How do wild animals differentiate edible berries from poisonous ones?
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Learned from parents, or experience… they have the sense of taste and smell, they spit out things that taste bad (according to Google at least, they might try a leaf of the plant before the berry to see if that tastes bitter)
For many animals, their other senses come into play.
Just like us, animals will looks at color, condition, smell, etc..
They evolved to avoid things that are dangerous. The animals that had mutations that made a rotting carcass smell bad are the ones who had a lower chance of getting sick and dying which leads to a higher chance of passing on that gene.
Same thing is true for berries, fruits, plants, etc..
It’s not so much that they know they’re bad as much as they know that there is something off-putting to them that make them not want to eat it.
Natural selection. Animals that don’t eat poison plants (for whatever reason) pass on their genes. Animals that do eat poison plants die, and thus do not pass on their genes.
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