Poisonous animals

Poisonous animals produce toxins in twopurposes: for protection and for attack. For some, poisonous secretions are a means of scaring off predators and protecting their lives, for others - a hunting tool for extracting food.

Poisonous animals are distributed among alldiversity of fauna uneven. If the venomous arthropods (scorpions, spiders, some insects) are known widely, then there are only four species of such mammals. These are the Australian platypus and echidna, as well as the American pipe-toothed and some shrews. Interestingly, the pipe-tooth, possessing poisonous saliva, is susceptible to its own poison! In fights that arise between representatives of the species, the pipe-toothed die even from small bites of their opponents. How, in this case, do they manage to keep the population at a sufficient level, and in general, why does the animal produce poison, from which it kills itself - one of the mysteries of biology.

Many poisonous animals in the minds of ignorant people are demonized. They are credited with a mortal danger to humans, which in fact rarely corresponds to reality.

The poison of most scorpions causes a personOnly a local defeat, which passes safely in a few hours. Only one death of a person (a seven-year-old boy) from a bite of a giant scolopendra was reliably recorded. The bite was in my head, most likely, at the same time were struck by vital centers, in addition, medical assistance was late. Otherwise, this episode could be excluded from the list of lethal statistics.

A widely spread viper in Russiaordinary is dangerous only in the spring, when it actively produces enzymes. And this reptile for the restoration of poison requires much more time than its southern counterparts. Therefore, our viper spends toxins very sparingly, preferring an escape flight, and a man bites only in self-defense. In summer and autumn, the poison of a viper does not represent a mortal danger and can cause only a series of unpleasant sensations. Poisonous animals are not very abundant on the territory of our country. Only southern regions can "boast" a variety of toxic fauna.

Many of the world's poisonous animals havecalled "passive toxicity". This means that they do not have special organs that produce poison. Such, for example, is a fugu fish containing tetrodotoxin in tissues, even in small quantities, which is deadly to humans. Toxicity to fugu is so high that it is cooked by specially certified culinary specialists. In Japan, despite such precautions, several deaths occur every year due to the consumption of this fish.

Poisonous plants and animals for the most part -representatives of warm and hot regions. This selectivity of nature is due to the fact that at a high temperature the metabolic rate of living organisms is much higher than at a low temperature, and the inhabitants of the tropics can rather afford such luxury as poison production than residents of temperate and cold latitudes.