monique wrote:
Archie, don't think hide, think mouth: The muzzle, lips, gums, and
tongues of grazing animals are just as affected by nettles as bare human
skin.

M. Reed


Okay, and what would you say for grasshoppers and insects? Would it be
their mouthparts
and sense of smell and their "face area"? This should be easy enough
to research and find
a definitive answer as to how nettle evolved to ward off herbivores,
whether they be mammal
or insect.

The breaking off of the tip of the hyperdermic needle of nettles
suggests the intended victim
is when the mouthparts of the insect try to eat. And that it was not
intended to pierce human
skin but found it beneficial to the nettle. So I think the hyperdermic
needle geometry was
evolved for insects with the slightest touch would create the needle,
but that the needle
shape would also ward off humans.

I have never seen grasshoppers on nettle plants. I think grasshoppers
were the co-evolving
animal.

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies