I was reading an article about a US senator that received a letter full of poison. I didn't know much about the poison (ricin) so I decided to find out where it comes from, and it turns out that it comes from castor oil seeds and is the most poisonous plant on earth.
I'll avoid those.
So far, all good. And then I read
Poisoning occurs when animals, including humans, ingest broken seeds or break the seed by chewing: intact seeds may pass through the digestive tract without releasing the toxin.[16] Toxicity varies among animal species: four seeds will kill a rabbit, five a sheep, six an ox or horse, seven a pig, and eleven a dog. Ducks have shown incredible resistance to the seeds: it takes an average of 80 to kill them
I am at a loss as to why anyone would receive funding to see how many castor oil seeds it takes to kill a duck. Who is giving 'scientists' money to perform these stupid and pointless experiments? Does it matter if it takes 4 or 400 seeds to kill a duck? They are obviously poisonous, so don't feed them to animals. And 80 is an average to kill a duck? How many ducks did they kill to get that information? Not to mention rabbits, hamsters, tortoises, dolphins.
This annoys me about modern day science. People say "ooohhh science, yes its for the good of man, we myst know, its amazing" but in reality you are paying a guy $80,000 a year to force- feed poisonous beans to ducks and count how many before each duck keels over. That's not science. Its imbecilic. 
What kind of a sick f*ck goes to work with the intention of force-feeding beans to a horse until it dies?
"What did you do today at work honey?"
"Well I fed a shire horse 9 beans and it died. Then I fed a Shetland pony 4 beans and it died. Then after lunch I fed beans to a donkey and to 3 ex-riding school ponies. It turns out that the average amount of beans to kill them was 6. The cleaners aren't happy. Vomiting, bloody diarrhoea and equine carcasses everywhere. Still, tomorrow is snakes and reptiles day."
"I'm so proud of you. You work so hard. "
I'm not normally an animal rights person, I'd rather a rabbit wore lipstick before it burned a teenage girl and I think PETA is just an organisation to promote zoophilia, but that kind of 'research' just seems so cruel and pointless. When I was a kid I used to burn ants under a magnifying glass because I was a little sh*t. It normally takes 7 to 8 seconds to roast an ant. Was I a scientist?
*Additional: 'zoophilia' has also found its way onto the banned words list for this site along with rolex watches and poker. Is there nothing that we are allowed to enjoy?
Can't you think of any possible conclusions from this investigation by scientists and what it will lead to?
Apparently ducks got a high resistance against the poison, so it is worth investigating to how come ducks have such a high resistance. If scientists can find the answer to that, they may find a way to produce antivenom for humans against ricin in the future. They even do that now, with some other anti-venom
Wiki source
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AntivenomAntivenom (or antivenin or antivenene) is a biological product used in the treatment of venomous bites or stings. Antivenom is created by milking venom from the desired snake, spider or insect. The venom is then diluted and injected into a horse, sheep or goat. The subject animal will undergo an immune response to the venom, producing antibodies against the venom's active molecule which can then be harvested from the animal's blood and used to treat envenomation.