They are considered by humans living near them to be… a delicacy.

Of course you have to bury it for six months to let it ferment the poisons out.

i swear to gods, if it’s on this planet, we will find a way to eat it.

did you know, the first scientists to find a whole frozen mammoth out in the tundra … cooked some and ate it? Like, they found it and excavated it, and while still on site these 2 professionals with degrees said to each other, oh we gotta eat some of that. It was like 17 THOUSAND years old. They said it tasted bad. No shit. But that’s humans for you.

Both contain copious amounts of cyanide, or more accurately, compounds that release cyanide when you eat them. And yet? Cassava became a staple for people in the Amazon and beyond, because despite the fact that eating improperly prepared wild cassava will straight up kill you, people worked out that if you grind it up into a wet paste and leave it covered for several hours to offgas its cyanide. Though some domesticated varieties can be detoxified just through proper boiling and discarding of the water, a lot of domestic strains still require this whole involved process to not fatally poison you.

Meanwhile almonds, wild almonds, are also deadly poisonous. It takes about 50 to kill and adult but as few as 5 bitter almonds can be fatal to a child. Thing is, wild almonds occasionally produce plants that aren’t stuffed to the gills with cyanide. But still, it feels insane to me that people who lived off the land in the places where wild almonds grew found out that some of these plants wouldn’t kill you, because idk I feel like my instinct there would be to not even try And yet? Almonds are a thing. (almonds were a very early domesticated fruit tree and there’s some features of almond propagation that make this even more insane)

We also ported knowledge forward, mind, from our pre-human ancestors. Other primates are more than smart enough (while also going through “I gotta eat SOMETHING” phases) to know about That One Almond Tree That Doesn’t Kill Us, and to pass that knowledge on through generations; other primates may  even smart enough to figure out through trial and error that the smushed up cassava under the leaves didn’t kill me, so maybe if I smush it up and leave it under the leaves for a bit I can eat it later. 

So are other animals, mind, and we got really good at watching what other animals got away with eating, which is I suspect how you got the shark thing: other meat-eaters eat the fresh shark, they die! Then the famine hits and you notice that the fox or the whatever else is digging up that shark that washed up that you buried ages ago except now it’s NOT dying and you figure, what do I have to lose? Especially since by that time you’ve got thousands and thousands of years of cooking science behind you - of the collective knowledge that fermenting, cooking, freezing, drying, and doing other things to potential food makes it more or less poison or edible.

Back when contracting parasites was more of a regular thing, people would eat a bit of a poisonous plant to basically flush out their digestive system and get rid of the parasites, and since poisonous plants can have a variable amount of poison, it makes sense to develop means of reducing the potency so you can just eat more for a higher dose

Doesn’t even have to be a purgative/laxative, the main concept of most abortifacient plants is “poison you just enough to cause your body to reject a pregnancy”

Generally if you eat too much of a medicinal plant, that’s poison baby!

Sooner or later someone figured out “hey, if you boil pokeweed 3 times and replace the water every time, you can actually just eat it” and poke salad became important food for poor people

Y'all know that one meme of the tank being dumped off the ship saying "I go kill submarine for the motherland"?

If not, here it is:

The origins behind this image are utterly fascinating.

This is not a soviet built tank despite what the meme implies, it is actually a chinese built tank, a T-69-2 to be more specific.

What you don't see in the image are the further 24 tanks that are also on the barge about to dropped into the water as well.

These tanks are being dropped in on personal orders by Queen Sirikit, the queen mother of thailand.

No, for those worried, this was not them discarding old unusable tanks, at least in this instance. Rather, each of these tanks have selected and prepared to make an artificial reef. Rather than melt them down for scrap, in 2010 there were pushed into the water off the gulf of siam to create a home for hundreds of sea creatures. All the internals are gutted, including the engine and transmission, don't worry.

If you looks a little closer into the image, you'll see that all the hatches are open or removed, probably to make room for sea life.

If you want anymore info, I'd suggest checking out ConeOfArc over on youtube, he has a lot more on this and many more fascinating subjects such as the origins behind the panzer of the lake.

A N G R Y