Some experts have long believed that a massive asteroid was a primary cause of dinosaurs’ extinction some 65 million years ago, but new analysis from a University at Albany psychology professor suggests that the dinosaurs were in trouble long before the asteroid hit.
Some experts have long believed that a massive asteroid was a primary cause of dinosaurs’ extinction some 65 million years ago, but new analysis from a University at Albany psychology professor suggests that the dinosaurs were in trouble long before the asteroid hit.
Professor and evolutionary psychologist Gordon Gallup and his former student Michael J. Frederick, now of the University of Baltimore, assert that the emergence of toxic plants combined with dinosaurs’ inability to associate the taste of certain foods with danger had them already drastically decreasing in population when the asteroid hit.
“Learned taste aversion” is an evolutional defense seen in many species, in which the animal learns to associate the consumption of a plant or other food with negative consequences, such as feeling ill. To explain the defense mechanism, Gallup offers the example of rats.
“A reason why most attempts to eliminate rats have not been successful is because they, like many other species, have evolved to cope with plant toxicity,” said Gallup. “When rats encounter a new food, they typically sample only a small amount; and if they get sick, they show a remarkable ability to avoid that food again because they associate the taste and smell of it with the negative reaction.”
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