Authors: Nina Wedell
Publish Date: 2004/09/15
Volume: 91, Issue: 10, Pages: 503-504
Abstract
Picture this you are out on a leisurely walk happily strolling along when you come across a group of strikingly colourful beetles feeding on a flowering bush You move closer to get a better look and seconds later find yourself covered in a foulsmelling sticky substance emitted by the little critters Do you recoil in horror Or do you exclaim “Wow that’s amazing I wonder how they do that” A person who epitomises the latter reaction is Thomas Eisner Professor of Chemical Ecology at Cornell University author of For Love of Insects an opus intended to convert us all into avid fans of noxious bugsA surprisingly large number of animals are toxic The notorious lethal anthrax bacterium and the strangely popular partly edible partly deadly Japanese puffer fish are some of the more extreme examples There are even poisonous mammals male platypus have venomous spurs with paralytic effect which they use in sexual combats However it is the invertebrates that are the
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