Mastodawn

It's not weird for some species to incorporate toxins from their diet as defenses: poison dart frogs, monarch butterflies, sea slugs, etc

But let's get weird and circuitous with it

#Nicotine was developed by plants to kill insects. As a quirk of #neurochemistry, humans use it addictively, so cigarette butts are everywhere

Birds have figured out they can use them in their nests to repel insect parasites

The original intention of nicotine

Weird!

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347226000011

#Science #Ecology

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Em & future cats 🇺🇦🐈🏳️‍🌈

@benroyce this stuff always has fascinated me! Also extra tidbit… did you know that hedgehogs 🦔 have learned this too!!! They will take cigarettes, chew them up a bit, then spread their nicotine filled saliva over their bodies 😹
(They also do this with creosote) https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00zd354

And don’t forget about the crows that bathe in formic acid from spitting ants! 😹

BBC Four - Weird Nature, Peculiar Potions, A liking for licking

In hedgehogs, a taste for noxious substances leads to strange behaviour.

BBC