Edit: DERP duh you mean humans. :D Literally made the comparison without recognizing it, too. /Edit
Not challenging you, just curious and not immediately finding the answer myself with a quick search.
The capsaicin receptor is TRPV1, which is a critical protein for thermoregulation and detection being burned. In other words, it's not just a quick and easy evolutionary path to have a mutation break the receptor for capsaicin and now be immune to the taste. Obviously the animals could evolve behavior or even simply learn as juveniles to tolerate or even enjoy the taste (as many humans do).
There are some other interesting things that happen with avian carriers, like reductions in fungal infection and attractiveness to other predators (ants). https://www.washington.edu/news/2013/06/21/airborne-gut-acti...
https://youtu.be/dutpBSKj8JY?t=196
It looks at a couple non-competing (iirc) theories
You see a long time ago, someone at a tomato. Could've been a slice in a cold sandwich. Could've been a fresh one, maybe with A little cheese and pepper. But chili just won't do. Neither would spaghetti.
Then, before we had such regulations as we do today, they deposited that tomato seed, post digestion, in the train lavatory toilet. Being back then as it was, the tomato seed and associated fertilizer was dropped from the train car to the track ballast below where it germinated.
It's the same process where researchers deposit tomatoes on new volcanic islands.
You know what they say: when you gotta go, you gotta go.
After writing all that I did a search about people with low TRPV1 receptors and found an interesting study done on a couple people lacking functional TRPV1 channels. They were insensitive to the application of capsaicin to the mouth and skin. Furthermore they had an elevated heat pain threshold as well as an elevated cold pain threshold. Why I found this interesting is because my same son who barely reacted to this insanely hot pepper I can never get to wear a jacket to school. He does not mind the cold at all. He will if we were up a mountain or something but he always complains the car is too hot when I am cold. Anyways not sure he lacks function TRPV1 receptors but still interesting to think about. Article linked below.
Capsaicin is a nonpolar molecule that is fat soluble and hydrophobic, so running water over your tongue either has no impact on the problem or makes it worse.
You want to consume anything with fat like milk or sour cream or even pure olive oil which will dissolve the capsaicin and carry it down your digestive tract. For something as strong as a reaper challenge, you’ll want to gargle olive oil (the mechanical action of the bubbles helps break up anything coated on your tounge).
If you go extreme enough humans can even walk barefoot through the snow without a problem all day without a real problem, where as someone who wears socks and shoes when it is freezing cold will get serious frostbite on their feet in like 30 minutes or less if they tried it without adapting themselves over time.
For a direct application of this, ice climbers will soak their hands in ice water for 45 minutes every day in the weeks leading up to a climb so that their hands don't freeze and maintain blood flow when on an ice climb, because obviously you can't just stop and warm up your hands by a fire when you are halfway up a frozen waterfall and having stiff or frostbitten fingers makes climbing more difficult/dangerous.
(Dear god, I'm showing my age there, aren't I?)
Whatever it is, I'm absolutely certain that it can be launched in a few seconds on archive.org, with no special software requirements besides the JavaScript interpreter that a web browser already has, and that all of this can happen even on your standard-issue pocket supercomputer.
(Every couple of years I fire up an Apple ][ version of Oregon Trail on archive.org because even though we had a PC at home way back when, that's the version I remember playing in school. That game is still hard and I'm not sure exactly what it is that it is supposed to teach except that dysentery is evil.)
Apple][ in my case. Very early 80s, definitely before 83.
(My peppers ferment just find using microbes.)
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4643145/
https://www.ijrar.org/papers/IJRAR1944311.pdf
Antimicrobial doesn't necessarily mean it literally kills everything.
What else?
EDIT: and morphine!
So what kills some animals will have mind altering effects on others.
side note: It kills you by making all your muscles tense so strongly that you can't breath any more. The muscles in your face tense in a way that it gives you whats called a "Strychnine Smile".
Can also be caused by Tetanus
Now thats a party!
(and as I said in another reply) Strychnine
Cathinone, from khat (Catha edulis)
In Mexico, our ancestors cultivated corn despite not knowing fungicides to prevent mycotoxin contamination. Somehow they discovered nixtamalization, which is boiling corn in an alkaline solution that destroys mycotoxins and improves nutritional value. Guess they really loved corn.
that one always amazes me. How did they figure it out? it's not exactly intuitive, especially when they wouldn't have known about the chemistry underneath.
It would probably take weeks or months to notice if doing A instead of B was making people sick or not
In particular, lots of civilizations learned to strengthen the basic clay pot by the addition of lime-y things, eg burnt mussel shells. If all your pots are made in this manner then you dont so much discover nixtamalization as experience it only by its absence when you meet settlers that have pellagra and dont use your style of pot.
See [0] for a technical write up on this and many other pot themes.
There are other animals humans can observe instead of impulsively risking their lives.
> Nine young backpackers were rushed to hospital in the west Australian city of Perth after snorting a drug they mistook for cocaine. Three remain in critical condition after *ingesting the mystery white powder which arrived in the post addressed to someone else*
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-42563523
> The bystander states that the older man is a “death with dignity” patient who invited loved ones to be present while he consumed the [Medical Aid in Dying] medication. After his first swallow, he remarked, “Man that burns!” The younger man said, “Let me see,” and then also took a swallow.
https://www.jems.com/patient-care/emergency-medical-care/dea...
> She remarks that the older man “should be dead” and the younger one “should be alive.”
Great storytelling.
Some places are iron poor, some even resort to eating dirt, especially when pregnant when you need more iron. Some areas are salt poor and animals will go to extreme measures to get to salt. Some areas have poor bioavailability and require crushing, special cooking, soaking, or a narrow range of acidity to be available, which of course becomes the norm for cooking in those areas. Some even become religious standards, things like fish on fridays or avoiding pork (before trichinosis was controlled).
Same for corn (maize). There is no naturally occurring plant that looks like what we’ve turned it into.
Also I had lots of wild berries (of various species) in forests, and they look pretty much like the berries you can find in a garden. (Though probably not like the berries you can get in a supermarket?)
Wild grass also looks pretty much like some of the domesticated variety. (Well, some varieties do.)
Wheat still generally looks like wild grasses, but like maize its seeds are much larger than you’ll find on wild grasses.
When we came out, we were initially incredulous but they clarified that the flesh of the berry was sweet, but the seed was disgustingly bitter. Which prompted the rest of us to quickly do some research on what this plant was. The mood was initially somewhat light-hearted, however articles with titles like “Why is the Yew Berry sometimes called the Death Berry?” had us on the phone with poison control pretty quickly.
Poison control was very professional, and once they confirmed that it was indeed a Yew Berry that had been ingested, things got pretty serious. Apparently even small doses can quickly cause irreversible heart failure, with death the earliest “symptom” in some cases.
My friend didn’t die— just experienced some terror and gastric distress— the latter likely exacerbated by the terror). No drugs or alcohol or involved, just an impulsive decision, and a sobering reminder about the fragility of life.
One of the other replies in this thread mentions mushrooms. Which reminds of the aphorism: _There are old mushroom foragers, and bold mushroom foragers, but there are no old AND bold mushroom foragers._
My friend has a running joke calling Yew poison berries, but I never looked up the effects before. Great that you called poison control.
The route that my kids walk to school took us underneath a large yew tree, and the road underneath is often covered in hundreds of delicious-looking pink berries. Since they were tiny they have had to know all about how yew berries look lovely but even one can kill you. What I didn't ever tell them is how apparently the flesh is actually not toxic and is tasty, and it's the seed that will kill you.
Apparently, there are others in North America, but mostly not in the Southwest. I lived in the Pacific Northwest about a decade ago which also has a yew (Taxus brevifolia) but I don’t recall if I ever saw the berries.
That said, most folks I know were raised with a baseline of “don’t eat random berries you don’t recognize.”
Folks visiting the desert and distractedly running straight into octillos is just good entertainment. There's not much on the east coast that prepares you for a random shrub to be so hostile. Poisonous berries though, they're everywhere. I'm surprised your fellows made it to adulthood without basic suburban survival skills.
I think it's understandable. I live in a city suburb and the foliage around me is pretty much all non-toxic.
I was raised in a rural community and went camping often so we had the lessons of "don't eat random shit, you'll die" drummed into us.
Where I'm at, particularly in the suburbs, there's a distinct lack of things that are tempting to eat (like a berry) and also poisonous.
I'm pretty confident with berries as I've got plenty of experience, but I don't mess with wild carrot or even elderberry as I don't feel I have the knowledge at this point to make it worth the risk. There are just too many lookalikes.
>I was in Cape Cod
it give me the chance to tell you, "we say on Cape Cod". There are a number of towns on Cape Cod that you could be in.
Fun fact: The danger in eating raw cookie-dough isn't primarily from fresh eggs (though they can have problems too) but rather from the raw flour, which before cooking may have a bunch of bacterial nastiness in it.
("This cardboard is unlikely to kill me, sooooo...")
Yeah, but it ain't much fun to eat, either?
The eggs are a far more likely vector for illness unless you're making the cookies yourself from scratch.
At least where I live, only a minority are advertised as "ready to eat". It's more common to see the opposite, an explicit warning that it must be cooked.
* with the right equipment
Don't know about eggs, but some recipe sites claim it works for them too.
Perhaps on a low setting?
This isn't the default assumption?
(Spiders have a special deal: Just stay out of sight while inside and we're gucci. But I'll just move them outside because I see them as allies against the insects.)
If you must use traps, use snap traps and take the responsibility for cleanup.
https://www.evergreenseeds.com/do-mint-plants-keep-mice-away...
I was told that Irish Spring soap is minty enough to repel mice. Based on the scratch/tooth marks in the bar I left in the glovebox, it apparently isn't.
Next summer, I'll try something with peppermint oil. Assuming I can get the transmission fixed for a reasonable price. Not having reverse is proving to be a hassle.
But we are specifically discussing ingestion of non-recommended substances here.
To correct a minor misconception that could arise from your comment: essential oils do not contain active ingredients. They are, generally speaking, the active ingredient. Some, like oil of wintergreen, are an almost pure compound, while others, like oil of peppermint, are mixtures, but generally they do not contain inert or nontoxic components.
One specific way that a fatal dose could be ingested is if the person ingesting it had previously obtained adulterated essential oils from an irresponsible drug dealer, containing an active ingredient but consisting mostly of something like canola oil, and then switched to a pure essential oil without realizing it.
It really doesn’t matter how you classify the active ingredient (and there is absolutely an active ingredient). It’s not getting absorbed in five gram quantities unless you snort it, drink it, or apply a stupid homeopathic topical with DMSO that penetrates the skin.
Edit: you’ve edited your post several times since I’ve made mine and I’m just not going to bother. There a dozen everpresent household chemicals that are deadlier than essential oils by a long shot. Nobody seems to have a problem except the kids who eat Tide pods, and they solved that with a zipper.
However, it is worth noting that most household chemicals have a much larger lethal dose (are much less toxic) than commonplace essential oils! Such less-toxic chemicals include not only Tide Pods, but also everything else commonly used for laundry (even liquid bleach), window-cleaning ammonia, kerosene, unleaded gasoline, hair-bleaching-concentration hydrogen peroxide, most paint thinners, and even industrial degreasers like trisodium phosphate. I thought bleaching powder (calcium hypochlorite) was an exception, but I just looked up its LD50, and it's 850mg/kg orl-rat. So the lethal dose for an adult human is probably about 50 grams, which is an order of magnitude less toxic than oil of peppermint.
(Lye, sulfuric acid, and hydrochloric acid aren't toxic per se. You can safely add unlimited quantities of them to your food if they're dilute enough. But in reasonably concentrated forms they're corrosive enough to cause fatal injuries if ingested, even, potentially, at the teaspoon quantities we're talking about. Your mileage may vary, though, and you may just end up permanently maimed.)
It is possible that you don't appreciate just how small a quantity five grams is, or you have a vastly exaggerated idea of how dangerous commonplace household chemicals are. I have no idea how you could get to a dozen. Are you poisoning your rats with strychnine and sodium cyanide? There are much safer options now, you know. Most people stopped keeping those in their houses decades ago, even in poor countries.
(Yes, I edited my comment, just as you did, because I think it's important to make it a high-quality comment so that people who read it are not misinformed.)
Essential oils aren’t obviously caustic like bleach and since it’s food product someone might think that getting a little in their mouth or food they’ll eat is no big deal.
Right. Decades ago when I was in highschool and learning chemistry the chem teacher brought out reagent bottles of HCl, HNO3, H2SO4 and NaOH (in soln.) which he intended us students to smell and taste. He also had boxes of brand new test tubes and he issued everyone with four thereof for the demonstration/experiment which he insisted that we wash thoroughly under running water despite them being brand new.
His stated reasons were that as chemists that (a) we needed to become familiar with these common reagents as they were ubiquitous in chemistry labs and industry, and (b) we needed to know and experience the acidity of acids and to clearly distinguish them from the soapy character of the alkali. He also had a more important motive that I'll come to in a moment.
He then diluted the reagents to a safe level (I think it was about 1/40 Normal but I can't remember for sure). Then we students all lined up and he poured a few ml of each of the reagents into our test tubes for us to first smell then taste, which we all did.
Afterwards when we were all back in the tiered seats of the demonstration lab he made a statement in the sternest tone that shocked the wits out of lot of us:
"You're all dead!"
—long silent pause—
"Don't you ever do that again. You don't know whether the reagents are true to label, for all you know I could have given you poison and you'd be none the wiser until it was too late. And even if the bottles are true to label then you've still no idea how pure they are—they may contain impurities that are highly toxic."
He then went on to point out that these bottles of reagents were new and that he'd unsealed them in front of us and asked if anyone of us had noticed that.
He then pointed to print on the label that said BP—British Pharmacopeia grade and then to the assay list of impurities which were many decimal places below one percent (the minutest of a trace).
This chemistry lesson was by far the most important one we ever learned—nothing at university was ever the equal of it.
It's a great tragedy that these days health and safety rules preclude students from ever participating in such a demonstration. Students must be taught not to fear chemicals but nevertheless to treat them with care and great respect lest they bite.
These days much of society has an almost irrational fear of chemicals despite the widespread teaching of chemistry. That tells me there's something terribly wrong with the way we teach the subject—a matter that I've covered on HN previously.
Essential oils are generally not at high risk of deadly impurities, for three reasons. First, they are mostly intended for human consumption (whether BP grade or not), except for turpentine; second, their production process is just steam distillation and so doesn't normally involve any highly-toxic impurities; third, because the essential oils themselves are sufficiently deadly that most potential impurities would have to be present at very high levels before they were a concern.
Agreed. Whilst the lesson played out almost to the letter as I described it (I well remember the experience) some of the fine minutiae/details may be a bit unclear (after all, that lesson was in the 1960s). Thus, it's possible the 'odd-man-out' in the lineup wasn't HNO3 but rather H3PO4, but don't think so.
Remember, the amount the teacher put in the test tubes was at most only a couple of ml and most just barely tasted the samples (you can imagine, there was much ooing and arring at the bitter taste) so the amount tasted was actually minuscule). Incidentally, there was general agreement that the most objectionable reagent to the taste was NaOH, 'yucky' was the most common description.
Whilst I said the dilutions were about 1/40 N. that was almost certainly so for HCl but not necessarily so for the others which may have been more highly diluted (HCl's dilution specifically comes to mind because the teacher mentioned it in connection with stomach acid).
The reason I don't think it was H3PO4 is that we didn't do much chemistry with it although I do remember it being discussed in connection with Coca-Cola in that we shined up pennies with it.
I'd also point out there were other 'safety' lessons of a similar nature. Ones that come to mind Immediately include the need to take great care when handling aqua regia and H2SO4, especially so if heated in a retort, another was the preparation of H2S in a Kipp's generator/apparatus—the mandatory use of the ventiated fume cupboard and that H2S is particularly dangerous as it desensitizes one's sense of smell in even quite small concentrations. Then there were the strict rules surrounding the use of Hg (of which the lab had many litres thereof).
It's interesting you mention turpentine as an exception. I occasionally do a bit of woodworking and I know others who are more avid woodworkers than I am. One thing that characterizes a small subset of them is that they insist on using real oil/spirit of turpentine rather than the mineral (white spirit) variety for no other reason than it's 'natural' whereas the mineral stuff is 'unnatural' as it comes from the petroleum industry.
Frankly this horrifies me. As you'd know oil of turpentine is a catch-all name for any number of terpenes—of which there are hundreds if not thousands—all mixed in ill-defined ratios, what you get depends on where it's sourced.
There's no telling these guys that many terpenes are both irritating to the skin and quite toxic—and that some are known carcinogens. What surprises me is that woodworking suppliers are actually allowed to stock and sell the stuff.
If I had my way I'd ban it for that purpose (there might be some excuse for its availability if mineral turpentine was actually inferior in this application but that's not the case).
As for turpentine, it depends on the person and the particular turpentine, but generally turpentine on your skin isn't particularly irritating and may even be therapeutically beneficial. Like many other essential oils, it's a broad-spectrum fungicide, bactericide, and antiviral, but isn't absorbed particularly well through the stratum corneum, and it's a pretty decent solvent for removing other chemicals that may be more toxic and are commonly used in woodworking.
I think there are two good reasons for preferring natural turpentine, despite its variability, to mineral spirits:
- as with cyanide, the humans evolved with frequent exposure to small amounts of plant terpenes, from chewing pine needles and other leaves and from dermal exposure to broken and crushed plant matter and to pine resin. So you'd expect them to have reasonable ways of clearing out the terpenes that occur naturally, and in fact they do. Mineral spirits might just contain the same compounds (and other well-tolerated ones like octane and xylene) but they also might have novel compounds humans don't tolerate as well. And you can't usually tell from the label; just as with turpentine, what you get depends on where it comes from. Typically the MSDS will tell you the major components, but not the impurities thought to be harmless.
- culturally, there are millennia of traditions about how to use turpentine safely, due to its extensive use in shipbuilding, painting, and woodworking, so we can be reasonably sure that the health risks are small when handled in traditional ways. Mineral spirits are only 200 years old or less, and the processes for producing them today aren't the same as the processes used 50 years ago. So it's much more plausible for them to contain impurities that turn out to be dangerous. Indeed, many such novel nonpolar solvents widely used in the past turned out to be unexpectedly dangerous, such as benzene, carbon disulfide, polychlorinated biphenyls (used as solvents for woodworking in old Fabulon; see https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2267460/), and "cleaning fluid" (carbon tetrachloride). It would be much less surprising to find some novel hazard in mineral spirits than in turpentine.
I used mineral spirits last month to clean oil off my immersion blender. They're probably pretty harmless. But we can have a lot more confidence in the exact degree of harmlessness of turpentine.
Right, I agree. It's necessary to say where I am and that's Australia. It's important because I've lived and worked in both the US and in Europe and from experience nomenclatures and formulations of these substances vary substantially from country to country.
The term 'mineral spirit' for mineral turpentine (aka mineral turps) is rarely used here. If one went to any hardware store and asked for mineral spirit the person serving would likely be quite confused and ask for clarification 'do you mean Shellite?', or whatever.
BTW, Shellite† is our version (concoction) of naphtha, it's much more flammable ('explosively' so) than turps.
Here, labels on containers of mineral turps are always titled with the name 'Mineral Turpentine' followed by its UN number and description, ie: UN-1300, Turpentine substitute. The UN-1300 MSDS is: https://advancechemicals.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/0....
As with all SDSs, almost every warning possible is described but for mineral turps two particularly relevant points stand out which are 'Mutagenicity: Not mutagenic' and 'Carcinogenicity: Limited evidence…'.
Despite the usual danger warnings to not inhale it, to avoid skin contact and avoid long exposure to it etc., the facts are that in practice there's little evidence of any serious harm coming to those who are exposed to it on a regular basis—so long as they take reasonable safety precautions. Here, painters use it as their primary most-used solvent for linseed oil-based paints. Go to any hardware shop and you'll see 1, 4 and 20-litre containers of it everywhere. Paint shops stock mineral turps along with acetone and DCM. At a guess, for every litre of DCM there'd be 5 litres of acetone and 20-50 litres of mineral turpentine.
I'd always have several litres of mineral turps at home. Today, I used about 300ml to wash out dirt from an old clock, here it's a household solvent with a multitude of uses. I've a range of pre-mixed solutions—mixed with Shellite, with ~5℅ EtOH and trace H2O, etc; they're used for degreasing, stain removal, etc.
EtOH is the safest chemical I use on a day-to-day basis (I've always about 10 litres of 95% available—unlike the US, denatured EtOH is readily available here). The next safest solvent I use is mineral turps, yes I avoid deliberately sniffing it or getting it on my skin but I take no other special precautions (that's the procedure most here would adopt).
It's worth noting that mineral turpentine that's available here is very consistent in its formulation, benzene and other toxic impurities never exceed 0.1%, and I'm reliably informed levels are usually much lower. I cannot speak for stuff that's called mineral spirits that I've seen in the US and in Europe. I've not done an assay but I know they differ significantly to our local product, for starters they have quite dissimilar odors (here, all brands have an identical odor).
I'm in no way trying to whitewash the dangers of mineral turps but in this highly regulated country it comes in as one of the solvents of least concern. On past evidence it draws pretty much the least attention.
I say that as someone who considers ALL aromatic hydrocarbons as potentially dangerous, especially so if they've benzene rings. DCM is considered significantly more toxic than mineral turps, trichloromethane is now unavailable to the GP, and CCl4 was banned years ago, and righty so (but when I was a kid evey dry-cleaning shop used it, walk nearby a store and one would always smell it).
Turning now to gum/wood turps, from your description it seems the stuff to which you are referring is very different to the type that's available over here. Reckon they're different substances, the only similarity seems to be in name only.
Over here, gum turps is at least four to five times more expensive than mineral turps, at minimum it costs around $28/litre versus $5-6/litre for the mineral stuff. Some art supplies even sell it for upwards of $11/100ml that's around 20 times as much! At that exorbitant price no normal person is going to use it as a general purpose solvent.
Here's gum's MSDS: https://diggersaustralia.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sds/16012....
Comparing their harmful effects they're as different as chalk and cheese with gum turps being substantially more toxic. Obviously, I'm unfamiliar with chemical regulations in your jurisdiction but you'll note from the MSDSs that here there's much greater concern over gum turps than there is for the mineral stuff, in fact the gum turps MSDS is a frightening read. Gum's MSDS sums it up as 'Hazardous', it goes on to say that one must wear gloves, protective clothing, eye protection with side shields and a respirator. It also makes the point I remarked upon in my earlier post, that is:
"…essential oils can consist of up to several hundred constituents, which can vary considerably depending on many factors (e.g. genus, species, growing conditions, harvest period, processes used). Therefore, a description of the main constituents is often not sufficient to describe these substances. …"
As someone who does some carpentry, I've often heard stories from fellow woodworkers never to use the stuff. Some have told me from experience that its effects on the skin are as bad as urushiol if not worse and it produces rashes and blistering that can take weeks to heal; and that's just the effects on one's skin, breathing or ingesting it are much, much worse.
All up, it's little wonder the stuff has a nasty reputation in this part of the world.
Again, it seems to me the only explanation for our differing accounts is that we're discussing two different substances. Perhaps where you are regulations are much more stringent for the product. Perhaps also it's distilled from a genus that has compounds that are low in toxicity and or that post-distillation purification further reduces the amount of its toxic compounds to safe levels.
"as with cyanide, the humans evolved with frequent exposure to small amounts of plant terpenes, …"
I'm not a toxicologist but I know that a main function of the liver is to metabolize various toxins including those produced by one's body; eg, alcohol dehydrogenase enzymes mop up the small amounts of EtOH produced during digestion, same goes for numerous other 'nasties' including various terpenes. As chemistry teaches, concentration matters. Similarly, as we evolved to eat fruit, so we've adapted to the small quantity of toxic amygdalin glycoside that's in some fruit kernels one metabolite of which is HCN and our bodies have learned to mop it up quickly..
Incidentally, as a young teenager who was keen on processing my own films, I recall a darkroom experience when reducing the amount of Ag in negatives with HCN. To be dark the room had to be almost airtight and the HCN got to me. Fortunately, I was aware of its effects and staggered from the room. A short time later I was quite OK.
I'd like to discuss the impurities 'triangle' with you as it's a fascinating subject but this comment is already too long.
___
† Here's Shellite MSDS: https://diggersaustralia.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sds/Shell....
Here's an anecdote that's somewhat off topic but given it's about Shellite and that it's so memorable I couldn't help but to recall it here. Quite some years ago during a prolonged strike of some weeks by petroleum workers I kept my car running on Shellite—at least so for most of the strike's duration. At the time I had access to a number of 20-litre drums of it, and it was marvelous to drive around without almost any other traffic on the roads except for emergency vehicles (they had special reserves of fuel available). Having the normally bottlenecked roads in a large busy city with a population of millions almost all to myself for several weeks was a strange and unforgettable experience—and a very pleasant one.
That said, unfortunately about two-thirds way through the strike I ran out of Shellite. Well, not to be deterred I resorted to using any flammable liquid that I could lay my hands on including EtOH, kerosene and mineral turpentine mixed in various ratios depending on what 'fuels' were available on the day. Initially, the car ran quite well on the combo mixture—albeit a little rough—that is, so long as I had enough EtOH in the mixture. Trouble was, soon I also began to run short of EtOH and each day I had to reduce its percentage which made the vehicle very difficult to start. Eventually, the ratio of EtOH to the 'oils' was so out of wack that the vehicle wouldn't start, there just wasn't enough of it in the mix to get ignition.
What to do next? Fortunately, the uni's physics school had lots of sealed tins of Et2O, so I resorted to pouring a small amount directly into the carburetor and that solved the issue of the engine not starting, but then (as I expected) another problem arose. Unfortunately, kero/turps mixtures are not that dissimilar to diesel fuel and engine run-on became a problem, to stop the engine I'd turn off the ignition and then put my hand over the carburetor's air intake to choke it. :-)
They do that in any case
https://order.wbu.com/shop/bird-food/hot-pepper
It's a game changer, it's the only bird food that I use now.
they have no heat receptors?? capsaicin literally triggers the ion channel for thermosensing.
Capsaicin isn’t just effective on mammals, it also has an effect on some fungi and insects, though mostly through metabolic disruption.
Granted - the older areas have more mature oak, pecan, and other nut producing trees too. But there should be some squirrels out in the exurbs and I never see any. I've spent some significant time out there too. They have more rabbits than I see intown, which I imagine is the coyotes main food source.
We eventually took our feeder down after birds kept crashing into our windows near the feeder.
I can only assume they were trying to get to "the other bird feeder".
It was great while it lasted, though. We -- and our cats -- loved watching them crowd around the feeder to enjoy some seed.
I smeared some Last Dab on the bird feeder support and cayenne on the furniture and railings and haven’t seen a squirrel since.
Probably.
True. I suspect it is only placental mammals. Brush-tailed possums (a marsupial mammal) do not seem repelled by it at all. I've had my birds eyes and Carolina Reaper chilly plants and fruit eaten by them.
I'm getting so frustrated anymore trying to use google, bing, brave search, startpage, etc for finding anything except reddit or quora answers and business pages. If you find any more info on marsupials and peppers, I'd love to see it. It's a super interesting question.
Chewing is also an imperfect process. Mammals, and I can tell you this personally and with some disdain, sometimes pass seeds as well.
> found a chemical irritant that repels the mammals
Deer, and I can tell you this personally and with some disdain, seem to love peppers as much as we do. They're also harder to keep out of your yard.
That's how you get poop coffee.
One of my pet-peeves: Certain science fiction writers (often amateur) posit that humans will greatly impress aliens with our willingness--no, zeal--to consume capsaicin, a terrible death substance all sentient races flee from etc.
This is nonsense since it's basically an narrowly targeted false-alarm trick between relatively closely related creatures. It's not acidic, caustic, corrosive, etc.
> this protein
Just to head off the ambiguous phrasing here: Capsaicin itself is not a protein, but a much simpler kind of chemical.
What brand? I've been wanting to figure out a squirrel deterrant for my bird feeder, and personal recommendations are always greatly preferred to ads.
One one hand, some seeds must survive passing through the bird's digestive system intact to later grow into a plant, on the other hand, some seeds must be digested in order to keep the birds interested in consuming that seed... Alternatively, a bird species interested in eating indigestible seeds may become extinct due to malnutrition.
Contrary to what the internets want you to believe, there are bird murder machines called "cats", which seems to skip most of the "learning" and the "headache" part.
As for spicy peppers funny to me story. I grew a Carolina Reaper plant last summer and the plant did well and I got something like 200 peppers from it. Of course I had to know what it felt like so me my dad and my 13 year old son tried them. We all threw a big chunk in our mouths chewed for about 5 seconds and spat it out.
The pain was basically instant. It was at about 2 seconds I knew this was not going to be good. It was insanely hot which lasted about half an hour, the entire time me running my mouth under the tap or putting ice on it, trying crackers and milk, even tried to wash my tongue. Some how my son after about 5 minutes very calmly says can I go have a shower. He was hardly bothered by the pepper.
Funny thing happened couple weeks later. I was telling my friend how insane these peppers were. He then asks if he can have some as he has a bear knocking over his garbage every night and wants to leave some for the bear to eat and hopefully encourage it to stop. So he makes a burrito and fills it with 5 or 6 nice sized reapers and leaves it out before bed. Well middle of the night his phone dings and his outside camera detected motion. Fires up the video and what does he see, not the bear but some stray dog walking the neighborhood run up and down the thing in a couple bites. Oh man I hope that dog didn't suffer too bad when it came out the other end.
Of that list, we have a Metasequoia / Dawn Redwood tree in our yard, it's great fast-growing shade tree with deciduous leaves that are so small you don't need to rake them. Thought to be extinct, re-discovered in China in 1944, availability in nurseries is pretty good.
not really true, mastication isn't practiced to perfection in the wild, which is why you might often see seeds right on the poop. a portion of them get distributed intact.
The ones that were repulsive to birds but tasty to mammals got eaten by something that grinds up their seed, and so they are extinct. Or, (after humans invented agriculture), possibly got domesticated and became extremely numerous since we'd intentionally save some seeds to plant despite eating the rest.
But there was no awareness and no plan, just chance and history and whatever happened to work.
They also illustrate the evolution of this protein: birds have no receptors for capsaicin, while mammals do. Birds eat seeds mostly intactly. Their digestive systems are capable of breaking them down - but it's stochastic and some seeds make it through the bird undigested, being redistributed elsewhere. Obviously, having an agent sow your seeds widely is a fitness advantage, and so seedy plants are ultimately served well even if 90+% of their caloric investment into seeds goes into the birds.
Mammals, on the other hand, have teeth - particularly molars. Mammals that eat seeds grind them apart orally before even swallowing. As a result, any seeds ingested by mammals are very likely to be completely destroyed. Plants - peppers, anyway - found a chemical irritant that repels the mammals without even being sensed by birds.
I've used one such treatment (with an amusing logo illustrataion - https://i.imgur.com/JAl8vyW.png) to good effect to discourage squirrels at my feeder, so that they stick to my dedicated squirrel bungee with a log of compressed corn instead.