We failed evolutionarily to adapt an immunity to capsaicin. But peppers are super good for us, they are packed with vitamins. So instead we evolved a dopamine response to it that makes them more tolerable and slightly pleasing. This is why when eating something spicy, the heat gets worse after you stop eating, because you stop getting the little dopamine hits that dull the pain. It’s also why people love spicy food, you actually get a little high, similar to a runners high.
Not a chance. Peppers and the vast majority of humans still in existence did not interact for most of human evolution. Peppers are a new world plant and the humans who had the most experience and could have evolved along side them lost 90% of their genetic diversity when the Colombian exchange brought them a massive multi-disease plague. The return where peppers came to the rest of the world was in the 16th century. Not really enough time for evolution to guide people towards eating the plant. It’s a very short time on a genetic scale.
That theory may not hold for pepper alone, but capsaicin is found in spicy foods in general and may have health benefits, such as anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties so consuming spicy foods may have provided an advantage in promoting overall health
Poison dart frogs are not poisonous in captivity because they do not have access to the specific insects that they would eat in the wild which contain the toxins that make them poisonous.
Also
It is a common misconception that dart frogs lose their poison in captivity. In reality, they only lose their toxicity when they are exposed to certain chemicals found in captivity, such as cleaners and pesticides
Later
They acquire these toxins as they eat certain insects in their environment that contain them. So if a poison dart frog is ever relocated to an area where these insects don’t exist, it will lose its toxicity over time.
Finally… it’s fine if you’re not worries about getting poisoned
Some people handle their poison dart frogs with gloves, but this isn’t necessary unless you have an open wound on your hand or you’re particularly worried about getting poisoned.
Yeah I’m going to be honest. When I went to link an article, I just did a Google search and looked for the first article that wasn’t completely trashed with ads. Just briefly skimmed the article, not enough to tear it apart obviously.
The Internet is so fucking trash now. Video game solutions and mobile issue resolutions are two things I can personally confirm are no longer found in the first page of Google results.
It’s almost certainly machine generated text. And I’m terrified of a future where I need to first sort out 10 poorly written AI articles until I find something that’s actually written by a human and coherent.
Similar is happening to Western Yews for cancer meds, I think. Whether it survives depends on how easy it is to tame if only intensive agriculture will supply the demand. And then there’s the question of whether it’s still the same thing – looking at you, broiler chicken.
You aren’t kidding. I got four tiny spearmint plants this spring. They are growing kind of hydroponically because I have a pond.
In less than three months, those plants have exploded into huge nice-smelling bushes that are more than two feet in each dimension. They are planted in a line so there’s this walk of mint that’s almost 12 feet long.
But that’s not enough. The plants send out branches along the ground like freaking tentacles. They will spill out of a planter box, for instance.
The fast growth is why I chose this plant, but damn!
You’re going to battling mint for decades to come.
My mom made that same mistake more than 20 years ago. The original plants are long gone but I am still dealing with mint in my garden and just everywhere. It takes over the lawn.
Hemp / marijuana is arguably the most successful plant at this. It enjoys a high degree of biodiversity where as most plants we cultivate suffer from monoculture problems. Why is hemp / marijuana so successful? Probably because of its multiple uses. It makes strong fibers, you can make milk from it, you can make all sorts of consumer products like lip balm and hair conditioner, and you can get fucking ripped bro
See also Brassica Oleracea aka wild cabbage which we’ve cultivated into cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussel sprouts, collard greens, savoy cabbage, kohlrabi, gai lan… etc
Where did you find that about hemp? I can only find info about recreational marijuana and can’t find anything about agricultural or industrial hemp. And the recreational marijuana numbers I could find are all just like “top 30 strains to try today”
Leafly lists 6,822 cannabis strains. Though ‘strains’ or more aptly cultivars are often not reflective of the actual underlying chemical nature of the plant [source]. They are ultimately not very meaningful in general.
Based on this database, Europe has 104 varieties of hemp registered.
Though potatoes and cannabis aren’t really a fair comparison for many reasons. There are a lot of different species of potatoes with major chromosomal differences but cannabis only has 3 species.
Yeah its a major problem in particular with the Idaho Gold being far and a way the most commonly grown potato to meet McDonald’s demand for long fries that stick up out of the little fry nest
I actually thought about that and changed “enjoyed” to “usable”
Dodos were tasty and Vaquitas are cute but chickens, wheat, potatoes, rice etc. are a borderline infinite food glitch for humans compared to most food sources so they naturally get cultivated in huge numbers
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