Poisons, plants and Palaeolithic hunters

Dozens of common plants are toxic. Archaeologists have long suspected that our Palaeolithic ancestors used plant poisons to make their hunting weapons more lethal.  Now Dr Valentina Borgia has teamed up with a forensic chemist ...

Plant poison turns seed-eating mouse into seed spitter (w/ Video)

In Israel's Negev Desert, a plant called sweet mignonette or taily weed uses a toxic "mustard oil bomb" to make the spiny mouse spit out the plant's seeds when eating the fruit. Thus, the plant has turned a seed-eating rodent ...

Plants and caterpillars make the same cyanide

(PhysOrg.com) -- With an amazing example of convergent evolution, Niels Bjerg Jensen of the University of Copenhagen published a report in Nature Communications discussing the bird's-foot trefoil plant and the burnet moth ...

Native New Zealand tree puts the sting on pain

Researchers at The University of Queensland (UQ) have found that a native New Zealand stinging tree produces toxins that could hold clues for future pain medication.

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