why is poison measured in metrics of “can kill X of Y”?

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the measurement doesn’t make sense to me, why is the deadliness of poison measured in how many of something it can kill? i understand the animal, such as an elephant, is important since bigger animals need larger quantities of or more deadly poisons, but what does it mean when its said poison can kill “a herd of elephants”? how do you know that one drop can kill a multitude of individuals?

In: Chemistry

6 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

I think it is just a matter of people being absolutely terrible at understanding very large and very small numbers. Numbers in those categories have to be put into something that people can visualize, so you get things like how many elephants can a spoonful of poison kill or how many empire state buildings full of $100 bills is the US national debt. The understanding of those numbers tends to be massively incorrect otherwise.

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