Submitted 6 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/af100910-9246-4766-810b-ce80bc6e595e.jpeg
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. Every time I see this meme or versions of it I die a thousand times. Mushrooms are the penises of fungus who jizz peacefully in the wind. They WANT to be eaten. Spores travel far.
Psilocybin, if anything, is probably adapted to be attractive to other animals.
Moreover, eating the mushroom isn’t even hurting the original organism. It’s pretty vestigial once the spores have found a way to get out.
Then why are there also extremely poisonous mushrooms?
I dunno I didn’t make em
Just like peppers, a sort of odd evolution when humans come into play.
Peppers devolved capsaicin to keep mammalian herbivores from eating them and grinding the seeds up. Birds have no capsaicin receptors, happily poop whole seeds everywhere.
Along come humans. “Let’s grown and refine that shit!”
I’ve been using one of the hottest sauces I’ve had in a long time. It’s called Satan Revenge made with ghost peppers. I’m in so much pain when and after eating it. It’s good stuff.
jokes on you I'm into that shit
I’m into
thatshit
Human: I outsmarted every plant with this MO; no toxic plant can defeat me.
Manchineel Tree: Challenge accepted.
“Challenge accepted”
-Unknown person
When ingested, the fruit is reportedly “pleasantly sweet” at first, with a subsequent “strange peppery feeling … gradually progress[ing] to a burning, tearing sensation and tightness of the throat.” Symptoms continue to worsen until the patient can “barely swallow solid food because of the excruciating pain and the feeling of a huge obstructing pharyngeal lump.”
Given the medical/psychological benefits being explored, it’s could even be “Your resistance only makes me stronger”.
Slugs: what effects?
Peppers: first-time
Peppers want to be eaten by birds. Birds love that shit, and the pepper seeds love the bird shit they’ll be in after passing through the digestive tract.
The Botany of Desire is a fantastic book and also documentary that discusses, in some part, plants being desirable to humans as a selective force. Plant species that humans value have a higher likelihood of surviving because we use them for agriculture, ensuring their ongoing existence. Everything from tea to teonanácatl!
Maybe they want to be eaten…
“Science“
Or those fungi are farming us so we keep spreading and growing them for psychoactive abilities
Millipedes ·('m toxic, nobody will hurt me", Lemurs
indeed, 'tis poison for body and mind…
MichaelBuss@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Or they produce it exactly because animals are entertained by it to spread its spores. Or it’s random. Or who the hell knows. 🤷♂️
Donkter@lemmy.world 6 months ago
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/…/180227115548.htm
Scientists. Scientists are who knows.
rah@feddit.uk 6 months ago
These conflict.
Daxtron2@startrek.website 6 months ago
I could see that being really bad for something that size.
frezik@midwest.social 6 months ago
These things usually aren’t random. It takes energy for the organism to make it, so there’s usually some evolutionary advantage.
drasglaf@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Reminded me of this.
danc4498@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Dropped my phone can you help me find it?