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pain plant (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

How fortunate then that the same species resistant to their defense actually goes on to cultivate it

[–] [email protected] 39 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

I eat peppers just to feel something

[–] [email protected] 1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 22 hours ago

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.)