Anyway, there's an animal here, I assume marmots, that swallows the berries whole and shits them out as a half-digested diarrhea onto the tops of rocks, logs, anywhere high enough to mark their territory. Probably better than shitting out a charcoal briquette that you hope won't roll over... but they seem to know not to chew and crack the seeds.
The estimated lethal dose (LDmin) of taxine alkaloids is approximately 3.0 mg/kg body weight for humans.[27][28] Different studies show different toxicities; a major reason is the difficulty of measuring taxine alkaloids.[29]
Which is close enough to, "any exposure at all will kill".
How much is in one seed?
I could only find a few sources saying that you would need to eat about 50g of the needles to reach the LD, and that's... A lot. There's no way a child would accidentally manage that, for example (even assuming LD for a child is much lower). But I couldn't find specific numbers for seeds.
Not being a killjoy here, I grew up around yew trees and I was always told to be careful of them, but not with any sense of panic that would suggest "any exposure at all will kill”. I think you'd have a bad time even with low exposure but death seems unlikely by accident.
Not a good way to go, BTW: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4462509/
That is complete bullshit and you shouldn't be posting it this confidently.
Those seeds are very poisonous, yes, but not in that cartoonish way. It's not cyanide.
Great to see someone having some fun writing an article.
Its aim is to "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think".
Spit it out man! It means CUNT.
We need to have a conversation about wombats
https://theoatmeal.com/comics/wombats
Possibly NSFW, depending on your W.
[0] https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-04-13/how-fast-can-...
>South Australian wildlife biologist [A/Prof] David Taggart has studied the southern hairy-nosed wombat since 1993. In the 2008 and 2024 editions of Strahan's mammal book, he writes that the southern hairy-nosed species can run at 40 kph. "I can confirm that I have clocked this species running at just over 40 kph, although they can't maintain that for long."
More non-peer reviewed information here from the Australian national science agency: https://connectsci.au/news/news-parent/3758/Turns-out-wombat...
> "This study is really good," says Sunghwan Jung, a biophysicist at Cornell University who studies the mechanics of animal movements and was not involved with the research. It shows, he says, that the guts of these animals "are very special."
The other article [1] quote:
> It’s “an impressive step,” said Jack Szostak (opens a new tab), who studies the origins of life at the University of Chicago and was not involved in the research. “I don’t know of any other effort to put together an artificial cell from biological components that has progressed so far.”
Are these editorial guidelines to get an independent read? Just coincidence? I don't think they are LLM bits because I expect better from these magazines, but it's too eerily similar.
[1] https://www.quantamagazine.org/for-the-first-time-a-cell-bui...
and those who of them who shit cubes ended up more likely to procreate...?
[0]https://pubs.rsc.org/sm/article-abstract/17/3/475/708006/Int...
[1]https://pubs.rsc.org/sm/article-supplement/708006/mov/d0sm01...
My kids can't stop laughing
Wombat Song by Noam Hassenfeld
Ending of Vox Unexplainable Podcast on Wombat cube poops