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The world’s most poisonous plant and smallest fish
 Q:
What is the world’s most poisonous plant, and how deadly is it? (Kerry,
Grimsby, England)
A: The castor bean plant is the most deadly of all
plants. Eat a single castor bean, or perhaps two if you’re an adult, and die —
maybe. If you live beyond three to five days, you will probably survive.
Castor beans. Courtesy of the Agricultural Research Center
and Wikipedia
Castor beans (not true beans, but rather seeds) contain a
poison, called ricin, which works by preventing cells from making proteins, says
the CDC (Center for Disease Control). Cells die without the proteins, and the
resulting damage to the body can be great enough to eventually kill a person.
The plant originally came from Eastern Africa, but now grows
wild all over. Many cities plant it in parks, and other public places.
More ominous: ricin is part of the mash left over from making
castor oil from the beans, and can be used to deliberately poison people. A
500-microgram dose (about the size of a pin head) is enough to do the job if
injected or inhaled.
In 1978, Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian writer and journalist who
was living in London, died after a man stabbed him with an umbrella, which
injected a ricin pellet, says the CDC. We found ricin in Al Qaeda caves in
Afghanistan.
Ricin Poison
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What to do
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We have no antidote for ricin, so avoid the poison as a
first line of defense. |
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If you are exposed, leave the area immediately. Get
fresh air. |
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Take off clothing exposed to ricin. Cut off the
clothing --- don’t pull it over your head. |
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As quickly as possible, wash ricin off your skin with
large amounts of soap and water. |
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Rinse your eyes with plain water for 10 to 15 minutes
if your eyes are burning or your vision is blurred. |
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Call 911 immediately to get professional help. |
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How
you know if you’ve breathed ricin. |
When a large number of people close to you suddenly
develop fever, cough and excess fluid in their lungs. Later, those exposed
may have severe difficulty breathing. |
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Unfortunately, we have no good test to confirm if
people have been exposed to ricin. |
Further Reading:
Facts
about ricin, Center for Disease Control
Castor oil
plant, Wikipedia
Ricin toxin from castor bean plant, Cornell University
 Q:
I just read that the world’s smallest fish has been discovered. Is that true?
(Sandia Park, New Mexico)
Photo, released by Maurice Kottelat and Raffles Museum,
shows a male Paedocypris fish — a species that lives in acid waters (100 times
more acidic than rainwater) of peat wetlands in Southeast Asia and, when fully
grown, is the size of a large mosquito. (AFP/HO/Maurice Kottelat)
A: It depends on who you talk to. Ichthyologists
Maurice Kottelat of Switzerland and
Tan
Heok Hui of the Raffles Museum in Singapore, who discovered the fish,
certainly think so. They say a tiny distant cousin to a carp (named
Paedocypris progenetica) is not only the smallest fish, but is also the
smallest species of all animals that contain a backbone. At a mere third of an
inch (7.9 mm), that fish is hard to beat — for tiniest.
Another contender for the smallest-fish title — the
anglerfish — is a tad smaller: a quarter of an inch (6.2 mm) in length. But
only the males are. The females are gargantuan in comparison: eight times
bigger. Moreover, the male fuses to the female and becomes a parasite. We might
as well toss this one out.
However, there’s another one: the stout infantfish. He isn’t
as short as the tiny carp cousin (8.4 mm compared with the 7.9 mm) but he may
weigh less (1.5 mg). Tan Heok Hui says he did not weigh the carp cousin so we
don’t have a weight comparison.
It looks like the carp cousin is the smallest fish (by
length), but the final results are not in, and probably never will be. The
waters teem with fish species we’ve never seen.
Further Surfing:
Finds raise debates over the world’s smallest fish by Rick Weiss, Washington
Post
World’s smallest fish lives in acid by Mickey Lam, Epoch Times
Tiny
fish sets new world record, Marine and coastal community network
(Answered March 21, 2006)
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