Hot peppers

[mmcirvin]

Via Pandagon: Why did hot peppers evolve to be brightly colored just like yummy fruits, but full of hot hot capsaicin? Probably because then they would be eaten by birds but not by mammals, for optimum spreading of seeds.

Comments

[aderack.livejournal.com]

That is impressive.

Now explain the durian!

[aderack.livejournal.com]

JOHN LENNON NO!!

[vardissakheli.livejournal.com]

Man defeats nature once again!

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Natural selection falls beneath the power of our masochism!

Irony

[indyresolve.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm not sure that "irony" is the precise and proper term, but isn't it funny that the hot peppers go to so much biochemical effort to have mammals not eat them only to have crazy humans come along and actually find they enjoy the sensation of their pain-producing substance and eat them in large quantities? Then again, it still works as a survival and dispersal mechanism if we end up cultivating the suckers around the world - even helping it along by clearing fields of all other plantlife and pests and adding fertilizer and irrigation.

The pepper genes think "Well, this didn't work out quite the way we expected, but there sure are a bunch of copies of us now, aren't there!"

What other plants have this property? Onions with their tear producing irritants maybe? I wonder if the evolution of any modern plants owes it's success or prevalence to a similar occurence with a different species of consumer - where a property initially served to prevent consumption but actually became desirable by some new adaptation or species. Worth a thesis maybe...

Re: Irony

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Most naturally-occurring recreational drugs, I should think.

[paracelsvs.livejournal.com]

DID they evolve to be brightly coloured, though, or did we cultivate them that way?

I don't trust any vegetables at all these days to be anywhere near natural.