To the human eye, many edible plants have a poisonous plant look alike. We can distinguish the two after research and learning but how do animals just know the difference?
In: Biology
Hey,[I made a quick video to answer your question! (With a banging joke at the end too)](https://youtu.be/7jhgWCSdHzI)
If videos aren’t your thing I’ll summerise my answer here.
* Animals don’t always know what to eat/not eat. There are small pointers in nature that help them.
* Monarch butterflys are aposematic, meaning they display bright patterns or colours to warn off predators. If a bird was to eat this butterfly, they’d then fall ill due to it. They’d then make the connection between the patterns and the illness, stopping them from chomping on more.
* Animals adapt too, parsley contains psoralens which cause photsynphesis. It also makes it easier to sunburn due to this chemical. Insects that eat parsley have adapted, and have been seen to hide in shade for hours after consuming parsley.
* Some plants that are poisonous contain Tannin which makes the plant taste bitter. Antelope and other animals are seen to nibble plants, it’s thought that this is to see if the plant is edible. If it’s bitter they will steer clear.
* Natural selection plays a big part too, over generations and time animals that find poisonous plants tasy will stop having offspring and the species will eventually stop eating those plants.
Hope that helped, have a great day!
In addition to the other excellent answers about parenting and trial-and-error, consider the role that evolution plays. If an animal takes a liking to the taste of something that kills it, then it is dead and cannot have children. If another member of the same species ends up not liking the taste of that plant and never eats enough of it to kill itself that one will have children, passing on its genes which may result in their children not liking the taste of that plant as well.
Dogs will happily eat chocolate, grapes, poop, or literally anything that can fit in their mouths.
Some animals just… don’t know. Then they die without outside intervention.
So humans have this tendency to both over estimate and underestimate animals. Instinct doesn’t account for as much as you can. You know how some animals dig, or you know behavior animals do to indicate emotion? A lot isn’t instinct, its taught by the parents. Animals born in capitivity or orphaned don’t have the skills they need to be a flamingo or panda or what have you. Even then if released into other animals they are often out cast because they don’t know the social ques and social norms of said animal pack.
so a great deal of it is taught by parent animal, panda goes to eat poison flower and mom will smack it, much like a human. other times they learn the way we do, eat it, get sick, never touch it again.
they cant always. part of it is training (being taught by their parents/colony/whatever), part of it is just by smell (“this smells like food”), part of it is trial and error.
had to get rid of a couple of plants when I got my last cat, due to them being poisonous for her
It is their natural instinct. Their sensory system is hardwired with built-in hardware to recognize safe and unsafe. In the brain is a main sensor that communicates back and forth within itself like a fast pendulum in yes/no fashion, if it is a yes it will signal a go ahead when it *recognizes* a familiar pattern, color, smell, shape. This is the go-ahead to proceed and eat. If one of those steps are not checked, there is no match and the plant is passed by.
For your interest, we have 2 rabbits, one of my rabbits eat chili, lemon and also likes alcohol and then she would make weird noises. Of course we dont feed these food, that was only to test if she would eat it because the older doesn’t.
Conclusion :they don’t know what they can eat.
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