This has always fascinated me. If spicy peppers evolved to keep animals away, why did humans end up craving the burning sensation?
by Key-Professional9108
Spicy
Why do we enjoy spicy food if it’s supposed to keep animals away?
10 Comments
TIL I must be a tree shrew.
Pain plant hurt good.
Because mouth burn makes brain do good things.
Birds don’t have capsaicin receptors so they can eat the fruits and spread the seeds in the wild without it affecting them.
**Brain Size:** They possess one of the highest brain-to-body mass ratios of any mammal.
**Spicy Food Tolerance:** They are one of the few mammals besides humans that willingly consume spicy foods
A coincidence? I think not. 😉
Just connect the dots from doing drugs or extreme sports to eating peppers and voila – you have the basis for humans enjoying peppers. It’s a rush, it’s social, it’s fun…
Tree shrew is my new spirit animal
Add at least rats to that list.
When I was a kid I had per rats and in the early days of the Internet, I found a website made by a guy about his own pet rats. He fed them all kinds of things including bird food.
He noticed out of one particular mix of bird food, all the rats except one kept avoiding these little red things. The one rat that didn’t avoid them would hoard them in a corner and ate them slowly, one at a time.
The guy was very curious about this so he decided to try one of the red things and it was very spicy!
Iirc correctly, some kind of shrew like animal is one of our oldest ancestors
My dog loves hot shit. I have to try to keep her ass away when I’m eating wings or she’ll drive by lick my fingers.
Petition to make the tree shrew the sub mascot