The Universe of Discourse

More trivia about megafauna and poisonous plants

A couple of people expressed disappointment with yesterday's article, which asked were giant ground sloths immune to poison ivy?, but then failed to deliver on the implied promise. I hope today's article will make up for that.

Elephants

I said:

Mangoes are tropical fruit and I haven't been able to find any examples of Pleistocene megafauna that lived in the tropics…

David Formosa points out what should have been obvious: elephants are megafauna, elephants live where mangoes grow (both in Africa and in India), elephants love eating mangoes [1] [2] [3], and, not obvious at all…

Elephants are immune to poison ivy!

Captive elephants have been known to eat poison ivy, not just a little bite, but devouring entire vines, leaves and even digging up the roots. To most people this would have cause a horrific rash … To the elephants, there was no rash and no ill effect at all…

It's sad that we no longer have megatherium. But we do have elephants, which is pretty awesome.

Idiot fruit

The idiot fruit is just another one of those legendarily awful creatures that seem to infest every corner of Australia (see also: box jellyfish, stonefish, gympie gympie, etc.); Wikipedia says:

The seeds are so toxic that most animals cannot eat them without being severely poisoned.

At present the seeds are mostly dispersed by gravity. The plant is believed to be an evolutionary anachronism. What Pleistocene megafauna formerly dispersed the poisonous seeds of the idiot fruit?

A wombat. A six-foot-tall wombat.

I am speechless with delight.

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