Every plant is poisonous. Humans are basically the only mammal that eats capsaicin, caffeine, menthol. Grapes are toxic for everything except a few things. Plants don’t have the ability to pull out a gun to defend itself and so it uses poison, or irritants like thorns. This isn’t limited to pants with animals. Plants are also toxic to other plants. The example that I deal with the most is black walnut. I tried growing plants and when I used the walnut leaves for mulch it would kill the plants I tried growing.
Seriously, everyone points to our brains and thumbs as to why we’re the dominant species on the planet, but our ability to eat damn near everything is also a major factor. We can eat a wide range of plants and animals native to every region of every continent. Wolves/dogs are our closest competition there and they can only eat a fraction of what we can eat. This made us completely unlimited in where we could go and colonize way back in the stone age.
This is amazing to me. We’re immune to so many things that are dangerous/toxic/deadly to other biological life on the planet. We’ve evolved to an amazing extent, and yet, pick the wrong variety of berry and you’ll die writhing in agony.
They’re all trying to kill you, it’s just that some of them, still can.
You can’t be immune to everything and it all comes down to your genetics (lactose intolerance being the most famous example) and what you ate since childhood. One extreme example of what some groups of people can eat is kopalhen, which is deeply fermented meat full of ptomaines, which will kill most humans very fast. It also comes with botulism risk.
So I can be more or less immune to stuff based on my genetics. Neat.
Tartaric Acid
Source: https://www.gradyvet.com/blog/mystery-solved-why-grapes-are-toxic-to-dogs/
Only anecdotal but I grew up on a vineyard and my dogs ate grapes, raisins, sultanas all day and all have lived 11-14yo (GSP breed)
I don’t know. I’ll look it up.
https://www.google.com/search?q=why+are+raisins+toxic+to+dogs+and+not+humans
