"John Edser"  wrote in
news:cgl0la$2thg$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org: 

> 
> 
> 
> William Morse  wrote:
> 
>> I have nothing but praise for anything associated with Mexican food
>> (we routinely add jalapenos to almost everything we cook), but I
>> thought some of the credit for developing the compounds that make hot
>> peppers hot has to go to natural selection by pepper plants for seed
>> dispersal by birds rather than mammals - birds don't find the
>> compounds irritating while mammals do.
> 
> JE:-
> If mammals find hot peppers irritating
> then surely this indicates, from an
> evolutionary nutritional perspective ,
> that mammals should not eat them?

No, it only indicates that mammals shouldn't rub their eyes - or other 
sensitive bodyily parts - after handling them :-). But seriously, monarch 
butterflies have adapted to eat the toxic milkweed, and the result has been 
beneficial to the monarch. As opposed to the compounds in milkweed, 
capsaicinoids are not particularly toxic, and they help keep food from 
spoiling. So from a nutritional perspective, mammals should learn to 
tolerate the irritant effect in order to benefit from the preservative 
effect - which is exactly what numerous peoples in lower latitudes have 
done, judging from Ethiopian, Thai and southern Indian cuisines along with 
Mexican.

Yours,

Bill Morse
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