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Does anyone have an explanation for why they would evolve to prevent being eaten by mammals? I would think having mammals help spread their seeds would be beneficial?
Adding to the other responses, birds have simple digestion systems and the seed makes it into the poop, which birds do in flight so the seed will spread. Mammals digestive systems would destroy the seeds before they can spread
Found the answer myself. Protects against fungal attacks. Also birds don’t have the same receptors to capsaicin.
Birds eat them without feeling the heat. And they can spread seeds more effectively as you can imagine.
In the meantime, birds be like: “ultrahot? nom nom fruity”
HUMANS: Hey peppers, we like what you’re doing, a-
PEPPERS: HOW‽‽ IT’S SUPPOSED TO HURT Y-
HUMANS: -nd we wanted to produce as many of you as we can in a controlled environment.
PEPPERS: …
Blinks in disbeliefGo on…?Well, not all of you. We’ll massacre and purge your more moderate siblings and cousins, but we really like YOU, so we’re gonna clone you as much as we can.
You’re welcome.
How fortunate then that the same species resistant to their defense actually goes on to cultivate it
There’s a book called The Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan, which is about this. Looking from the plants eye view of things, they have manipulated us into growing them in a huge variety of environments. The book focuses on tulips, cannabis, apples, and potatoes, iirc. Fascinating book.
Two quick examples from the book:
Pot gets us high, now we grow it in closets, warehouses, yards, basements, attics, etc.
Apples don’t reproduce true from seed, so Johnny Appleseed brought readily available cider to the Americas. (You need a cutting of an apple tree to grow that type of apple.)
Oh, we’re not resistant, we’re just crazy enough to like the pain. Birds are resistant and don’t feel it at all, they can eat chilis like fruits.
Well, given that it’s supposed to be toxic rather than just painful, I’d say we’re resistant in that it takes a high dose to kill us.
i wouldn’t really count body mass as resistence, by that measure every single mammal bar perhaps the field mouse is resistant to basically every toxin.
You’d have to eat a lot of pure cap to kill you. Oral LD50 in mice is 47.2 mg/kg (source). For an 80 kg person, that’s 3780 mg of pure cap. 1000mg of pure cap dropped into a pot of chili would be inedibly hot even to the most hardcore spicy food fan.
It’s just relative. Most mammals don’t pay rent, taxes, or have to deal with the TSA. Once you do those things, spicy plant chemicals become a frivolous game.
I eat peppers just to feel something
If no eat, why so delicious?
Not brrrrr, more like kssss
meanwhile chinese cooking: i’ll have all 3 at once please
And it’s so. Damn. Delicious.
And Indian cooking! Curries are love. Especially with an immersion blender.
I will never understand the attraction. I sometimes find Ketchup too spicy.
Some people just like the pain. I don’t mind it spicy, but the flavor is more important to me.
Plant: “I will let you feel pain”. Humans: “Jokes on you, I’m into that shit”
Sometimes it also makes your ass go brrrrrr…
Tobacco plants: produce nicotine, a toxic alkaloid
Humans: imma smoke that shiiiiit
Humans: I will now cultivate you, export you, protect you and make sure you’re growing well so I can keep smoking you despite a 50% chance of dying from it.
Tobacco clearly has the last laugh in this story.
Tobacco clearly has the last laugh in this story.
Well, it’s not like we’re immortal if we abstain.
I am
With a name like The Fartographer, I’m inclined to believe you. 👍
Until proof to the contrary, so am I
Let’s go fight in an epic clash of the immortals! First one to die, loses!
I dunno, it could go on forever
Every second I’ve lived so far, I haven’t died, so if we simply take that pattern and extrapolate it for each future second…
Tobacco clearly has the last laugh in this story.
One or two particular strains out of the entire vast diversity of tobacco plants is having the last laugh.
We like our poisons in just the rights amounts.
If not delicious then why delicious shaped?
I dunno, seems to have worked out for the chillis - there’s more of them now than ever before
That’s because evolution is a results-driven process. All that matters is making viable offspring. Doesn’t matter how it gets done.
Why is the chili wearing a cape? Or is that… hair?
