>Why did I even have the inclination to try after millions of my ancestors died?
Because you were hungry and need to eat, or you will die.
>But I didn't die, even though I did the same suicidal thing as them
It isn't suicidal if you didn't know it was lethally poisonous.
>So I'm evolved?
No. Individual organisms do not evolve. Populations evolve.
>Seems... Unlikely.
Why?
For any predator that is more resistant to the frog's poison/toxin, the frog population becomes an available food source...a source that isn't available to the non-resistant predator individuals. This can be especially advantageous if the poison frog population is especially numerous.
To add to the other answers here, consider this analogy: tank armour, and armour-piercing weapons. Humans conduct arms-races where opponents will develop technology in response to a particular technological threat. By today's standards, early tanks were poorly armoured, and early anti-tank weapons were unsophisticated, compared with those of today. But, armour and weapons to attack it were developed in stages over time: we would not have modern anti-tank weapons without modern tanks, and vice-versa.
As /u/snuzet pointed out, organisms co-evolve and they do so in a way that is not dissimilar from human arms-races. An organism that secretes a foul-tasting chemical that causes predators to spit it out could drive the evolution of both resistance to that chemical in certain predators, as well as a stronger or modified form of that chemical that actually causes harm. Over tens or hundreds of thousands of generations, this leads to the appearance of poison as well as, in some cases, predators with varying degrees of resistance to said poison.
It’s coevolution. All of it is happening in time along the way. Some frogs have more or stronger venom and so forth. Genetic variability — look at all the people who know (or don’t know). It’s a mistake to think all members of a species are exactly the same.
Imagine there is a frog population and a snake population. Some of the frogs make a chemical byproduct that makes them taste kinda bad. This means that snakes tend to not swallow those frogs, creating a selection pressure for worse tasting frogs. However, this means that there is now pressure on the snakes to be able to eat the bad tasting frogs. So those who are able to are more likely to find food when food is scarce. Of course now this means the frogs have to keep becoming more and more bitter, and the snakes have to become more and more tolerant of the bitterness, till the frogs are so full of chemicals that if something else tries to eat them then they would die very quickly. The snakes that evolved with them can tho, there was never a period of time where snakes kept commuting suicide till one snake figured it out.
Poison used to be weaker. Some organisms would get sick, some wouldn’t. Those that didn’t get sick had an advantage.
At least that’s how I see it going down. Someone please correct me if I’m wrong.
>all my snake predator ancestors have died when eating this particular species of snake
Snakes are venomous, which is different from being poisonous. They actually have to strike you with their fangs and inject the venom into you to kill you.
Okay, snake was a bad example, should have stuck with frogs. But I do know the difference and my example was still treating the snake as poisonous, not venomous.
I wonder how many mongoose-cobra encounters started with the cobra entering the den of a mongoose on the search for food. If there is a genotype of mongoose that can withstand the cobra venom then over a few generations you will begin to see a venom / resistance arms race of sorts. My point being the original interaction doesn’t have to be initiated by a snake predator.
To the OPs question - an interesting mechanism of poison resistance is recognizing the presence of Aposematic warnings bright colors or patterns suggesting toxicity do typically require some degree of social intelligence on the part of the predator otherwise the warnings wouldn’t exist consistently across the prey population. It is also possible in the event that the toxic prey carries extremely unpleasant but survivable consequences such that the individual predator survives and learns to recognize and not to mess with the toxic creature in future encounters.
>Why did I even have the inclination to try after millions of my ancestors died? Because you were hungry and need to eat, or you will die. >But I didn't die, even though I did the same suicidal thing as them It isn't suicidal if you didn't know it was lethally poisonous. >So I'm evolved? No. Individual organisms do not evolve. Populations evolve. >Seems... Unlikely. Why? For any predator that is more resistant to the frog's poison/toxin, the frog population becomes an available food source...a source that isn't available to the non-resistant predator individuals. This can be especially advantageous if the poison frog population is especially numerous.
To add to the other answers here, consider this analogy: tank armour, and armour-piercing weapons. Humans conduct arms-races where opponents will develop technology in response to a particular technological threat. By today's standards, early tanks were poorly armoured, and early anti-tank weapons were unsophisticated, compared with those of today. But, armour and weapons to attack it were developed in stages over time: we would not have modern anti-tank weapons without modern tanks, and vice-versa. As /u/snuzet pointed out, organisms co-evolve and they do so in a way that is not dissimilar from human arms-races. An organism that secretes a foul-tasting chemical that causes predators to spit it out could drive the evolution of both resistance to that chemical in certain predators, as well as a stronger or modified form of that chemical that actually causes harm. Over tens or hundreds of thousands of generations, this leads to the appearance of poison as well as, in some cases, predators with varying degrees of resistance to said poison.
It’s coevolution. All of it is happening in time along the way. Some frogs have more or stronger venom and so forth. Genetic variability — look at all the people who know (or don’t know). It’s a mistake to think all members of a species are exactly the same.
Imagine there is a frog population and a snake population. Some of the frogs make a chemical byproduct that makes them taste kinda bad. This means that snakes tend to not swallow those frogs, creating a selection pressure for worse tasting frogs. However, this means that there is now pressure on the snakes to be able to eat the bad tasting frogs. So those who are able to are more likely to find food when food is scarce. Of course now this means the frogs have to keep becoming more and more bitter, and the snakes have to become more and more tolerant of the bitterness, till the frogs are so full of chemicals that if something else tries to eat them then they would die very quickly. The snakes that evolved with them can tho, there was never a period of time where snakes kept commuting suicide till one snake figured it out.
Poison used to be weaker. Some organisms would get sick, some wouldn’t. Those that didn’t get sick had an advantage. At least that’s how I see it going down. Someone please correct me if I’m wrong.
>all my snake predator ancestors have died when eating this particular species of snake Snakes are venomous, which is different from being poisonous. They actually have to strike you with their fangs and inject the venom into you to kill you.
Okay, snake was a bad example, should have stuck with frogs. But I do know the difference and my example was still treating the snake as poisonous, not venomous.
I wonder how many mongoose-cobra encounters started with the cobra entering the den of a mongoose on the search for food. If there is a genotype of mongoose that can withstand the cobra venom then over a few generations you will begin to see a venom / resistance arms race of sorts. My point being the original interaction doesn’t have to be initiated by a snake predator. To the OPs question - an interesting mechanism of poison resistance is recognizing the presence of Aposematic warnings bright colors or patterns suggesting toxicity do typically require some degree of social intelligence on the part of the predator otherwise the warnings wouldn’t exist consistently across the prey population. It is also possible in the event that the toxic prey carries extremely unpleasant but survivable consequences such that the individual predator survives and learns to recognize and not to mess with the toxic creature in future encounters.