Very nice. Is that some kind of US military standard issue cigarette? Because they so many varieties in content now.
I think its more the principle. Nicotine, like caffine was evolved by planets as a pesticide. Animals (like parasites) that don't normally come in contact with it, likely don't have resitances to it.
Highly evolved Apes like us, are simply to big and evolutionarily advanced to be killed by such a small dose of poison.
I don't know about 'advanced'; my understanding was that our protein were simply slightly different, enough to make nicotine not a potent poison, but just another substance you don't want to take too much of.
I think it takes eating four cigarettes to kill you.
7.2.1 Human data
7.2.1.1 Adults
The mean lethal dose has been estimated to be 30 to 60 mg (0.5-1.0 mg/kg) (Gosselin, 1988).
7.2.1.2 Children
The lethal dose is considered to be about 10 mg of nicotine (Arena, 1974).
7.2.2 Relevant animal data
Dog: oral LD50: 9.2 mg/kg
mouse: oral LD50: 3.3 mg/kg (RTECS, 1985-86)
rat: oral LD50: 50 mg/kg
edit: http://abcnews.go.com/US/paul-curry-convicted-1994-nicotine-...
edit2: I see what you saw - http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00204-013-1127-0...
This completely misunderstands evolution on a very basic level, and is wrong beyond the hope of being salvaged.
> Depending upon the supplies, there is a worm remedy: swallow a couple of tablespoons of kerosene or gasoline. Kerosene is more effective but gasoline will do. Either will make you a bit sick, but will make the worms a lot sicker.
It's amazing how the wording is very similar. This document is from sometime in 50's I think, written by a Korean(?) war vet (talks about his time being a POW and "stealing" a wooden house board by board until it was slowly gone altogether. The Chinese guards were confused but weren't amused.)