Why don't plants and animals evolve themselves to be particularly unpalatable, so that they don't avoid being eaten up?
Let's talk about a cold knowledge first, the biggest opponent of plants is actually insects, and there are more species of insects that eat plants than plants themselves, so the main imaginary enemy of plant evolution is also insects.
There are three main routes in which plants evolve themselves to be unpalatable. The first is the chemical route, the use of chemical weapons, such as the evolution of pyrethroids in the Asteraceae family. The second is the physical route, which uses spikes, hard shells and other defensive means, such as wheat, the so-called "needle tip to wheat mang", and the hard thorns are particularly piercing. The third is to walk the chemical and physical routes together, such as the stinging nettle, a light touch can make people grow painful and itchy urticaria, and no matter how much the animal loves to eat grass, it has to walk around.
There may be more than 100,000 compounds that plants have evolved to make themselves "unpalatable". Some of them are even highly toxic, such as ricin in castor beans, nicotine in tobacco, hen beads in bright red acacia seeds, cardiac glycosides in oleanders, hyoscyamine in mandala flowers, xyloatrolin in rhododendrons, and so on. These plants can be considered "unpalatable enough".
Chili peppers are also a type of plant. The peppers were well planned, and the fruit was given to the birds, who spread the seeds far away. In this way, the peppers can go to the north and south of the world, and occupy their own territory. Mammals are not suitable for eating chili peppers, and their chewing and digestion processes can destroy chili seeds, making them less germinated.
As a result, the pepper becomes spicy. Spiciness is actually a sense of pain. Capsaicin is actually a "chemical weapon" created by chili peppers against mammalian pain receptors.
In addition to chili peppers, almonds contain amygdalin, pineapples contain calcium oxalate needlecrystals that prick the mouth, and persimmons contain tannins that can cause indigestion and stomach stones. There is also theobromine in chocolate, caffeine in coffee and tea, which are deadly toxins for animals such as cats and dogs.
After talking about plants, let's talk about animals.
Compared to plants, the most important characteristic of animals is that they can move. In other words, there are many ways for animals to survive natural selection: they are particularly good at hiding, fleeing very quickly, and being very numerous, or they are strong and gathered in groups to fight back against their opponents......
You know, animals have to "evolve themselves to be hard to eat", and there is also a cost. Some animals have other ways to survive, and they don't get attached to making themselves so unpalatable.
But there are still animals that have evolved to be hard to eat. Turtles and hedgehogs take the physical route. As for the highly poisonous pufferfish, blue-ringed octopus, and poison dart frog, they take the chemical route. Some animals that take the chemical route will deliberately make themselves red, yellow, black, white and other warning colors, just to tell the world: "I'm really not delicious, don't come to eat me!"
In summary, if plants and animals have not "evolved to be hard to eat", there are several main possibilities:
1. They have tried their best to evolve to be very difficult to eat, but they still want to be eaten.
2. They did evolve to be difficult to eat and generally do not appear on the dinner table.
3. They don't feel the need to make themselves unpalatable.
4. They evolved to be quite unpalatable, but after being domesticated by humans, they became "delicious".
In the evolutionary process, both the hunter and the prey had to run desperately to not be eliminated. Whether it is unpalatable or delicious, every animal or plant that has survived to this day is both lucky and powerful.
There is also the case that being delicious enough is also an "evolutionary advantage". There are now more than 30 billion chickens in the world, and this is the power of "artificial selection", which is no weaker than "natural selection".
Author: You Zhiyou. From Reader Magazine, Issue 9, 2024. Those shining days, there are "Readers" to witness with you.