- I'm Coyote Peterson
(Coyote screams)
and I'm about to enter the taste zone with the dumb cane.
Just that much of a sample right there could send you
to the hospital.
(Coyote screams)
Hi, I'm Coyote Peterson.
And yes, believe it or not, I'm still alive.
This morning, I'm hiking at the Rio Nuevo Nature Reserve
on the Osa Peninsula
and I'm searching for one of its most toxic plant species,
a poisonous individual that is rumored
to be able to give a human a very painful chemical burn.
Oh, how about that?
I managed to walk right into a cluster of them.
Now this may look like a common household species
and believe it or not,
this is a plant
that could be found in millions of homes across America,
but I bet you didn't know that it was toxic.
Now, in order to perform today's test,
all it's gonna take is a single sample
and this plant right here looks like it'll do perfect.
Oh!
Geez!
This smells terrible!
Oh, it's kind of making my throat burn.
In the bag with you, buddy.
We have got our specimen.
It's go time.
Oh, it totally stinks.
(upbeat music)
Welcome to Coyote's Kitchen.
Today, we're gonna unbox a new adventure.
This is CookUnity,
the first chef-to-you-meal delivery service
with meals from over 70 award-winning chefs.
Let's get started.
(upbeat music)
With rotating menus every week,
there's always something new to try
and something for everyone
with options from vegetarian to paleo
and everything in between.
Tonight, I'm eating Peruvian Chicken Fried Rice
from Chef Andres Mendez from New York.
Looks delicious.
(upbeat music)
The subscription is super flexible
and you can pause, skip deliveries or cancel at any time.
And one of the things that I love about CookUnity chefs,
is that they use real ingredients, nothing artificial here.
And when possible,
they use humanely sourced meat and organic ingredients.
This looks delicious.
(upbeat music)
Ooh!
(Coyote sniffs)
Oh yeah!
It's go time.
Oh, I can't wait to try this.
Go to cookunity.com/bravew50,
or click the link in the description
and use my code bravew50
to get 50% of your first order of CookUnity meals
to try them out for yourself.
(upbeat music)
Hmm, that is fantastic.
Now my taste buds feel like they're traveling the world,
every single time I have one of these meals.
Now at Brave Wilderness,
we definitely care about the environment.
If you're wondering about the packaging,
it is recyclable, reusable or compostable.
How cool is that?
(upbeat music)
CookUnity for the win.
And now we're off on our next adventure.
(upbeat music)
(air whooshing)
There it is, Dieffenbachia.
(brooding music)
That is the genus
and underneath that genus, are multiple species.
This one right here happens to be the most toxic.
It has to do with the chemical makeup of the sap
that exists within the leaves, the stalk and the stem.
And those are the three pieces
that we are ultimately going to test today.
This does not have any nettles,
so that makes it quite a bit different
than these stinging plants that I have experienced thus far.
What makes this toxic are the raphides and the idioblasts
that exist within the sap.
Now, that sap in a sense, is armed
with something known as calcium oxalate crystals,
which sort of look like little shards of fiberglass,
completely invisible to the human eye.
But if you were to look
at the sap underneath the microscope,
you would see where that world of pain is going
to come from.
And the most dangerous place
that you could get this sap is in your eyes, your nose,
or of course, your mouth.
That is an absolute worst-case scenario.
So if I picked up the stem of this
and bit it like a cucumber,
my tongue would swell, my esophagus would swell
and I would stand the chance
of having that swelling be so bad
that I would asphyxiate and ultimately die.
So I'm not gonna be taking a chomp into this plant.
When we look at my forearm, the skin is very thin here.
So when testing the leaf, the stalk and the stem,
I'm gonna get three different possible effects.
It is fair to say that I don't react to poison ivy.
So will I have a reaction to this?
Well, I compare it to a mix
between the Devil's Toilet Paper and poison ivy.
Let's say the two got together,
did a little dance, made a little love.
The dumb cane is the plant that would come out of it all.
Okay, so here's what we're gonna do.
I'm gonna make three distinct marks on my forearm,
so that we can separate the test zones.
(Coyote mouths sound)
Okay, please, please, please do not replicate
what you see me doing here.
Remember, this is for science
and to find out just how my body's gonna react
to the toxins in this plant.
Now, what I'm gonna also do is roll this up just a bit,
just squeeze that down there.
(mysterious music)
Get that sap right to the edge.
Just that much of a sample right there,
if put in your mouth and chewed up,
could send you to the hospital.
That is how potent this plant is.
Okay, sample number one, the leaf near my wrist.
Let's see what happens.
(mysterious music)
Yeah, if you're gonna go, go big, right?
(mysterious music)
(Coyote grunts)
(mysterious music)
Tingling sensation thus far, not really painful.
It's turning a little bit red,
but nothing like the Devil's Toilet Paper,
or any of the nettling species,
very, very, very slight if anything.
But a little bit of redness noted.
Let's up our game, we're going stalk.
(mysterious music)
Oh yeah, this is a juicy one.
(mysterious music)
You can see it oozing.
Yeah, oh boy, that's gonna make a difference right there.
Yeah, you see that sap coming right to the top of the stalk.
All right, let's do this.
Entering the poison zone with the stalk of the dumb cane.
This is dumb.
(mysterious music)
Oh, yeah, oh!
(Coyote giggles)
Oh, that's definitely a different effect.
I can definitely feel that.
(mysterious music)
It feels like little tiny needles going into my skin.
(Coyote groans)
And it is getting a little red,
but not as bad as one would think.
All right, we're going straight to the stem.
I'm gonna put a fresh cut,
so we can really get a lot of sap.
All right.
(mysterious music)
This is gonna be the one
that's probably gonna have the biggest impact.
Here we go.
I'm Coyote Peterson
and I'm about to enter the pain zone,
the poisonous pain zone with the dumb cane,
(mysterious music)
right in the sweet spot of my arm.
One, two, three.
(mysterious music)
Oh, geez!
(Coyote laughs)
(Coyote screams)
Yeah, you can definitely feel that.
(upbeat music)
Oh!
(upbeat music)
Oh, man, wow, immediate searing!
Oh, you can see how red it got right out of the get-go.
And I know what you're saying right now,
"Coyote, really?
You're gonna go this far,
but you're not gonna put any of that in your mouth?"
Guys, that would be insanely unintelligent.
Dumb cane for a reason!
(upbeat music)
But I think I should test it on the tip of my tongue, right?
I mean, for science, right?
Right?
- Do it.
(upbeat music)
I have no knowledge about this plant.
(Coyote sighs)
I have done zero research on it.
I do not recommend putting any poisonous substance
in your mouth.
Once it enters your system,
you don't know how it's gonna react.
- Now, I'm not going to chew this up.
I'm not gonna swallow it.
I'm just going to literally place the tip of my tongue
on the tip of the stem
and see what sort of reaction we get.
(Coyote sighs)
This one's just, fine, okay, here we go.
(dramatic music)
(Coyote sighs)
I'm Coyote Peterson
and I'm about to enter the taste zone with the dumb cane.
Okay, guys, ready?
One, two, three.
(dramatic music)
(Coyote screams)
That is it, that is definitely it!
(Coyote screams)
(Coyote mumbles)
See, I don't want to get my tongue in my mouth.
Do you see what's happening here?
And I am just talking like this,
'cause I don't want my tongue to go in my mouth,
'cause it's burning!
It's like my mouth is full of Novocaine.
(Coyote screams)
I'm gonna have to rinse my tongue off though.
(Coyote coughs)
The tip of my tongue is on fire.
Just get a shot of the tip of my tongue.
(Coyote screams)
That's way worse than the arm is!
(Coyote breathes heavily)
(dramatic music)
Yeah, I'm washing off.
- [Mario] Wait, wait, wait.
Put your tongue in your mouth.
- I do not want it in my mouth.
And cut cameras.
(Coyote grunts)
(Coyote spits)
So what the heck is happening?
While invisible to the camera's eye,
my tongue is experiencing a chemical burn.
(Coyote screams)
(upbeat music) (birds chirping)
A chemical burn occurs when living tissue is damaged
by a corrosive substance,
such as the oxides in the plant's sap.
- This wasn't our idea, this was his idea.
(Coyote coughs) (Coyote screams)
(gentle music) (birds chirping)
(Coyote screams)
- Basically, your body immediately rejects it.
This was a crazy few minutes.
And clever editing,
has eliminated my body's most extreme reaction,
violent vomiting.
(Coyote giggles)
You're welcome.
Because trust me,
my lunch mixed with a watermelon slushie looked gross.
- [Trent] Are you dumber?
(Coyote coughs)
- Wow, wow, wow!
My body, ah, I say, first of all,
I don't wanna touch my eyes just in case or my hand.
(Coyote screams)
It feels like Novocaine on my tongue,
but it hurts like a hot wing.
Oh, it's so hot right now!
There's far and there's too far.
Far, too far.
And I cannot express
how important it is to never repeat
what you saw me doing here.
Putting any sort of poison in your mouth,
is incredibly foolish.
(Coyote rinsing his mouth)
So we came up with the idea for doing the dumb cane episode.
Because the other day,
Jim was telling me about this toxic plant
that he's run into before.
And I was like, "Really?"
And I put a little bit of leaf on my wrist
and didn't have much of a reaction
and then he did it.
And your wrist has been like this for days.
- Yeah, it's actually horrible.
It is itchy a lot for several days.
I mean, we have like four days working together already.
- Yeah.
- And this is actually horrible still.
- Well, this is like poison ivy, how it's reacted to you.
So we will see what happens with my arm.
Well, it's been 24 hours
since I placed the dumb cane on my forearm.
And thus far, no effects, no blisters, no itching.
It means I'm pretty resilient towards plant saps.
However, when I placed the dumb cane on my tongue,
which was incredibly stupid,
you saw the immediate effects.
Within 60 seconds, my body was rejecting the poison.
I was vomiting and trying to make sure
that my body rid itself of that toxic substance.
So it goes without saying,
never place a toxic substance in your mouth.
Now, for ranking plants on an index,
the same way we were on insect stings,
on a scale of one being the least painful,
four being the most painful,
I'd have to put the dumb cane at a two.
Because while the initial effects were pretty intense
in my mouth,
within 20 minutes, I was completely fine.
So if you are a botanist,
or you know anything about toxic plants,
whether of the nettling, the sap or the oil type,
write in the comment section below
and tell me what plant should I rank
on the plant-sting-pain index next.
I'm Coyote Peterson.
Be brave, stay wild.
We'll see you on the next adventure.
(rumbling)
(birds chirping)