The flowers themselves aren’t the most toxic part of the plant but they produce measurable levels of toxic alkaloids. After 11 years of studying these malformed sheep, scientists realized that although pregnant sheep could feed on the flowers of V. californicum with no ill effects, they would go on to give birth to the deformed lambs. It became readily apparent that the deformities found in these lambs could be traced back to the consumption of V. californicum.

However, this was not case closed. The ranchers learned that they must keep their sheep away from Veratrum but no one had any idea as to how eating these plants led to such horrible birth defects. It took 25 more years before scientists had that answer.

While studying embryonic development in fruit flies, researchers discovered a set of genes that, when deactivated, cause the flies to grow spiny hairs all over their body. They named this gene “Sonic Hedgehog” after the spiky blue video game character. It turns out that the Sonic Hedgehog gene was extremely important in the development of more organisms than just flies. Importantly, these genes control the way in which the body plan of an organism develops. When something goes wrong with the Sonic Hedgehog pathway, a whole slew of deformities follow. Among these is the development of a single, malformed eye on the middle of the mammalian head.

Luckily, researchers studying Sonic Hedgehog remembered the story of the cyclops sheep in Idaho. It didn’t take long to put the puzzle pieces together. It was soon realized that V. californicum produces one alkaloid in particular that interferes with Sonic Hedgehog. The compound was given the name “Cyclopamine” as a reference to the deformities is caused in those sheep back in 1957. Scientists finally had the smoking gun.