The Most Evil Plants Poison Ivy Could Control

this episode of because science is sponsored by the science of MORTAL KOMBAT these are the most evil plants that poison ivy could control plants are Earth's dominant life-form making up a full eighty percent of the planet's biomass the super villain known as poison ivy has complete dominion over this dominance but most of the time to entangle Gotham in his schemes she uses regular old trees and vines if she wanted to dr. Isley could get a lot more villainous because Mother Nature has some downright evil plants that are just waiting to be Ivy's weapons tell Lady freeze I said hello to be clear it would be incorrect to say that a plant was evil in the same way that you'd say a person was evil like any other organism a plant just doesn't want to be eaten obviously though plants can't just get up and evade a potential predator so over the course of their evolution they have developed a number of defense mechanisms that don't care about their lack of mobility defenses like thorns and toxins so when I say that there are evil plants I mean that if Ivy wanted to weaponize a plant there are much better options than the simple vine with much meaner capabilities if Ivy wanted to take on some do deter ha take that big boy by far the most common defense mechanism that plants use are toxic or poisonous chemicals there are countless poisonous plants that use compounds and molecules to make a single bite out of them anything from unpleasant to straight-up deadly one example is caffeine like you can find in the Coffee Beanery it's the world's most used psychoactive drug but it evolved as a defense mechanism in plants that acts as a natural insecticide that can paralyze or kill predators and then there's scopolamine which you can find if you eat the angels trumpet plan and if you do that you can violently hallucinate away your grounding with reality and you can end up cutting your own tongue and dongle off a guy actually did that my point is there's a spectrum though these toxins are terrifying poison ivy can't exactly make you chomp down on any of these leaves so when we're looking for a more evil plant for her to use we're going to look for plants that are dangerous in a different kind of way the kind of dangerous where you don't even want to touch them Oh seriously though do not do not eat one of those because if poison ivy wanted to get nasty she would control plants that could not only entangle heroes they could do damage on contact and contact damage again is going to depend on mechanical weaponry like large thorns and chemical weaponry like the toxins in the cut your dongle off plant Poison Ivy's namesake poison ivy is a great example of a plant that uses the latter when you touch poison ivy an oily mixture of organic compounds called Arushi all seeps into your skin and starts an allergic reaction in the majority of the planets humans poison ivy is a great start and if you've ever lived anywhere near poison ivy you have a healthy respect for it but poison ivy doesn't even come close to the worst thing that dr. Isley could slap you with ow hey that was that the dongle cutter plant was it our first choice for Poison Ivy's improved plant based arsenal is giant hogweed this up to 18 foot tall invasive plant can be found all over the world and what makes it so sinister and dangerous especially if we were under Poison Ivy's complete control is that upon contact hug weed can make you basically allergic to the Sun hogweed SAP on your skin is more or less harmless until it is exposed to sunlight the radiation and the energy in it actually changes the chemical structure from fine to photo toxic what the SAP does then is in effect make your skin extremely sensitive to ultraviolet radiation the SAP is priming your skin to get absolutely the worst sunburn of your entire life inflammation rash giant gooey blister scarring that can last for years exposure to hog feed SAP is so bad that the actual medical advice after you have contact with it is to stay inside and avoid all sunlight at all for two days that might not be so bad if your darkness and the knight himself Batman but it would be extremely painful and inconvenient for you do not leave me here do not leave me here Bruce I know your secret don't leave me we're just getting started a phototoxic touch is really bet excuse me a phototoxic touch is really bad but plants that can outright blind you or kill your skin are worse our next choice for poison ivy is sanguine area canadensis or blood root it's a lovely looking little flower native to North America when you break or cut the stems the petals or the roots of bloodroot it starts to ooze an orange red sap that resembles human blood hence the name and when the SAP contacts human skin the chemicals in that SAP start interfering with the sodium potassium pumps in the membranes of our skin cells and if that sounds bad it's because it is if poison ivy could weaponize these little flowers and a tight embrace from a lot of them would cover a hero insect that would start destroying the tissue on the outside of their bodies it would leave giant gaping holes of dead flesh that would have to be fluffed off later these wounds from bloodroot mimic the wounds that you get from anthrax exposure from gangrene and from necrotizing spider bites I just drew a diagram of what happens here because you do not want to look up pictures of what actually happens but can we get meaner let's look for another plant no yep yep okay lair Melissa in 1521 famed Spanish explorer and conquistador Ponce de Leon embarked on what would become his final voyage while exploring what is now the coast of Southwest Florida he was struck by an arrow covered in the sap of this tree the man chenille he died not long afterwards man chenille is also referred to as death Apple and is the most poisonous tree in the Americas as well as one of the most immediately dangerous plants on earth the man chenille has such a reputation that in most of the places you can find the plant growing the locals have either attached an explicit warning sign or marked all the trees with a red X in other words this is a perfect weapon for poison ivy every single part of Hippo Manman chanela is dangerous the bark a poison the SAP a poison the fruit oh you mean those death apples yeah and they're full of poison even if you just touch the tree your skin will start to blister those mansion neil warning signs that the locals put on these trees like the ones that we just saw specifically say do not even seek shelter underneath these trees when it rains because the water droplets pick up enough a poison to blister your skin the SAP if it gets in your eye will blind you it can take paint off cars the native people who killed Ponce de Leon with the SAP used to use the leaves from the mansion eel to poison water supplies they would tie people just to the trunks as a form of torture are you getting that this plant is dangerous given all of this this is definitely the kind of plant that you just want to burn off the face of the earth right wrong the smoke is poison and it will immediately blind you if poison ivy could control an army of man chenille she would be far more dangerous than she ever was using just stupid vines ow but seriously so much poison while man chenille might be the all-around most dangerous plant poison ivy could use as a weapon there is one plant that would scare me even more not now crane yes you're much scarier in the second animated series this is dead drop 9 Maruti's it's an unassuming plant with large heart-shaped leaves if you're walking through the right rain forest you'd probably just miss it but if you even brushed up against it with the slightest amount of exposed skin you would never ever forget here is a closer look at the plant nothing special right well let's zoom in a bit yeah how about a little bit more yeah now you see the danger the entire plant the entire plant is covered with thousands and thousands of transparent hard-to-see silica tipped needles filled with a potent neurotoxin called more lloyd n' and this toxin is so dangerous it's why you will often see this plant called the suicide plant on contact the tiny hairs on the surface of Demuro DS impart an absolutely excruciating sting speaking with Australian Geographic ecologist marina Hurley who has been stung by this plant before described the pain this way quote being stung is the worst kind of pain you can imagine like being burnt with hot acid and electrocuted at the same time if you were put up against a plant like this by poison ivy your first instinct might to be just cut the plant down but those tiny hairs that you're trying so desperately to avoid are so fine that they actually float in the air and so for example forest workers working anywhere near this plant have to not only wear protective clothing all over their body they have to wear respirators and this sting would be the bane of your existence not only because the sting is so bad and so painful it lasts for so long and it hurts your body a road surveyor in Australia where this plant is from because of course it is was one of the first people to document the excruciating effects of Deemer Odie's all the way back in 1866 and since then Australian folklore has been filled with terrifying tales like the unfortunate horse that was accidentally stung by this plant and the pain was so bad for so long it threw itself off a cliff and then there's a story of the military officer who accidentally used one of the leaves from Demuro teas as toilet paper he shot himself hence the name the suicide plant the plants hairs containing this neurotoxin they are so potent and so hard to get rid of that the pain from them can last from days to weeks to months and if you do not get all the hairs out of your skin after contact remember they are tiny and transparent the pain can last for literally years in 1963 a man named Ernie Ryder was accidentally slapped in the chest arms and face simultaneously by the demon Rudy's plant and he described the experience this way quote for two or three days the pain was almost unbearable I couldn't work I couldn't sleep and the pain was pretty bad for another fortnight or so this stinging persisted for two years and reoccurred every single time I had a cold shower if you do not deal with all the stinging hairs from this plant the pain keeps coming back if poison ivy could control these plants like she does every other plant on the planet then you would have to handle her like she could control a swarm of hypodermic needles you have to avoid contact with this super villain at all costs less you regret it for literally years no so I know that poison ivy does pretty well as a super villain with just her typical armament of trees and assorted vines but if she was willing to change up her weaponry just a bit mother Nature has a much more menacing menagerie to offer she could command tendrils of bloodroot and branches of man chenille to quickly send heroes to the hospice I will admit that poison ivy is a better name for a super villain than giant hogweed no I would be much more afraid of the latter because science [Music] just think about getting stung by this dima roadies plant again so everything it's it's covered with all these hairs and what they do in australia if you're stung it doesn't it doesn't just go away like an insect sting the hair stay in your skin so the pain reoccurs every time you irritate the skin or activate it in a certain way it keeps coming back cold breeze cold shower what they have to do is take tweezers and painstakingly take all the hairs out of your skin or there's like waxing strips to rip them back out of your skin like they were forced in there so just imagine just imagine I don't want to I'm Kyle Hill join me as we test fatalities brutalities and realities in the science of MORTAL KOMBAT [Music] thank you so much for watching Liam you can follow me on these handles here and because science would give me suggestions for future episodes and the one big thing I want to remind you the science of MORTAL KOMBAT it's coming next week first episode premiering on this channel [Music]

Channel: Because Science

Views: 822,200

Keywords: Nerdist, Because Science, Fvid, Batman, Poison Ivy, DC Comics, Kyle Hill

Id: D2aeMRoWAE0

Length: 13min 57sec (837 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 14 2019