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Comment by xattt | original | How do wombats poop cubes?
[−]xattt · 2026-07-02 Thu 02:55 UTC · link
There has to be a term for these very specific claims. 30 g in 30 minutes? Give me LD50 numbers.
[−]3eb7988a1663 · 2026-07-02 Thu 03:20 UTC · link
Taxine alkaloids[0]

  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]
It goes on to say that rats are ~20mg/kg, which would put a human at somewhere less than 1.4grams.

Which is close enough to, "any exposure at all will kill".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxine_alkaloids

[−]esperent · 2026-07-02 Thu 05:10 UTC · link
> 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.

[−]golem14 · 2026-07-02 Thu 05:32 UTC · link
A child might not need the whole 50g.

Not a good way to go, BTW: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4462509/