Imagine you are a chili. A plant folks harvest for spice.
Imagine at a certain point in your life cycle you reflect about the reason for your existence.
And it comes to you in a flash. "Promote the species". Encourage reproduction. Prepare for succession. Just like all other life forms.
But how?
Pesky little animals have taken to feasting on the chili seeds. They are tasty and nutritious.
But those ingested seeds get all chewed up, and never amount to anything but waste. A lost reproduction opportunity.
And then another flash.
Why not bump up the production of the spice (capesin). Those little seed eating critters won't care for the hot spices. Capsaisin does indeed trick the brain into thinking it has encountered something hot - as in temperature, and that is not pleasant.
And so it came to pass.
Some peppers/chilis boosted their capsaisin quotient to the point little animals learned to stay away.
The seeds were not eaten nor chewed and destroyed by little animals with sharp teeth.
The species was not reproducing as expected. Numbers were down for those chilis.
All was not lost though.
Rather, birds took up the slack
They did not chew the seeds. They never tasted the spice, hidden within the seed.
Instead they swalled them whole, complete with their little sac of nutrients.
The seeds never got digested, so when the critter pooped, out came the seed and fertilizer, et voila, better reproductive efficiency and success.
What a clever strategy for advancing your life goals.
[ On re-reading some time later, I now think the logical path of this piece is very flawed. I wonder about "causation" matters. Birds had been around before animals got scared off chilis. So what's the diff...]
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