WEBVTT - Is chocolate poisonous to dogs?

0:00:00.520 --> 0:00:03.840
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to Brainstuff from house stuff Works dot com where

0:00:03.840 --> 0:00:15.400
<v Speaker 1>smart happens. Hi Am Marshall Brain with today's question, is

0:00:15.680 --> 0:00:20.200
<v Speaker 1>chocolate poisonous to dogs? You may have heard people say

0:00:20.239 --> 0:00:24.320
<v Speaker 1>that chocolate will kill dogs? Does that make sense? If

0:00:24.360 --> 0:00:28.040
<v Speaker 1>I can eat chocolate, why can't my dog? It turns

0:00:28.080 --> 0:00:31.520
<v Speaker 1>out that for dogs, a chemical and chocolate called theo

0:00:31.600 --> 0:00:35.600
<v Speaker 1>bromine is the source of the problem. Theobromine is similar

0:00:35.600 --> 0:00:40.159
<v Speaker 1>to caffeine. It's toxic to dogs when it ingests between

0:00:40.159 --> 0:00:44.440
<v Speaker 1>a hundred and a hundred and fifty milligrams per kilogram

0:00:44.680 --> 0:00:49.280
<v Speaker 1>of body weight. Different types of chocolate contain different amounts

0:00:49.280 --> 0:00:53.360
<v Speaker 1>of theobromine. It would take about twenty ounces of milk

0:00:53.440 --> 0:00:56.840
<v Speaker 1>chocolate to kill a twenty pound dog, but only two

0:00:56.880 --> 0:01:01.800
<v Speaker 1>ounces of Baker's chocolate or six ounce is of semisweet chocolate.

0:01:02.160 --> 0:01:04.840
<v Speaker 1>It's not that hard for a dog to get into

0:01:04.880 --> 0:01:08.480
<v Speaker 1>something like an Easter basket full of chocolate eggs and

0:01:08.600 --> 0:01:11.560
<v Speaker 1>chocolate bunnies and gobble up to a pound or two

0:01:11.640 --> 0:01:15.520
<v Speaker 1>of chocolate in a single sitting. If the dog is small,

0:01:15.560 --> 0:01:19.560
<v Speaker 1>that could be deadly. It turns out that chocolate poisoning

0:01:19.760 --> 0:01:23.280
<v Speaker 1>is actually not as unusual as it sounds for a

0:01:23.400 --> 0:01:27.559
<v Speaker 1>human being. Caffeine is toxic at levels of fifty milligrams

0:01:27.560 --> 0:01:30.440
<v Speaker 1>per kilogram of body weight. That's the same as for

0:01:30.640 --> 0:01:35.720
<v Speaker 1>dogs with theobromine. Humans generally weigh a lot more than dogs,

0:01:35.720 --> 0:01:39.120
<v Speaker 1>but small children can get into trouble with caffeine or

0:01:39.240 --> 0:01:42.720
<v Speaker 1>chocolate if they consume too much of it. Infants are

0:01:42.840 --> 0:01:47.240
<v Speaker 1>especially vulnerable because they don't eliminate caffeine from the bloodstream

0:01:47.319 --> 0:01:51.320
<v Speaker 1>nearly as quickly as adults do. Dogs have this strange

0:01:51.320 --> 0:01:55.280
<v Speaker 1>ability to wolf down lots more food than a human does,

0:01:55.600 --> 0:01:58.080
<v Speaker 1>and that makes a dog a lot more susceptible than

0:01:58.200 --> 0:02:02.880
<v Speaker 1>chocolate poisoning than a human it be be sure to

0:02:02.960 --> 0:02:05.720
<v Speaker 1>check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.

0:02:06.080 --> 0:02:08.399
<v Speaker 1>Join how staf Work staff as we explore the most

0:02:08.400 --> 0:02:13.480
<v Speaker 1>promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The How Staff Works

0:02:13.520 --> 0:02:16.800
<v Speaker 1>iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes.