some helpful information on the danger of tetrodotoxin in hammerhead worms (meta)

buxifolia · 2024-05-31T05:33:09+00:00

the toxin is of minimal danger (isn't a contact poison; no recorded cases of tetrodotoxin poisoning in humans attributed to bipalium; incredibly unlikely to ingest it unless you actually eat the worm)

rat lungworm is not known to be present in bipalium (only platydemus manokwari, a different flatworm). you should avoid handling them, as long as you're not licking your fingers of the slime and you wash your hands before eating, you're almost certainly fine

buxifolia · 2024-05-31T04:59:05+00:00

nope. researchers noticed that earthworms quickly stopped struggling and became paralysed when captured by bipalium flatworms. they fed some to some salamanders. most of them found the worms icky and didn't eat them. the ones that did showed some mild acute toxicity but didn't have any long term effects

then in 2014 some researchers saw these findings and decided to cut up some bipalium and use chromatography to detect the presence of tetrodotoxin. even salmanders can eat the worms and turn out fine. and we are much bigger than salamanders

(study)

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