It blinds; it burns; it looks kind of pretty. An invasive, poisonous plant known as giant hogweed, or Heracleum mantegazzianum, is attacking western Ontario.

The plant is a member of the carrot or parsley family, and as described in a brochure (pdf) from the Michigan Department of Agriculture, 20th century gardeners cultivated the giant for its impressive size and for its stem’s purple coloring. But it soon broke out of gardens and arboretums, its seeds finding soil outside of captivity.

Besides Canada, the plant has also appeared in the northern United States (both east and west) and as far south as Maryland. Ontario officials are concerned with the plants’ continuing spread–it was most recently sighted in Renfrew County–and have urged anyone who spots it to contact them immediately.

Giant Hogweed can grow to almost twenty feet tall and five feet wide, and each plant can produce tens of thousands of seeds. Sap on your skin can give you ugly blisters, the CBC reports, and sap in your eyes could cause blindness.

Jeff Muzzi, manager of forestry services for Renfrew County, told the CBC that, despite its heft, the weed is a stealthy attacker.

“[Exposure] could be inadvertent,” Muzzi said. “You might not even know it’s here, [just] walk into it and happen to break a leaf. The next thing you know, you’ve got these nasty burns.”

Renfrew County officials are attempting to thwart the toxic plant’s leafy grip by distributing pamphlet warnings and, as the CBC reports, through “weed-whacking campaigns.”

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Images: Wikimedia, Michigan Department of Agriculture

Relax, Indiana Jones. Snakes aren’t so scary… as long as you’re wearing a good pair of jeans.

According to research done by scientists in California, denim provides more than classic American fashion statement. While this may seem somewhat obvious, the researchers are happy to announce that covering your legs with jeans doesn’t just reduce the amount of venom that a snakebite can inject into your system—it reduces it by a lot. From Reuters:

Drs. Shelton S. Herbert and William K. Hayes used latex gloves filled with saline to simulate a human appendage, then exposed the gloves to bites from small and large southern Pacific rattlesnakes. Some of the latex “limbs” were covered in a layer of denim.

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Spitting cobras are famous for their terrifying defense mechanism: They spit venom directly into an attacker’s eyes, causing severe pain and possibly blindness. Now, scientists have learned that the name “spitting cobra” is a misnomer, since the snake doesn’t actually spit out its venom. Instead, it sprays the poison in geometric patterns such as paired ovals, similar to the way a pitcher winds up to throw a ball.

And how did this astonishing fact come to light? Biologist Bruce Young at the University of Massachusetts Lowell examined the spitting habits of three captive species of cobra…by provoking them to spit venom in his face.

No, he’s not crazy—he wore a visor fitted with an accelerometer, so a computer could trace his eye and head movements in 3D while he taunted the angry reptiles. Young also tracked the snakes’ movements, using high-speed videography to quantify the sway of their heads and electromyography (EMG) to measure the contraction of their head and neck muscles.

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Remember the doomed, cane-toad-eating crocodiles? Well they’re still eating, and dying: A new report suggests that as much as 77 percent of the crocodile population along the Victoria River has now perished from toad poisoning.

In yet another example of the “solution to one problem becomes an even bigger problem” doctrine, cane toads were purposely introduced to the region as a pest-control measure for beetles in the sugar cane fields. But sure enough, the toads soon became pests themselves, to the point where volunteer groups are trying to stop the toads’ spread across the continent.

One community has been promoting “cane toad golf”—basically whacking the toads with golf clubs. A more humane way, experts suggest, is to put the toads in the fridge until they’re numb and then transfer them to the freezer to kill them.

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