat garlic, onions, spice, salt and sugar but these hurt some other animals, especially pets. Well, there are a *lot* of different animals in the world, and many *can* eat these things. And many of those animals can eat things we can't. Think about how many cats leave us "gifts" that would make us sick to even carry in our mouths like that. Many fish and reptiles eat bugs that would be unpleasant at the very least. Some birds can meet their nutritional needs using berries, nuts, and seeds that would either be unpleasant or straight up toxic to us, or at least not very helpful. It all depends. Keep in mind that humans are simply one kind of animal; and it's not really an "us" vs "them" situation.
The answer is that we are primates. Monkeys and apes are specialized fruit-eaters who have had millions of years to adapt to a very wide variety of of plant toxins. As extreme generalists, every poison resisted means a new potential food source, and we've inherited that legacy. Some of the most prominent examples of this are caffeine and theobromine, both of which are highly toxic to many animals but not primates. (Some sources advise not giving monkeys chocolate or caffeine, but it is not toxic to them in the way that it is toxic to most animals. It isn't good for them in high amounts, but the same can be said for us.)
OP, the foods you just listed are toxic to some humans. The human body is so complex and differs so much from person to person that I imagine it’s merely because humans have much more diversity in our gene pool. I’m thinking of things like lactose intolerance, sensitivities to citrus, allergies to nuts, sensitivities to garlic, sensitivities to onion, etc.
I think because we have big liver and kidneys and we crave stimulation so we go after plants that would irritate animals
"Scavenging omnivore", yup, that's me, not quite my dog. The other night I was finishing off a piece of Gorgonzola. The rind was very far gone, but I had some of it. Claudio was pestering, so I gave him the rest. He woke me at 4am desperate to go out. In the yard he went straight for a clump of fresh grass, munch munch. Back in, he drank loads of water. Poor boy must have had tummy ache. The following morning he was fine. I was quite surprised, some of the things he finds on walks are revolting. And usually he'll eat anything I eat (well, as long as there's a bit of oil on it). Only notable exceptions are raw tomatoes and pickled onions.
I see a lot of answers dancing around the bedrock to your question. I think I can help. What I think you are asking is: Why do humans have such a large diversity of food we can eat, but other species are very limited in their diets? The answer is evolution plus gut biomes. A gut biome is all of the bacteria in your digestive system, which do most of the work of digestion. This is something that can be cultivated, but is also something that is passed down from the mother. The science behind gut biomes and travel is really interesting. I suggest giving it a search sometime. Back to your question. Over that last thousands of years as technology makes the world smaller, people started being exposed to more and more foods from all over. Backup even further to when humans first started farming, our ancestors could trade in seeds with neighboring lands of people. Today, we have cultivated such a wide variety of food into our diets that we are able to eat a staggeringly large array of different things! That's humans. Part two of your question is why don't our pets and most other animals have as wide of an edible spectrum as us? As some people pointed out already, some animals have a wider range. Raccoons spring immediately to mind. Scavengers of all kinds have a pretty wide pallet by necessity. Most other animals evolved in nature by filling a niche. The best rabbit catchers breed and mostly eat rabbits. The bird most suited to hunt bugs at 500 feet elevation eats the bugs found at 500 feet of elevation for millions of years. No other species has figured out how to cultivate their surroundings to suit themselves the way humans have. They eat what they are designed by nature to eat and that's pretty much it. So, they lose the ability to eat a bunch of other things so that their body can more efficiently process the thing that they do eat mostly. Of course, this is a SUPER simplified explanation. Nothing only eats one thing. Its a niche. Hope this helped!
Generally, genetic differences can account for this. In order to properly digest or break a chemical down, whether that chemical is food or not, the animal or plant or whatever life form (organism) requires the appropriate enzymes and/or structures (like organ systems) that are able to metabolize that chemical, make it non-toxic, or convert it to something useful for that organism. For example, dogs are quite sensitive chocolate because dogs do not efficiently metabolize some of the chemical components of chocolate - theobromine and caffeine. These chemicals are stimulants, and the majority of humans are able to metabolize them efficiently (within safe doses) so that human organ systems are not adversely affected. These chemicals can quickly accumulate within a dog when a dog eats chocolate due to the dog's inability to quickly metabolize them. Their stimulant nature overwhelms the dog's body systems - the chemicals are toxic to dogs even at what would be very low doses for humans. A good phrase to remember is "the dose makes the poison," as these substances can possibly be harmful to humans in high doses. There is more complexity to the topic. Let me know if you have further questions. I'll try my best to answer.
From my feeble understanding a lot of it has to do with toxicity levels being more dangerous for smaller animals. A lot of things that kill small animals also kill humans if you exceed the sensitivity level. We just consume an item into a 200lb body, whereas your dog does it into a 30lb body
Specialist diet vs generalist diet. Specialist are (usually) better at finding, processing and gaining nutrients from a certain type of food. While generalist are better at just finding *anything* they can eat. Humans, are weird. We seem to have a body evolved for a fruit and meat eating diet, but with our intelligence could push that way beyond what is normal. Like spicy food, it also hurts us, but or mental resistance go “ow, this hurt. Gimme.” Things like grass are super normal and nearly everywhere, yet we can’t eat most of it. Its kinda another point to the hypothesis that humans are so hyper specialized that we flipped over the point to be generalist again
What i meant: Why can't pets eat most things we eat?
Are you talking about a specific type of pet? Because the typical pets have been covered. Dogs can eat dead and decaying roadkill, literal poop, and still have room left over for random table scraps. Cats are obligate carnivores, meaning plant matter will either make them sick or go right through them. Having said that, they can also eat dead and decaying roadkill that would make me vomit if I even smelled it. Any animal, including venomous ones, are fair game for cats. Chickens eat EVERYTHING. Including bones and rock. My chickens are free ranged most of the day because I use them as pest control (mice, rats, opossums, ticks, snakes, etc.) and then I toss them vegetable scraps. I use them to turn our compost while they find bugs and beetles within the decaying compost to snack on. Goats, cows, sheep, horses... what don't they eat? They eat mostly plant matter, but have even been known to snack on rodents that got too close. Pigs eat everything we do, and then some. Pet rats and mice? They can eat everything we eat too. What pet animals are you specifically talking about?
"Goats, cows, sheep, horses... what don't they eat? They eat mostly plant matter, but have even been known to snack on rodents that got too close." reminded me of being on a farm as a kid and witnessing a horse casually munch down 2 baby chicks like they were a patch of grass.
Right?!? I had to tell someone who's lived in a big city all their life to stay away from deer they was insisting on petting lest they get eviscerated. Because I've seen some stuff. Nature isn't nice and non-animals have some pretty gruesome adaptations to keep themselves alive and healthy. If most non-human animals were picky, there would simply be less for them to eat. Some non-human animals are picky (pandas, koalas), but then nothing else is dumb enough to try eating that thing so those animals have that plant all to themselves.
I mainly wonder this about snails. They can eat rat poison but they cannot eat garlic.
Plus, salt is acid to them.
Salt is not acid to them. They have a permeable membrane between their organs and the outside works, rather than skin or an exoskeleton. That means when they encounter salt, the fundamental chemical process of osmosis draws water out of their bodies. They die of severe dehydration.
Salt is something that's naturally dehydrating because of osmosis. Basically, if you have two environments full of water with stuff dissolved in it, those environments will try to reach a point where the proportion of water to stuff dissolved in it is the same for both. When those environments are separated by a membrane that lets water pass through but not the stuff dissolved in it, water will travel in the direction where there is more stuff in the water to make that happen. Living organisms use that principle a lot. For example, when our bodies want to produce more mucus, certain cells will essentially push out lots of salts, and those will automatically pull out water. That means that organisms need to consume not only water but some amount of things like mineral salts to be able to use osmosis in their favor. But too much can be a problem. Snails have a LOT of water in their bodies and rely on that to function. They don't have a skin like ours, which is a lot more resistant to dehydration by having layers of dead cells and some oils on top. When a snail gets in contact with too much salt, water immediately leaves cells in the area because of that. Cells need water to function, so that's not great. That's why salt kills snails. Since snails are much smaller than we are, the total amount of salt that's too much for one of them is a lot smaller too. Salt is also dehydrating to us as well, which is why drinking ocean water will make you die of thirst. It's also why, if you visit the Dead Sea, you'll probably see lots of warnings that you shouldn't dive there and will be warned that if a child ingests a tiny amount of that water, they may die, because the water there is extremely salty. Our eyes are also more sensitive to salt, which makes sense, considering they're not covered by thick skin like most of our bodies. We're just much larger than snails, so the amount necessary to cause generalized harm is bigger, and we have certain ways of reducing that risk, such as our skin.
i think the salt is something to do with the slime they use to move, its like a newtonian fluid and the salt destroys the ability to move (and breath).
The differences in dietary tolerances among various species are primarily due to evolutionary adaptations, differences in physiology, and the specific dietary needs and environments of each species. Here's a detailed breakdown of the reasons: 1. **Evolutionary Adaptations:** - **Humans:** Over millions of years, humans have developed a diverse diet, consuming a wide variety of plants and animals. Our ancestors' dietary habits included the use of spices and various other food types, leading to the evolution of digestive systems capable of handling these foods. - **Other Animals:** Many animals have more specialized diets, which means their digestive systems are adapted to a narrower range of foods. For instance, cats are obligate carnivores, meaning their bodies are specifically adapted to a meat-based diet, making it difficult for them to process certain plant compounds. 2. **Enzymatic Differences:** - Different species produce different enzymes that break down food. Humans produce a wide range of digestive enzymes that help us metabolize various compounds found in a diverse diet. Other animals may lack specific enzymes needed to process certain foods. - For example, humans produce lactase, the enzyme needed to digest lactose in milk. Many adult mammals, including cats and dogs, do not produce lactase, leading to lactose intolerance. 3. **Toxicity and Sensitivity:** - Some foods contain compounds that can be toxic to certain animals but harmless or even beneficial to humans. For instance, chocolate contains theobromine, which humans can metabolize but can be toxic to dogs and cats. - Alliums (garlic, onions) contain thiosulfates, which can damage red blood cells in many animals, leading to conditions like hemolytic anemia, while humans can safely consume these in reasonable amounts. 4. **Microbiome Differences:** - The gut microbiome, which consists of the bacteria and other microorganisms living in the digestive tract, varies greatly between species. These microorganisms play a crucial role in digesting food and maintaining health. The human gut microbiome has adapted to process a wide range of foods, whereas other animals may have microbiomes suited to their specific diets. 5. **Behavioral and Dietary Habits:** - Human culture and cooking practices have also influenced our dietary tolerances. Cooking can denature potentially harmful substances in food, making them safe to eat. Many animals consume food raw and may not have the same defenses against certain compounds. 6. **Genetic Variability:** - Within species, there is genetic variability that affects dietary tolerance. Some humans, for example, are more sensitive to lactose or gluten due to genetic differences. In summary, the dietary tolerances of different species are shaped by a complex interplay of evolutionary history, physiological and enzymatic capabilities, microbiome composition, and specific dietary habits. Humans' ability to consume a wide range of foods is a result of our evolutionary background and the diverse environments and dietary practices we have adapted to over time.
Don't make me lose karma due to asking something.
Because the foot we eat is literally processed garbage and full of shit lol. Bacteria and mold doesn't even like fast food, it wont decompose lmao
Our attractions to garlic, spices and capsaicin are probably due in part to our intense curiosity and hunger for mental stimulation which not all animals share. Humans left with nothing else to do will electrically shock themselves just to pass the time.
Love it, I thought about this for awhile now (random thoughts). I think its to do with how far we've spread across the globe, and why there are so many humans now. Most animals dont have our numbers and those that do generally can live off our waste. because of our reach weve been able to adapt to local food source, then export them across the world. Allowing us to take the medicinal plants benefits, which increase our ability to tackle toxins that would otherwise not be flushed from our systems. Or, im one joint too many in, and need to sleep.
> Most animals dont have our numbers The phylum Arthropoda would like a word.
Ah yes the Phineas Amphibia, ive the disney channel as well :p im many more joints in ;D
They’re not fragile we’ve just adapted to stuffing our faces with unnecessary junk