Theobromine/chocolate poisoning in a human-bird hybrid character

[bluerosekatie]

Hello!

EDIT: Thank you to everyone who added details, this is the result! (Locked to AO3 users to avoid AI scraping)

I have been looking into chocolate toxicity as it occurs in birds, since I want to write a scene where a human character with significant amounts of bird DNA tries chocolate and regrets it. I'm not planning on killing her, but I do want to figure out an accurate amount of chocolate to give her for it to make sense. Looking at the treatment methods, I would probably want a milder case of theobromine poisoning but enough to be a close call, if that makes sense. How much chocolate do you think she'd need to have, and what would be the proper course of treatment?

Comments

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Hi, I asked my sister and she said 20 mg/kg of weight would make them sick, but she hasn't gotten back to me how much would kill them (or almost kill them). I don't she's actually had a case of it but she's been a vet for about 25 years. She gave me the example of one M&M which is 0.7 g and there are ~2 mg/g of methylxanthines (theobromine being one) in milk chocolate so 1.4 mg of it in one M&M. She used the example of a macaw being .5 kg so it would have to eat at least 10 M&Ms to even make it sick and it would probably start vomiting way before that.

FYI, she said avocados are more of a problem than chocolate. Hope this is helpful!

[bluerosekatie]

Thank you! I do know about avocados being a thing, but I feel like it's more plausible for a semi-sheltered character to be peer pressured into trying chocolate (sweet, normally a pleasant experience, "you'd be missing out" etc.) than avocados. So it would take some doing to ingest enough to be seriously ill without getting the alarm first, right?

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Well, one text says that even small quantities will harm it, but I suppose it depends on the size of the bird. Maybe that's what the 'one bite' above is talking about.

I asked her if 40 mg/kg would kill a macaw and she said 'probably, a block of Baker's chocolate would do it.' So maybe 20 M&Ms for macaw (that doesn't seem like a lot to me) They would have central nervous system and cardiovascular stimulation, so tachycardia and hyperactivity and vomiting and diarrhea. It would all be out of the bird's system within 30 hours, but they would give it active charcoal as treatment to get it out if they knew that's it was. I think they would definitely feel the effects of it quickly so if they ate, say, a quarter to a half of a chocolate bar quickly, maybe dark chocolate? then it could hit harder and faster--boom.

[bluerosekatie]

Thank you!! I figure the treatment would be figured out somewhat fast so a small bar of dark chocolate makes sense!