how do animals know which plants are dangerous and not to eat them?
In: Biology
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Their parents’ can help teach to some extent in early life, but a lot is that animals who did eat the plants that might kill them didn’t survive to produce offspring. It then becomes somewhat instinctual and they can sense it is dangerous. Think about things that taste gross for example, that’s an evolutionary trait we have to help protect us from eating things that might kill us. It won’t prevent everything, for example the Death Cap mushroom is at least rumored to taste good despite being one of the most toxic mushrooms that exists, and some animals eat things that are toxic and kill them.
Depending on which animals you’re talking about, they likely don’t know.
The ones that eat lethal things, die. Dead things have less opportunities to pass on their genes and behaviours. This lowers their representation in the genetic pool, and removes their influence on any young they had or could have had.
you ever had a dog?
some do better than others.
My wife came home from work one day to find our dog passed out in a pool of his own vomit and poop. Apparently he had eaten a bunch of [brunfelsia berries](https://animalpoisons.com.au/news/brunfelsia-is-highly-toxic#:~:text=Did%20you%20know%20that%20Brunfelsia,highly%20poisonous%2C%20especially%20the%20berries) that our landlord had planted. He ended up being ok after a few days, but I guess the moral is that some animals definitely don’t know which plants are poisonous.
By developing aversions to certain flavours appearances etc. Basically, the ones that keep eating that poisonous berry keep dieing, the ones that don’t like it live. So eventually the whole species doesn’t eat that berry.
Also, with many animals, we keep finding out they have more of a “culture” than we tend to think. So, learned behaviours that parents pass on to their offspring and that the same species didn’t do until some learned it and spread it.
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