Why didn't humans develop the capacity to produce venom or be poisonous? Would there be any drawbacks?

t. furious butt pirate

I will contract aids and forcibly rape your butt

Genes over the course of many generations focused on physical strength and intelligence. The genetics of humans simply never allowed it to develop. Perhaps if humans relied on biting, their saliva would accumulate bacteria and after several generations, develop a bacteria sack near the saliva glands to store bacteria, and eject bacteria with specific muscles. You might want to post this in a speculative biology thread on /AN/. It is a very interesting theoretical science.

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Take this garbage back to /pol/

because mammals, in general, aren't venomous. evolution builds on existing structures. no venomous ancestors, no venomous decendents.

also, as I understand it, animals are becoming less venomous, as we all evolve. a creature holds a trait because it is more useful than not having it. for some reason, venom is not useful to the majority of animals, relative to other options.

no, we can't kill prey with a lethal spit. but, if we could, would we have developed the ability to run long distances, giving us our upright gait and big, sexy butts? given that hunting is such a pain in the ass for humans, would we have developed the ability to eat so many different foods, giving us the ability to live in so many environments and areas? would we have developed such agile hands and strong arms for gathering and carrying food, if we had poison and a much easier time killing prey? and, with the need to be strategic with out hunting and expansive and curious with our gathering, would we have developed into such clever, strategic, curious species?

except for this moron. way to make us look bad to the venomous/poisionous amphibians and invertibrates

We did, but it evolved memetically instead of genetically.

we did. its called society.

lel gays are dangerous human beings

uhhhh if you can't have venom without venomy ancestor than how is there venom at all

chcek mate atheirsts

Ill try my best to answer but the bottom line is this.

In the grand scheme of things, something like 60% of all animals (by this I mean kingdom animals, which includes insects and what not) have some sort of venom/poison. So it seems like its a good idea but...

Take snakes. While manufacturing the venom is pretty simple (this is measured by their biological activity pre and post bite) the storage, degradation, injection, and maintenance of the venom pathway (where the venom sacs and the hollow teeth actually play their role) is very hard - a snake with these parts removed will put on weight something like 30% quicker. Same deal with other venomous animals like cone snails.

The maintenance of the venom pathway + making sure your venom doesn't kill you + making sure your venom will be able to be digested if you hunt with it = high maintenance costs. Fine if you have a small brain that doesn't need much energy, bad if you are a mammal.

Now for poison. We run into the same sort of issue. Its high maintenance. It requires predation by relatively small things. Take for example marine animals - the big ones shrug off poison, it doesnt work. The only poison that is really used (stonefish) is to make sure that the various parasites dont stick on. And our sweat + hair + tough skin actually does that pretty well.

So, despite evolution not having a direction, it is likely that mammals that started developing precursors to this had too high energy costs for support of this infrastructure (e.g. slight toxin in saliva) with little gain. This made them selected against and hence why we dont see venomous or poisonous mammals and humans

Not the poster but their answer was just poorly worded. venom is developed from structures already present like salivary tract. The structure to make venoum from salivary tract did not emerge in mammals for various resons, namely it is overrated. Hence no preservation of this structure every time it emerges. Hence no ancestors, and no descendants.