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The plant is poisonous, containing cardiostimulant compounds such as adonidin and aconitic acid. [42] Aesculus hippocastanum: horse-chestnut, buckeye, conker tree Sapindaceae: All parts of the raw plant are poisonous due to saponins and glycosides such as aesculin, causing nausea, muscle twitches, and sometimes paralysis. [43] Agave spp.
All parts of the plant contain Cycasin and an unknown nervous system toxin which are poisonous to animals, including humans. The seeds are poisonous enough to kill small mammals such as dogs and cats, and cause liver and kidney failure, as well as eventual paralysis in humans. Dehydration sets in very quickly.
Sheep seem to be poisoned most often due to their grazing behavior as they pull up and consume the entire plant. [2] Moist conditions are more conducive to cattle poisoning as it makes it easier to extract the plant from the soil. [2] Humans have also fallen victim to zygacine poisoning by mistaking the death camas for other edible plants.
Dogbane, dog-bane, dog's bane, [citation needed] and other variations, some of them regional and some transient, are names for certain plants that are reputed to kill or repel dogs; "bane" originally meant "slayer", and was later applied to plants to indicate that they were poisonous to particular creatures. [citation needed]
Toxic effects include vomiting, seizures, and an irregular heartbeat, and death can occur in as little as a few hours. This poison is known as "the poison that keeps on killing" because the toxin stays in the body after the animal dies, so if a predator eats the animal, the predator gets poisoned, and so on up the food chain.
The term is also used to describe toxic chemicals produced by plants themselves, which function as defensive agents against their predators. Most examples pertaining to this definition of phytotoxin are members of various classes of specialised or secondary metabolites , including alkaloids , terpenes , and especially phenolics , though not all ...
Early writers used quail as the standard example of an animal that could eat something poisonous to man without ill effects for themselves. Aristotle ( On Plants 820:6-7), Philo ( Geoponics : 14: 24), Lucretius ( On the Nature of Things : 4: 639–640), Galen ( De Temperamentis : 3:4) and Sextus Empiricus (Outlines of Pyrrhonism: 1: 57) all ...
The plant is regarded as one of the most toxic plants in Namibia, but specific studies into its toxicity are not known. It has been reported that the toxic milky latex of the plant is capable of killing animals and humans except rhino and oryx who feed upon it. [ 3 ]