this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2024
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I thought that plants benefited from having their fruits eaten. As animals (like humans) defecate the seeds in different places, with enough manure to grow.
In the case of peppers, birds are immune to the effect of capsaicin. It strikes me as an evolutionary way of ensuring your seeds get spread as far as possible, by something that flies.
Could just be chance, though, I'm no expert.
All of evolution is just chance, but it sure is interesting to see what random chance can do if given enough time
Depends on the plant. Some plants like to grow close together, they don't need an animal to distribute their seeds. Other plants like to spread out, and they benefit if birds eat and distribute the seeds, but not mammals.
Evolution is purely a results driven process, all that matters is can the organism create offspring that are capable of creating offspring.
Or maybe they grow well close together because they evolved to do so because their seeds weren't being spread all that far away?
Sorry couldn't help but nitpick there. But you're right, things don't evolve in any particular direction, it's all about just being above the bar of "not dying before producing offspring."
No offense taken. It's a complex topic that can't realistically be understood from a few comments on the Internet. Feel free to add detail or correct.
Yeah it's hard to talk about evolution without injecting intent into it. Selection bias on natural selection as it were. Like a species had a good "evolution strategy," But no, it just evolved that way because it survived. We just don't talk about the ones that didn't survive. Well, unless they were cool like dinosaurs.