Hmm, nobody mentions eating the insects or digging for grubs but I've seen this done on "Man vs. Wild".
I'm on a deserted island. How can I tell which plants are poisonous?
31–40 of 65 posts
Re: I'm on a deserted island. How can I tell which plants are poisonous?
#32One tip I learned for berries was that if the birds don't eat them, you shouldn't either because they're almost certainly poisonous. The reverse is not true: birds can eat things you can't.
Bottom line: If there's any there, it's not safe to eat it. If they're all gone, then they would have been safe. Next chapter, how to test for witches by the flotation method.
>If they're all gone, then they would have been safe.
WRONG. Birds can eat a lot of things that would make you very sick.
Re: I'm on a deserted island. How can I tell which plants are poisonous?
#33I got myself a copy of the SAS survival handbook sometime last year. It covers this topic and many others: http://www.amazon.com/SAS-Survival-Handbook-Revised-Situatio...
There are a lot of books with this advice in them. It could even have been cribbed from my Boy Scout Handbook from back in the 1970s.
Re: I'm on a deserted island. How can I tell which plants are poisonous?
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are of course variations of this trick. If you can't find a monkey, either a quail or a toucan will do just fine. I have some friends who were in a military survival training mission in the Amazon.. For many days all they were able to find was swamp cabbage (palmito). Then they found a toucan... The monkey trick didn't work because the trees are very very tall.
I guess one common variation is the monkey eating you...
They're in the Amazon, not Soviet Russia.
Re: I'm on a deserted island. How can I tell which plants are poisonous?
#35My all time favorite answer for this question is from a book I read in Brazil. It was a jungle-survival guide from a Brazilian military: First of all, find a monkey. Follow the monkey, and eat everything the monkey eats. If possible, eat the monkey too.
I saw a show on monkeys once where a species of monkeys discovered that by eating the wood charcoal from nearby villages they could eat more of a plant that was normally somewhat toxic to them, the charcoal acting as a filter for the toxin.
Re: I'm on a deserted island. How can I tell which plants are poisonous?
#36My all time favorite answer for this question is from a book I read in Brazil. It was a jungle-survival guide from a Brazilian military: First of all, find a monkey. Follow the monkey, and eat everything the monkey eats. If possible, eat the monkey too.
I wonder why they spend so much time eating nasty things like larvae in these courses. There's lots of fish in the Amazon. Snakes and lizards are quite tasty too. I guess it must be the easiest thing to catch.
Re: I'm on a deserted island. How can I tell which plants are poisonous?
#37Water is more important than food. A person can go a long time without food, but will die without water in just a few days time. I would observe what the local animals seem to be eating. Another trick is to take a sample and rub a bit of it on of your skin. If it causes irritation, its probably bad.
Depending on climate either shelter or water is the most urgent. Most people can go weeks to months without food if they must.
If you find yourself behind enemy lines, you need ammo, especially if they are hunting you down. Otherwise keep it for emergencies.
Re: I'm on a deserted island. How can I tell which plants are poisonous?
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a saying that, "you can travel across the land or live off the land but not both." You may be able to improve your chances over the short term by concentrating on finding food but if you want to survive long term your best chance may be to get back to civilisation and get back quick. Having said that as with most situations the optimal strategy is probably somewhere between the two extremes.
If you have no idea how to get back to civilization, your best strategy is to wait for search and rescue. Wandering aimlessly is the worst thing you can do.
Also, you want to try and make a signal to any rescuers or passers by.
Try chopping down trees in a pattern so planes can see the pattern. Have a bonfire ready that can be lit in less than a minute if you hear a plane or helicopter, or see a boat. A mirror too can be reflected out to people.
Re: I'm on a deserted island. How can I tell which plants are poisonous?
#39Even with a survival manual it's easy enough to get one harmless food source mixed up with another look-alike harmful one. It's widely speculated that this happened to Chris McCandless aka Alexander Supertramp, who hiked into the Alaskan wilderness back in the 90s to get away from it all but ended up dying from either starvation or eating something poisonous which contributed to his starvation.. I guess the point is…
Wiki page on McCandless:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McCandless
The speculation is that he died either from eating http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedysarum or Hedysarum with "Black Patch Desease" fungus : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhizoctonia_leguminicola
I just watched the movie about him "Into The Wild" -- pretty interesting.
Re: I'm on a deserted island. How can I tell which plants are poisonous?
#40Water is more important than food. A person can go a long time without food, but will die without water in just a few days time. I would observe what the local animals seem to be eating. Another trick is to take a sample and rub a bit of it on of your skin. If it causes irritation, its probably bad.
Here's an unpleasant thought; what are the rules for drinking your own urine? Some apparently do this for fun, but what about for survival situations?
If you're able to find enough edible plants (via watching other animals), it might also be worth trying to cultivate them, but this depends on your broader circumstances.