How come you can build up tolerance to toxins, like snake’s, but you can’t build up a tolerance to others, like cyanide?

Question

How come you can build up tolerance to toxins, like snake’s, but you can’t build up a tolerance to others, like cyanide?

In: 106

Answer 1

To slightly contradict some of the other answers here, the human body HAS built up a certain tolerance to cyanide, evolutionary speaking. Because humans had to learn what was okay to eat and not okay to eat, the human body adapted remarkably to clear/breakdown cyanide very fast. For example you could (but NOT recommended ingest approximately 5mg of cyanide and clear it within minutes).

What makes cyanide poisonous isn’t the molecule itself, but moreso the amount you take.

Edit: 5mg is related to a possibly 150+ pound adult male. Ratio of cyanide to body weight slight applies