Evolution is just future-proofing Australian animals.
this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2025
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I'm a fan of "if it's worth doing, it's worth doing poorly"
Hrm... so then for you, "poorly" is "right"!? 😜
You never know when you'll need to kill a herd of elephants, better be prepared.
Don't tell me what to do, you are not my dad!
Search your feelings, you know it to be true!
You’re not mad at me, you’re mad at your dad! I forgive you!
I saw a snail hunting a pack of elephants yesterday, the elephant was screaming something about him being immortal and if he touched him he would die.
Yeah, but why possibly kill when you can definitely kill?!
And it isn't like you'll be punished evolutionarily if you ultra kill.
Blue ringed octopus is just using tetrodotoxin though, it's not like they developed that toxin through evolution. Bacteria are the ones that made TTX so toxic. I'm not impressed.
Bacteria be like "You merely adopted the tetrodotoxin. I was born in it, molded by it..."
Wait until you hear about deadly toxin producing bacteria.
You only need about 6 kg of Clostridium botulinum to produce enough toxins to kill all mammals on earth.
Assumptions:
- weight of a single bacterium is 1 picogram
- a single bacterium produces 0.5 picograms of toxin
- All mammals on earth are 1.4 gigatons of mass
- a lethal dose is 150 nanograms per kg
Can I buy that on Amazon?
You can make it at home!
Just need to isolate the correct bacterium first.
Yes but the delivery is a problem. How do we package, ship and then get each mammal on earth to ingest 150 ng of the toxin?
Well, if all it takes is 6 kg, I don't think it would be that hard to make like a few tons and fly around the world throwing a kg at a time into any body of water you find.
Sure, you wouldn't kill everyone, but probably most 🤷♂️
Are you a Batman villain, threatening to poison Gotham's water supply.
It would a lot less interesting.
Literally everyone dies except a few that drink only bottled water. Society is now 90% people who believe that alkaline water is magic
More likely 10-15% of people die then everyone figures out it's the water, identified the cause of death, develops filters to remove the toxin, and then the filter becomes commercialized.
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I think about 96% of mammal biomass is either humans or domestic animals so if we ignore the 4% wild animals it suddenly because a much easier task.
Like, throwing enough botulinum toxin into the ocean to kill all the whales would be annoying.
Deliciosa soup for their family?
Simple. Start a new plandemic and give out free vaccines! It worked last time, that's why we're all dead.
Genocide is evolutionary beneficial for the toxin producer, maybe there's a ring of truth to it. Poison everything around you, free up resources for yourself.
I always wondered if the toxin didn't kill the bacteria.
Bacteria doesn't have nerve cells.
I feel like if evolution is correct (I'm confident it is) then it must be evolutionarily advantageous to have the capacity to kill a herd of elephants with one's toxin, assuming all animals in the group have that capacity.
A lot of people think of "venomous" as being a one-dimensional property like strength or speed that you have to build your way up towards. But really it's just how this substance your body produces that reacts with another substance in another creature who evolved on a whole other continent to you.
There doesn't need to be a strong evolutionary imperative to be able to kill a herd of elephants, it's enough for there to not be a strong disincentive not to produce enough venom to do it.
Basically it means the animal's prey(/predators for defensive toxins) has evolved a massive resistance to the toxin that elephants haven't.
I mean if the venom you stumble into is too strong, would you bother weakening it?
Great meme. Keep it up!
Death held out a hand. I WANT, he said, A BOOK ABOUT THE DANGEROUS CREATURES OF FOURECKS-
Albert looked up and dived for cover, receiving only mild bruising because he had the foresight to curl into a ball.
After a while Death, his voice a little muffled, said: ALBERT, I WOULD BE SO GRATEFUL IF YOU COULD GIVE ME A HAND HERE.
Albert scrambled up and pulled at some of the huge volumes, finally dislodging enough of them for his master to clamber free.
HMM... Death picked up a book at random and read the cover. "DANGEROUS MAMMALS, REPTILES, AMPHIBIANS, BIRDS, FISH, JELLYFISH, INSECTS, SPIDERS, CRUSTACEANS, GRASSES, TREES, MOSSES, AND LICHENS OF TERROR INCOGNITA," he read. His gaze moved down the spine. VOLUME 29C, he added. OH. PART THREE, I SEE.
He glanced up at the listening shelves. POSSIBLY IT WOULD BE SIMPLER IF I ASKED FOR A LIST OF THE HARMLESS CREATURES OF THE AFORESAID CONTINENT?
They waited.
IT WOULD APPEAR THAT-
"No, wait master. Here it comes."
Albert pointed to something white zigzagging lazily through the air. Finally Death reached up an caught the single sheet of paper.
He read it carefully and then turned it over briefly just in case anything was written on the other side.
"May I?" said Albert. Death handed him the paper.
"'Some of the sheep, '" Albert read aloud. "Oh, well. Maybe a week at the seaside'd be better, then."
Resistance?
They understood perfectly well, too bad that they have no idea what an elephant is so they got venom that could kill anything, just in case
They understood perfectly well, too bad that they have no idea what an elephant is so they got venom that could kill anything, just in case
Their ancestors knew. And they solved that problem.
Cone snails represent
Kill? Why not paralyze or severely wound? Slow enough that you can kill with I don't know a pointed stick, rock or gravity? Why make the venom do all the dirty work?
This message paid for by toothjuice 417 local union
I love Australia but I've always wondered what exactly it is about Australia that made evolution go "yes, let's make this place like Master Mode in BOTW where everything is OP, wants to kill you, and can one-shot you"
Castle doctrine but it's mother nature and also sometimes your house
It's really more of an easy mode with a couple of super unlucky bullshit gameovers scattered around than a master mode. Look at how many builds have overtaken the Australian meta since their introduction: dogs, cats (okay, they're an apex predator everywhere), foxes, rabbits, cane toads, mice, rats, deer, camels, scottish thistles, horses… I could go on.
The emus didnt only start a war with humans u know.
Fucking warmongering dinosaur cunts...
Perhaps we have not yet found the animals that they have had to kill in the past to survive....
Sometimes I wonder if this is a deathworld by planetary standards. Like we go to other planets and its super chill.
Something like the first part this: https://youtu.be/x1aZEz8BQiU?ol0IyB2BmDW4VBov