Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Lesson 403. The title of today's
lesson is the difference between venomous and poisonous. You know, especially
in regard to animals or creatures. This is this is a question I've gotten a
number of times from students so now I'm kind of clarifying because it was a
little tricky to try to answer this to begin with. Let's continue. Venomous
creatures use their venom or their poison to attack other creatures.
According to biologists you know , the scientist biologists the use of the term
venomous should be applied to organisms that bite or sting to inject their
poison. The term poisonous should be used with organisms that unload or release
their toxins when you consume them. So you eat them. You get the poison, but they
didn't attack you or the poison is secreted you know , comes through their
skin. So maybe when you touch them, you can get poisoned as well. Thus we do have
some poisonous animals , especially amphibians such as frogs, toads or in the
lizard category a salamander. So if you touch these animals that's how you get
the poison. Okay. Which can pass toxins through this skin. However, since they
don't bite or sting. We use the term poisonous instead of
venomous. Okay. I hope that's clear. Let's continue here. Other poisonous creatures
include the pufferfish or the Blowfish. Yeah. You only get poison when you eat it
or sometimes even touching it. If you touch the poisonous part the poison
could spread to you too. But the puffer fish doesn't really attack you. It
doesn't use big teeth and bite you or anything like that. So it's mostly when
you try... when you eat him or possibly even just touching it,
getting it on your hands. It can cause like I think even swelling if it if it didn't
actually kill you. Monarch butterflies I don't think
they're poisonous to people, but they might be to other animals that eat them.
There are some venomous lizards such as some iguanas and the Komodo dragon . Yeah.
The one famous one that's in Indonesia. One of those Islands actually I think it's
called Komodo Island there. I think there's saliva and if they bite you of
course that's where they could spread poison. Okay. Good. All right. Other famous
animals that are venomous are certain snakes. Well, we should all know this.
Although we know that not every snake you know, contains you know poison but we
definitely would use it with those snakes that bite you and spread the
poison that way spiders again not all spiders but some spiders. So certain
spiders, jellyfish. Probably most of them, but I think there are a few species of
jellyfish that don't. That are you know don't have venom or aren't poisonous as
well. Coral they of course you can definitely get bitten by corals.
sea anemones. These of course we know fire ants, wasps etc. All of these could be
venomous. Okay. Even though, sometimes you might hear people use the word poisonous
with them too, but technically they are venomous. Okay.
Good poisonous creatures mostly use their
poison for defense. You know, so because they don't bite and they don't sting.
Venomous could be used for defense or to attack or kill prey. And then there's
also plants. Probably most plants we would probably just say are poisonous
but I think they could be even a few exceptions of a few plants that you
know if they if they prick with their thorns or something they spread
poison that way maybe they could be considered venomous as well. Anyway, I
hope you got it. I hope that clarified it. Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.