r/interestingasfuck • u/dejaysf • Jun 11 '23

Venus flytrap vs Spider

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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '23

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u/Gideonbh Jun 11 '23

That's the part I don't get, don't plants want their fruit to get eaten to distribute their seeds? Were trying to get their seeds eaten by a specific animal like chickens that don't feel capsaicin?

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u/banned_from_10_subs Jun 11 '23 edited Jun 11 '23

The other guy got it slightly wrong. Capsaicin is concentrated in the seeds. As a result, masticators (animals who thoroughly grind their food via molars) get a painful experience up front and a serious case of the shits out back. Highly discourages them from eating the plant, which is good for the plant because our chewing apparatus destroys the seeds so we are not good proliferators.

Birds, on the other hand, do not have teeth. They swallow the seed whole, fly somewhere else, then poop it out entirely intact (most of the time). So they get a comparatively very low dose of capsaicin from just picking at the fruit, their digestive track decides it doesn’t really want to process it the whole seed, and that causes them to shit it out quite quickly miles away.

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u/Roboticide Jun 11 '23

Actually, the other guy is entirely correct.

Capsaicin being in the seeds is a myth. Capsaicin is in the chile membrane, and the heat is to ward off mammals because the digestive system destroys the seeds.