this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2024
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Mint, peppers, and caffeine, the holy trinity of "plant defenses that did not work on humans."
Counterpoint; those plants are now cultivated in huge numbers, thus ensuring the successful and continued propogation of their genetic legacies.
From an evolutionary perspective, those defences worked too well.
Literally no quality will guarantee a species survival in the modern world more than being delicious to humans.
But I bet we have vastly reduced their generic diversity so if humans disappear they will have more issues to survive without us.
Mint would take over continents if humans left. Ask any gardener.
On the other hand, being useful to humans have made them some of the most widespread and successful plant species on the planet.
Being useful to humans is the single most important factor in evolutionary success rates.
Sure, there's 8 billion of us, but we collectively KILL ~~30 billion~~ 70. 70 goddamn billion chickens every year, and there's always more of those fuckers. We kill more than double the number of chickens every year than are ever currently even alive. That's how many chickens there are.
Will humanity ever get rid of chickens???
Hawaii hasn't been able to get them off of one island so... No
Wait, are you telling me that Hawaii has wild chickens? Are we gonna have a Chicken War, like Australia did with Emus?
If you go to Honolulu you'll see them wandering on the streets. They're all over the place. I think they're seen as a nuisance? I dunno I thought they were charming.
Didn't work out so well for the rhinos to be fair.
Rhinos aren't super useful.
Being super useful has a few requirements. Elephants, for instance, are incredibly useful. They're large, they carry burdens well, they can be trained and will behave well if they're treated well, they're social and understand commands.
But they have one baby every 22 months and it takes years before they're fertile. So they're not super useful. Rhinos, similarly, do not reproduce fast enough to check off the super box.
If the rhinos are not useful why do we need to hunt them so much they're going extinct?
The animal also needs to be tamable if it wants to thrive.
go vegan :)
I'm on a strict enough diet already for medical reasons, trying to get that to work without animal products would be a nightmare I don't think I can deal with.
I don't know your condition, so I can't tell you what you can or can't do. Reducing is a good enough step towards lessening animal cruelty in the world, though, so consider that maybe.
Avoiding animal-derived ingredients in medicine or finding medicine that is not animal-tested is a pain and another thing entirely, however. I get it.
Just know your priorities, I guess. If you don't care, that's fine too.
I don't think so. Humans eating chicken is a temporary thing either way, if we get flesh from cell cultures or go extinct, what you think happens with the overbred cows and chicken? Goal of evolution is survival, not spread.
To be clear, I don't think that's going to happen. Like I appreciate what the near meat movement is doing, I'll grant you the conditions these animals live in isn't good and there's a debate to be had about the ethicality of raising livestock at all, let alone the way we currently do it.
We can't even move away from corn syrup which is causing the largest health crisis in history because a small section of the Midwest can't grow much else but corn. You think we're going to let the entire meat industry crumble for some vat grown goo I've got a bridge to sell you.
That said, let's say that yes, meat loses popularity for whatever reason and the industry crumbles. 90 billion cattle and 70 billion chickens become useless what happens to them?
In short, saving a few specimens on small farms, extinction. These animals will die, the cattle will die in childbirth or starve. The chickens simply won't be able to sustain themselves, and will succumb to disease and the fucking awful effects of how horribly inbred these animals are.
When their usefulness to humans ends, their one survival advantage goes with it. And so, you've supported my point. Usefulness to humans is the best survival advantage a species can have. They just only get that advantage while they're useful.
If you can grow corn, you can grow soybeans on the same land. My parents live in Indiana. Corn, soybeans, and pigs. For hundreds of miles of highway, that's all you'll see. Maybe some woods, but there aren't any deep forests left.
It's not the growing conditions that prevent the switch, it's the subsidies and stubbornness to switch crops, because they'll have to buy another part for their combine harvester that isn't even close to paid off
I hear you, I really do. You're not picking up what I'm saying.
It's not about whether or not the switch is possible, the switch isn't fucking happening. If we can't get away from the awful habit that's literally killing us, we're not getting away from the awful habit that's keeping us alive. It doesn't matter if alternatives become available, because they are now and we aren't switching.
Livestock is bred to be slaughtered. No life to be had there since they die in the end regardless and do not have good lives in the slightest (regardless of the conditions they live in), so in terms of animal welfare, it's the best possible outcome for them to not be raised at all. Take in as many of these animals in animal sanctuaries and let them live there as far as possible. But arguing that pigs, chickens etc. must be bred in order to them not getting extinct is a cruel thought. My two cents.
Edit: Plus, the livestock we know today only exists because of breeding. These are not naturally-occurring animals except for maybe chickens. Same thing that happens with dog breeds, cat breeds etc.
Yeah evolutionary advantages don't really factor welfare in to the equation. Like I said, the welfare of these creatures isn't good. That doesn't matter for what we're talking about.
Did the animal successfully reproduce? If yes, then it has succeeded evolutionarily. The best way to ensure an animal reproduces is if humans want it to reproduce. An animal will reproduce more often more successfully when humans intervene.
Grass: is useless
Humans: "Growing a nutritionally useless plant demonstrates that Im so wealthy I can afford to waste arable land"
Grass: is now one of the dominant species on earth
We made grains from grass. If you let most grasses get tall enough to seed, they look like green wheat.
Also I'm not certain, but wheat and corn may give grass a run for their money in acreage cover, if you count the wheat and corn as a single species, but count each specific grass separately.
Hey! grass made us quit the trees and stand up, let's pay it back!
Lol pls.
That's the r-rated version.
The true trinity is nicotine, cocaine and opiates.
And also,
— Terence McKenna
Yang?
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/yang
It distorts the connotation, but it wouldn't be too far off to use, say, "macho" instead. It just feels weird to apply such words to plants.
Particularly peppers lol.
Ah, mild pain! The perfect addition to my diet.
To be fair, they also have vitamins and sugar.
Cilantro: best I can do is 20%.
Hallucinogens, nicotine, caffeine, all evolved for plant defense and all of them are used recreationally.
Also, don´t forget THC
THC is a heat shock defence. The fact it has such an effect on us is purely coincidental.
Yes, that is one of the possible explanations for trichomes. However, In literature there are several potential reasons for cannabis producing THC listed, some of them are:
-deterring certain insect and other herbivores -Anti-microbial effects -UV light protection
Claiming that heat shock defense is the only reason seems like a simplification, considering that scientists are still researching the matter.
It used to also be insect deterrent but since we've bred cannabis to have so much lovely THC that the globules are too large and dry to work. But that's ok because cannabis has domesticated humans enough that we've invented climate controlled hothouses to grow them in.
And Willow, tobacco... You could also count things like Digitalis, which are rather toxic but usefull medications.
HFY! or are Space Orcs.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/magic-mushrooms-hallucinogenic-chemical-properties-insects-eat-defensive-measure-a8233581.html