Marmot eating Stinging and Toxic Plants | Bob Armstrong's Nature Alaska

This video could be used as an introduction to how animals cope with toxic plants.
How do Wild Herbivores, such as these marmots, Cope with Plant Toxins? An article created by members of a graduate Foraging Ecology Class at the University of Idaho and Washington State University under the direction of Drs. Karen Launchbaugh and Lisa Shipley mentions:
Although toxic plants can cause negative effects, herbivores may still consume them because of the plant’s nutritional quality, palatability, availability, or addictive chemical properties.
Animal nutritional state Nutritional stress can contribute to animal consumption of toxic plants. An animal’s perception of toxic plants may change when it is starved or deprived, as undernourished or hungry deer may select less palatable or toxic plants that they would reject when forage is plentiful.
Mixing diets. Herbivores eat more than one plant in each meal. By eating a mixture of plants containing different toxins the negative effects of ingesting one toxin may be diminished. Thus, mule deer are able to eat two times more of a toxic plant when they ingest a mixed diet than when they eat one poisonous plant alone.
Cyclic consumption . Herbivores can avoid toxicities by limiting or varying the consumption of a specific toxic plant each day or until toxins cause negative feedback. For example grazing studies with tall larkspur showed that consumption above 25 to 30% of this plant for 1 or 2 days reduced the intake on subsequent days.
Tolerate the toxin. Although little is known about the tolerance of wildlife species to plant toxins, tolerance to toxic compounds might be the best way for animals to diminish the risk of poisoning. Different animal species and individuals within a species are more or less tolerant to toxic plants than others. For example, mule deer are more tolerant of locoweed than pronghorn antelope, and elk are more tolerant of ponderosa pine than bison. Microbial adaptations in the gut can be induced by consumption of small quantities of plant toxins and thus provide an opportunity for the animal’s system to adapt to the toxin.
You can learn more by reading http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/range556/appl_behave/projects/toxins-wild…