Question

Lets say some bushman uses an arrowhead-poison frog to rig his arrows with a poison so deadly, it is lethal at (ld50 0.000000001 g/kg). He dips the arrow in and shoots the animal which dies quite fast. How does he not die from eating the animal? I mean, even if the bloodstream stops quite fast, only 1/1,000,000 part of the poison on his arrow ingested is enough to kill his entire tribe.

Answer 1

isnt it the same for the energy transfer? if you eat the animal, shoyuldnt you get all of the energy? no you dont, some of it gets burned off by the animal naturally. i think itnot enough to kill tribes and at the same time it somewhat dissapears

Answer 2

As you might know, energy is aborbed at about 1/10 which causes the food pyramid. And poison accumalates 10/1 because of this. Thats why potentialy low mercury values in the ocean cause deadly poisoness fish. because they are on top of the foodchain. So I'm catching your drift, but I dont think this is the correct explanation

Answer 3

gotcha so you mean build up.

Answer 4

Well, my point is that the buildup isn't even necessary to kill them all. But poison usually doesn't get metabolized or excreted but stored (especially if the animal dies in under one minute), so it shouldn't disappear and the food should be deadly poisonous.

Answer 5

unless the animal adapts no? but yeah i see where your going with this.so how many has he have to eat to die?

Answer 6

Indeed, if they would have a laboratory, they could weigh the exact amount of poison to kill a 20kg animal and safely eat one limb of the killed animal each and don't die. But they royally dip their arrows in this poison of which one gram can kill 12 million 80kg humans. I was just wondering how they pull it off :P

Answer 7

yeah its amazing. i guess its just a old trick they pass down.

Answer 8

I guess so.. or they would all be dead now.. well thanks for the setting up the think-tree with me.. I guess we really don't have clue :P

Answer 9

haha nope. and im kinda dying haha i need to think. only acouple of hours to sleep and uit like 7 here and is dylight and i cant sleep in daylight

Answer 10

Lol.. take 0,01 ng arrowheadpoisonfrogpoison :P

Answer 11

nooo its too much haha.

Answer 12

xD If I found out the awnser someday ill post it here :P Have a good one mate

Answer 13

haha hope you will. to you too.

Answer 14

if it was cooked wouldn't the poison die off? because of the chemical reaction occuring...no poison should be able to with stand a certain amount of heat. i mean, i'm not a genius and all but to my knowledge.

Answer 15

So, you would be saying, that you can leave food out of the fridge as long as you like, if you just heat it up before you eat it you are fine. Lots of toxins are heatresistant, atleast to the extend that the food must still be edible after heating it. I dont think they eat ashes of cremated animals :P

Answer 16

i ment if you killed it then ate it lol...i guess im not that smart! =O

Answer 17

or cooked then ate

Answer 18

well, it might well be the key. I'm just saying it is not always the case and I can't find any proof or anything

Answer 19

hmm that is a hard one

Answer 20

Bushman? Seriously? Even if we ignore how racist that (and the whole concept of the question) is... the "bushmen" live in Africa, and poison arrow frogs are native to Central and South America.

Answer 21

Ah yes, I'll give you that. I have to admit I hastly cooked up an example in which I did not check the propability of these two factors meeting up in the real world. I only used the example to get my question clear. I don't know anything about racism and I think it is perfectly clear I did not mean my question to be racist at all.

Next time please only reply if you want to take part in the discussion about the biology behind this, and check into the 'language & culture' section if you want to debate about racism. Copy my question and ask if it racist if you like. I don't care

Answer 22

If you cook it doesn't it lose more energy o_O?