4 ms·
That's not a crazy idea; there are plants which rely on the mobility birds for reproduction and spreading. Take peppers for example. The seed pods are attractiv
by korethr 8y ago
That's not a crazy idea; there are plants which rely on the mobility birds for reproduction and spreading. Take peppers for example. The seed pods are attractive to birds due to their bright colors. The capsaicin that deters many insects and most mammals (except for us batshit-crazy humans who enjoy the sensation of chemical warfare upon our tongues for some reason) can't be tasted by birds. The seeds themselves are protected from the bird's digestive tract by a membrane. Digestion softens said membrane enough to allow for easy germination, and the ready-to-germinate seeds are then spread around the area by the bird passing the seeds while in flight. And so the pepper plants spread.
- sliken 8y agoWhile humans like capsaicin, we can't stand nearly as much as birds can. Sure people eat ghost papers and make amusing videos of themselves in pain. Birds however aren't bothered by even 1% capsaicin by weight, far more than any normal human would voluntarily consume.
- korethr 8y agoWhich was part of my point, above. Birds are incapable of tasting capsaicin at all. So they'd have to be hit with a dose thereof unrealistically larger than anything they'd ever encounter in their natural environment before it begins to cause problems for them, and at that point, other compounds in the peppers probably would've started causing problems long ago. And so, they happily eat the tasty seed pods which the plant so helpfully color-coded as edible, and then poop the seeds around their environment, thereby helping those tasty plants become more numerous.