The Alnwick Poison Gardens in Alnwick, England was established in 2005 by the Duchess of Northumberland. The grounds contain nearly 100 deadly plants that produce poisons or hallucinogens. Some are so dangerous, they are displayed only behind glass. And yes, there are opium poppies, cannabis, and magic mushrooms as well, but you can’t get close to them. Read about the poison gardens and other strange gardens that are (or once were) open to the public around the world in a list called Gardens of Death and Other Horticultural Marvels at Atlas Obscura. Link

(Image credit: Flickr user Jax60)

You probably know that Socrates was forced to die by drinking poison, but did you know that he was made to drink hemlock, which essentially shuts down the body and allows the mind to continue functioning until death finally sets in?

For more interesting information about poisons and the people who used them, enjoy this great Mental Floss article by Miss C.

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While many types of plants contain levels of toxins for defense from insects and other predators, this list of plants are extremely lethal to humans. When foraging for plants to eat in the forest, be sure not to have any of these such as the “Angels Trumpet” on your menu.

What could be sweeter than the sound of an angel’s trumpet? Perhaps the moaning agony of a trip that won’t end. Related to petunias, tomatoes and potatoes, the angel’s trumpet (datura stramonium) is a highly effective hallucinogen, but should not be consumed for recreational purposes as it can also be lethal. According to wikipedia: “The active ingredients are atropine, hyoscyamine and scopolamine which are classified as deliriants, or anticholinergics. Due to the elevated risk of overdose in uninformed users, many hospitalizations, and some deaths, are reported from recreational use.” This common plant also goes by many other names, including jimson weed, stink weed, loco weed, and devil’s snare. One 18-year-old who was house-sitting alone for his uncle recounts how he decided to prepare some angel’s trumpet tea in curiosity and almost died (a friend burst in on him convulsing on the bathroom floor and the authorities assumed he was on an acid trip).

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To figure out the rat’s secret, [Oxford University study researcher Jonathan] Kingdon and his colleagues observed the rats in the wild and ran lab tests on a line of hairs that run along its back and seemed to have a unique structure. They also tested the chemicals in the hairs’ poisons alongside that of the bark of the Acokanthera schimperi, which the rats are known to chew.

They found that to make its poison fur, the rat — which averages about 14 inches (36 cm) long — chews the bark of the A. schimperi and licks itself to store the resulting poisonous spit in specially adapted hairs. This behavior is hardwired into the animal’s brain, similar to nitpicking behavior of birds or self-bathing of cats, the researchers suspect.

“What is quite clear in this animal is that it is hardwired to find the poison, it is hardwired to chew it and it is hardwired to apply it to the small area of hairs,” Kingdon said. The animals apply the poisonous spit only to the specialized hairs on a small strip along its back. When threatened, the rat arches its back and uses specially adapted muscles to slick back its hair and expose the strip of poison.

Poison from this tree bark has been used by hunters to take down large prey, like elephants, for thousands of years. “Evolution has mimicked something that hunters do,” Kingdon said. “It [the crested rat] is borrowing from the plant just as the hunters are borrowing from the very same plant.”

The hairs themselves are specially structured to absorb the poison, Kingdon found. Their outer layer is full of large holes, like a pasta strainer, and the inside is full of straight fibers that wick up liquids. “There is no other hair that is known to science that is remotely structured like these hairs,” Kingdon said.

It is unknown why the rat doesn’t die from chewing the poison, though it could be resistant somehow. “The rats should drop dead every time they chew this stuff but they are not,” Kingdon said. “We don’t have the slightest idea how that could be done.”

Learning more about how this poison works could even help human medicine, since it acts by inducing heart attacks. A related chemical, called digitoxin, has been used for decades as a treatment for heart failure.

The study was published Aug. 2 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. Link

Link Image via Image*After

Most of us have heard of strychnos owing to its use in rat poison – as well as the occasional murder! – but it has been used for centuries as an arrow poison in the jungles of Assam, Burma, Malaysia and Java. A chieftain of the Limba people of Sierra Leone is holding iron-tipped arrows dipped in strychnos poison in the image above. The seeds contain 1.5% strychnine, but the flowers and bark contain the poison too. People and animals exposed to the substance will suffer paralysis, severe convulsions and, finally, death. On the plus side, medical science has used it in minute doses to help people as well.

Read about seven of these traditional poisons at Environmental Graffiti. Link

(Image credit: Flickr member John Atherton)

Palytoxin is shrouded in legend. Hawaiian islanders tell of a cursed village in Maui, whose members defied a shark god that had been eating their fellow villagers. They dismembered and burned the god, before scattering his ashes in a tide pool near the town of Hana. Shortly after, a mysterious type of seaweed started growing in the pool. It became known as “limu-make-o-Hana” (deadly seaweed of Hana). If smeared on a spear’s point, it could instantly kill its victims.

The shark god may have been an elaborate fiction, but in 1961, Philip Helfrich and John Shupe actually found the legendary pool. Within it, they discovered a new species of zoanthid called Palythoa toxica. The limu-make-o-Hana was real, but it wasn’t seaweed – it was a type of colonial anemone. In 1971, Richard Moore and Paul Scheuer isolated the chemical responsible for the zoanthid’s lethal powers  – palytoxin. Now, Jonathan Deeds from the US Food and Drug Administration has found that the poison is readily available in aquarium stores.

The problem is that the anemones that contain palytoxin are almost impossible to distinguish from species that don’t. Read more about it at Not Exactly Rocket Science. Link -via reddit

The poison is present only in a specific species of almond, namely the “bitter” ones, which are a broader and shorter version of the sweet almond. Although each bitter almond only contains tiny amounts of cyanide, the substance is dangerous enough that it is illegal to sell raw almonds in the US. Nowadays all almonds must be processed through heating in order to eliminate germs and render the poison harmless.

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We’ve covered a lot of weird food here on Neatorama, but Weird Worm has got a post about strange foods that are not only weird – they can also be deadly. Take, for instance, the Jamaican ackee fruit above:

The ackee is highly nutritious as well as incredibly poisonous, a sick joke played by a cruel and unloving god. The only section of the fruit that is safe for consumption is the white innards, and only after it is ripe. Everything else is brimming with the exotic alkaloid toxins, resulting in a combination of seizures, vomiting and fatal hypoglycemia known as Jamaican Vomiting Sickness. If you’re envisioning this properly then you are now terrified of Jamaicans and their vomit.

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Previously on Neatorama: 10 Weird Gourmet Foods | The Weirdest Ways to Celebrate Ice Cream Month

But what made the water of Styx so poisonous? A new toxicological study have uncovered the reason:

"Indeed, no ancient writer ever casts doubt on the existence of a deadly poison from the Styx River," Mayor, author of the Mithradates biography "The Poison King," said.

The researchers believe this mythic poison must be calicheamicin. "This is an extremely toxic, gram-positive soil bacterium and has only recently come to the attention of modern science. It was discovered in the 1980s in caliche, crusty deposits of calcium carbonate that form on limestone and is common in Greece," author Antoinette Hayes, toxicologist at Pfizer Research, told Discovery News.

And could calicheamicin be the poison that killed Alexander the Great?

Retrodiagnoses for his mysterious death have included poisoning, heavy drinking, septicemia, pancreatitis, malaria, West Nile fever, typhoid, and accidental or deliberate poisoning (hellebore, arsenic, aconite, strychnine).

"Notably, some of Alexander’s symptoms and course of illness seem to match ancient Greek myths associated with the Styx. He even lost his voice, like the gods who fell into a coma-like state after drinking from the river," Mayor said.

The poisoning diagnoses were rejected by many experts because few poisons induce fever. Furthermore, even fewer such poisons were available in Alexander’s time.

However, naturally occurring calicheamicin, which is extremely cytotoxic, could still be the culprit.

"Cytotoxins cause cell death and induce high fever, chills, and severe muscle and neurological pain. Therefore, this toxin could have caused the fever and pain that Alexander suffered," Hayes said.

Rossella Lorenzi of Discovery News has the full story: Link

# An adult female called worried because she took 2 Aleve® for her headache and then noticed that the pills expired 5 years ago.
# An adult woman called because a battery leaked out of her personal massager and she was concerned about battery acid burns.
# An emergency room called regarding a 29 year old male patient who had chewed and swallowed a fentanyl transdermal patch in an attempt to get high. He was found unresponsive by his mother and brought in via ambulance.
# An adult male called concerned about his friend who drank a very large amount of alcohol over the course of the previous evening after losing his job. His friend had vomited numerous times and had very garbled speech but is awake.
# An adult female called after she accidentally took 2 of her melatonin tablets.
# A 20 year old college student drank 2 Red Bulls® and took 6-7 Ritalin® tablets that belonged to a friend to help her stay awake and concentrate to study for a big exam. She stated she was having palpitations, vomiting and tremors.

This post drew interest from a local TV station, which then did a report on the poison center’s funding problems. Incidentally, the nationwide number for poison control is 1-800-222-1222. Link -via Metafilter

If you like drinks that are so strong that they’re practically poison, this is the glass for you: Polluted Glass, shaped like a ‘lil 55-gallon drum used by Evil Big Corp to dump their toxic waste.

YouTube link.

Jack Dumbacher, an ornithologist at the California Academy of Science, describes the discovery of and studies of a neurotoxin produced by this bird from New Guinea.  The batrachotoxin that the bird produces is a sodium-channel blocker that is chemically identical to the neurotoxin used by poison dart frogs, and it is potentially lethal in higher doses.  One assumes that this evolved as a deterrent to predation, so it’s interesting that like monarchs and other toxic butterflies, this bird exhibits a strikingly bright warning coloration.

The Spanish ribbed newt has a pretty bizarre defense mechanism – when attacked, it secretes poison and pushes out its ribs until they pierce its skin, creating a row of sharp bones that act like barbs:

The newt has to force its bones through its skin every time it is attacked, say scientists, who have described the form and function of the barbs in detail. [...]

When the newt becomes agitated or perceives a threat, it swings its ribs forward, increasing their angle to the spine by up to 50 degrees.

As it does this, the newt keeps the rest of its body still.

“The forward movement of the ribs increases the body size and stretches the skin to the point of piercing it,” says zoologist Egon Heiss of the University of Vienna in Austria.

The tips of the newt’s ribs then stick outside its body, like exposed spines.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by dangana.

On October 23, 1858, William “Humbug Billy” Hardaker, sold peppermint lozenges to the good people of Bradford, England, as he usually did. This particular Saturday he had the good luck to buy his batch of mints at discount because of their substandard appearance. By the time he fell sick that afternoon, he had sold enough lozenges to satisfy some 200 peoples’ sweet tooth. The next day, still ill, Hardaker had to explain to the police why everyone who ate his candy was either getting sick or dying.

The answer makes you glad we have laws about food ingredients these days. This story is part of 5 Disasters That Could Have Been Avoided. Link -Thanks, Sami!

There is finally an alternative. The British engineering firm, Novacem, has created a new cement that uses magnesium silicates, which emit no carbon dioxide when they are heated. As the cement hardens, it absorbs CO2. In all, it removes about .6 tons of carbon dioxide per ton of cement used.

Link Via Good

This is one of the lucky cat! Nine-year-old Jelly was spotted by owner Wendy Wallis walking around with a copperhead snake wrapped around her neck and immediately called wildlife rescuers to have the snake removed.

“Both the cat and the snake seemed quite happy,” Ms Wallis said. “She didn’t show any signs of a bite last night, but this morning she was almost paralysed”.

“She is currently at the Montrose vet at the moment being pumped full of anti-venom, but the vet says she’ll recover fully.”

Ms Wallis said she snapped the picture through a glass door, but didn’t dare open the door as the cat would have walked inside.

Jelly may well be thinking “One life down, eight to go!”

Via: Mercury