Нас хотят задавить интеллектом

[aptsvet]

"Если Бог не хотел, чтобы мы ели животных, зачем тогда Он сделал их из мяса?"

Sara Palin
Going Rogue, p. 133

Comments

[shkrobius.livejournal.com]

It is one strategy among many.

Why fish? The same general reason: there are very few committed herbivores among the teleost fish that we eat. Caviar: no point given the odds of survival. There are poisonous fish allright; the most notorious example is fugu puffers that makes tetrodotoxin in its internal organs and skin. The same toxin is found in other animals (newt, octopi). These are not produced by animals, they co-opt bacteria to make this toxin. There is no reason per se why mammals can't do the same: this defense evolved independently several times.

There are a lot of toxic, venomous, and poisonous marine snails. As for ill-defined "poisonous," I meant specifically making one's flesh/organs/skin toxic. You should realize that animals do not want to kill their predators with their toxins, because if their predator is dead there is no learning of avoidance. Mertesian mimicry is based on this rationale, e.g http://acp.eugraph.com/news/news06/darst.html
Actually, we (the chordates) had evolved from sedentary hemichordates (tunicates; we are the upgrade of their juvenile bentic form) whose chief defensive adaptation is poisoning their tissues with vanadium extracted from sea water. So the use of this strategy has everything to do with the question, why are you around today. Our ancestor did not have much choice. I apologize for being fragmentary, it is a long story. You pull one thread, and it only leads to the next. But the gist of the argument is as I say. It "explains" some other peculiarities, see e.g.
http://shkrobius.livejournal.com/194867.html
http://shkrobius.livejournal.com/194867.html
(some related digestive paradoxes).