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Amid Agony, Scientists Discover World's First Venomous Frog
sciencehabit writes: Some discoveries come with a price, and Brazilian biologist Carlos Jared's discovery of the world's first known venomous frog came with agony. When Carlos picked up a Brazilian hylid frog—a small, lumpy, green amphibian—while doing fieldwork, the frog raked him with spines hidden within its upper lip across the hand. He dropped the frog, and excruciating pain shot up his arm for the next 5 hours. It was known that some frogs secrete poison onto their skin but this species has tiny spines on their heads and upper lips that enable them to inject lethal venom directly into the bloodstream. C. greening's venom is twice as potent as that of the deadly pit viper, the researchers report.
If they don't name that frog after Moe from the Simpsons, then I just don't want to know about it.
(Moe Sizlak: http://webpages.shepherd.edu/B... )
-Styopa
Amazon rainforest, Australian outback, Middle East, Somalia, Baltimore
Meanwhile some Amazon tribes have been using frog venom on their arrows and blowpipe darts for thousands of years...
And theres probably some joke about Jeff Bezos patenting it...
I'm a bad motherfucking GANGSTA frog, and you in MY HOOD now!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I can't be the only one picturing this happening to some scientists from a Far Side cartoon...
...involving aliens?
If there is any doubt, even 1% doubt, that something is 100% safe, don't handle it. Get gloves, or a net or a trap, or something, but for fuck's sake, don't pick it up, at least, not without gloves.
Yes, I can read. I know frogs are not known to be venomous, thus the news story, but that doesn't mean that it isn't carrying a weird bacteria, or has a secretion that can cause an allergic reaction, or any number of things that can go wrong.
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
Sometimes science advances with the phrase "hmm, that's unexpected" and sometimes with the phrase "arghargharghargharghargh!".
- "Ne sevimli se.."
*hart*
- "ANANI!."
*bir hafta sonra*
- "Cok tesekkurler, bu odulu fen dunyasina layik goruyorum, mahcub ediyorsunuz."
Indeed. There are certainly ways of determining the "what would happen if..." without becoming a test subject yourself.
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
Yes! Hand it to the ungloved undergrad!
They should be more careful choosing what to lick.
Leave aside how you get the venom out of the frog (that's an exercise in applied bio-technology), poisoned darts and arrows are a technique for injecting it into a victim. Works just about as well if it's a venom that the original animal could inject into you by itself, or a poison that normally would only get into your bloodstream if you ate the animal, snorted it, or got it on a cut in your skin. (There are some poisons that only affect you if you eat and digest them, but they're not the kind that would be useful as arrow poisons.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Venom is something the animal can use to attack you with; poison is something that affects you if you attack the animal (or eat or breathe or otherwise get the animal, plant, or mineral material into your body.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It's venom if the animal can use it to attack you, but an animal (or plant or mineral) can be poisonous without being venomous. If a traditional hunter wants something to poison an animal or a traditional warrior wants something to poison an enemy with, in either case by using a dart or arrow or knife coated with the poison, they could use venom from a venomous animal, or they could use some other poison that's available. (Those poisons have a partial overlap with the poisons an assassin or a bad cook could use to poison your food with; some poisons need to be eaten to be harmful, some poisons need to be injected but are rendered mostly harmless by the digestive system.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Biologically, we're not venomous (though bites or scratches inflicted by humans can get infected.) But somebody with a venomous attitude toward you may try to poison you, or kill you with a blunt instrument or sharp object.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
Excellent distinction, one of those things I have never noticed but as soon as I read it, it was "obvious". An exception might be jellyfish who regularly use their stingers for both purposes, jellyfish stingers are more like a tiny speargun than a needle or a spine.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Arguably, "inject" generally implies a hollow tube through which the material is forced. This also means that a larger dose of the material can be forced into the wound since the material is under pressure. So syringe, snake fangs, mosquito proboscis, spider fangs, etc. are all hollow and "inject" would be appropriate.
On the other hand, contact poisons (even on a barb or spin) would generally not be considered an "injection".
If I coat a knife with poison and stab you with it, I'm not "injecting" the poison into you, you're basically absorbing the poison off the surface of the knife.