this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 12 hours ago (3 children)

Butt also go Brrr after eating to much spicy

[–] [email protected] 5 points 12 hours ago

You get to enjoy spicy food twice.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago

Nope, pretty much just the mouth, over here, no butt or tummy brrr-ing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 6 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

HUMANS: Hey peppers, we like what you're doing, a-

PEPPERS: HOW‽‽ IT'S SUPPOSED TO HURT Y-

HUMANS: -nd we wanted to produce as many of you as we can in a controlled environment.

PEPPERS: ... Blinks in disbelief Go on...?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 12 hours ago

Well, not all of you. We'll massacre and purge your more moderate siblings and cousins, but we really like YOU, so we're gonna clone you as much as we can.

You're welcome.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 12 hours ago

Why is the chili wearing a cape? Or is that... hair?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

I will never understand the attraction. I sometimes find Ketchup too spicy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago

Some people just like the pain. I don’t mind it spicy, but the flavor is more important to me.

[–] [email protected] 61 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago (2 children)

meanwhile chinese cooking: i'll have all 3 at once please

[–] [email protected] 3 points 12 hours ago

And Indian cooking! Curries are love. Especially with an immersion blender.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

And it's so. Damn. Delicious.

[–] [email protected] 94 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I dunno, seems to have worked out for the chillis - there’s more of them now than ever before

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 days ago

That's because evolution is a results-driven process. All that matters is making viable offspring. Doesn't matter how it gets done.

[–] nihilist_hippie 13 points 1 day ago

It's funny if you think about it: Plant makes chemical (capsaicin) to help it thrive > humans love the painful spice, start growing and propagating peppers > Peppers spread grow like crazy. Evolution working exactly as it should

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

Plant: "I will let you feel pain". Humans: "Jokes on you, I'm into that shit"

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Does anyone have an explanation for why they would evolve to prevent being eaten by mammals? I would think having mammals help spread their seeds would be beneficial?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 22 hours ago

Adding to the other responses, birds have simple digestion systems and the seed makes it into the poop, which birds do in flight so the seed will spread. Mammals digestive systems would destroy the seeds before they can spread

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago

Birds eat them without feeling the heat. And they can spread seeds more effectively as you can imagine.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago

Found the answer myself. Protects against fungal attacks. Also birds don't have the same receptors to capsaicin.

[–] hikuro93 33 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (23 children)

Life wouldn't be the same without Tabasco. How could I ever eat my cotton candy or cereals without copious amounts of it?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 days ago

I’m actually surprised that I’ve never found cotton candy coated with tajin, now that you mention it.

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

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

[–] [email protected] 42 points 2 days ago (4 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 2 days 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] 13 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I eat peppers just to feel something

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 days 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.)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

If not delicious then why delicious shaped?

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Tobacco plants: produce nicotine, a toxic alkaloid

Humans: imma smoke that shiiiiit

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 days ago (8 children)

Humans: I will now cultivate you, export you, protect you and make sure you're growing well so I can keep smoking you despite a 50% chance of dying from it.

Tobacco clearly has the last laugh in this story.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago

Tobacco clearly has the last laugh in this story.

One or two particular strains out of the entire vast diversity of tobacco plants is having the last laugh.

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[–] Showroom7561 8 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Is it ironic that those two sauces aren't really that hot? 😂

Delicious, yes! But very low on the Scoville scale for hot sauce.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago

Sriracha is now completely random from bottle to bottle. It goes from Tabasco to Carolina Reaper with no visual indicator. Turns out fucking over your loyal farmers and having to constantly scrounge has negative consequences…

[–] Rusty 6 points 2 days ago (9 children)

Is Tabasco delicious? I find the Sriracha from couple of years ago delicious (the current one is much worse), but Tabasco always tasted like a white vinegar mixed with capsaicin.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

the only hot sauce i've yet to actually find appealing is sambal olek, somehow the heat in that just makes me salivate and kinda feels more like sourness, as opposed to everything else where it's just pain and like.. no real flavour? with sambal olek i can actually taste the flavour in it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

Yeah, Tabasco is the weakest link when it comes to hotsauce. Sriracha definitely is a step up, but even that has to move aside for the Buldak Sauce.

Buldak has become my go-to hotsauce. It's so damned good.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Valentina is my favorite. Both the black and yellow labels are good, but I like drenching shit with the yellow (milder one).

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago

It's sort of what happens though. A plant gets a defense mechanism, it becomes more abundant, something will target that abundant food source.

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