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I read something similar on Yuval Harari's Homo Sapiens, where he suggests wheat domesticated humans not the other way around. An excerpt can be found here [1]. Whole essay is great but I especially liked this part: > The word “domesticate” comes from the Latin domus, which means “house.” Who’s the one living in a house? Not the wheat. It’s the Sapiens. [1] https://www.ynharari.com/topic/ecology/
I thought fruits are nutritious because they are there to support the seed during its journey.
I read something similar on Yuval Harari's Homo Sapiens, where he suggests wheat domesticated humans not the other way around. An excerpt can be found here [1]. Whole essay is great but I especially liked this part: > The word “domesticate” comes from the Latin domus, which means “house.” Who’s the one living in a house? Not the wheat. It’s the Sapiens. [1] https://www.ynharari.com/topic/ecology/
Well that was a fun thought on a Sunday night. I work in AgTech. The thought that all of the engineering work I’ve put into the last 6 years is really a bunch of trickery that plants have inflicted on me and my coworkers really makes me smile. And that smile, like the author says, is just enough of a dopamine hit to get back up in the morning and keep at it!
Plants are naturally a bit protected from animal predators by a simple economics of scale: proteins require nitrogen, we can't get it from the air even though it's abundant there, we need to get it from nitrogen fixing bacteria but those are farmed by plants in their plant roots... But plants are mostly cellulose and don't have much nitrogen by proportion. But then they are also actively protected by being extremely effective poison manufacturers, using their rigid cell walls to put things at high pressures, growing around pests, cutting off resources to leaves and regrowing them after the predator moves on, and attracting predators of their predators like ladybugs.
But the networks of interdependence that we eventually form should perhaps not be put into a traditional exploiter/exploited juxtaposition. “How can I tweak myself so that you find me indispensable?” is a question both the humans and the plants are asking of themselves vis-a-vis each other.
“But fruits aren’t just for us. They’re a clever evolutionary strategy. By making themselves tasty and appealing, plants ensure that animals (including humans) will eat them and disperse their seeds.” I thought fruits are nutritious because they are there to support the seed during its journey.
The food for the seed is inside of the seed, which is often not the fruit. Most fruits are different anatomically, but you will find that an apple has little seeds, you open it and you will find endosperm in it, mostly food for the little embryo in the seed.
For stuff like wheat we really do eat the endosperm, but for stuff like apples and watermelons and peaches, we spit out the seeds. (For peaches we often don't even see the seed, which is hidden inside of a woody endocarp, you can crack it open and find the actual seed inside.
So if you thought that the peach meat was the food for the seed you were doubly wrong, you need to go several layers deep in order to find the seed food.
A core idea of Richard Dawkins's second book “The extended phenotype” is that genes can also select for anything affecting the environment of the organism - i.e. genes for characteristics/behaviours that are external to the organism itself. So there could be a gene selecting for getting watered by humans (e.g. via wilting or colour). This can also create a connection between genes and memes e.g. a new flower characte…
Why should it be hard to grok? Selection just happens, it doesn't "care" if it's natural or based on human preferences. Even human-free selection doesn't guarantee a long run since genes can paint themselves into a corner (see natural extinctions). Iow, it's what it is.
I read something similar on Yuval Harari's Homo Sapiens, where he suggests wheat domesticated humans not the other way around. An excerpt can be found here [1]. Whole essay is great but I especially liked this part: > The word “domesticate” comes from the Latin domus, which means “house.” Who’s the one living in a house? Not the wheat. It’s the Sapiens. [1] https://www.ynharari.com/topic/ecology/
My theory is that multicellular life itself was developed because viruses wanted a more effective way to travel. Humans are the pinnacle of virus transportation technology, and they've developed very successful behavioral override countermeasures against our pesky use of vaccines.
I read something similar on Yuval Harari's Homo Sapiens, where he suggests wheat domesticated humans not the other way around. An excerpt can be found here [1]. Whole essay is great but I especially liked this part: > The word “domesticate” comes from the Latin domus, which means “house.” Who’s the one living in a house? Not the wheat. It’s the Sapiens. [1] https://www.ynharari.com/topic/ecology/
I suppose that makes us as domesticated as e.g. lions or chimpanzees, which have been known to e.g. share food with humans ("work for them") in the wild but it's not their reason for existence.
“But fruits aren’t just for us. They’re a clever evolutionary strategy. By making themselves tasty and appealing, plants ensure that animals (including humans) will eat them and disperse their seeds.” I thought fruits are nutritious because they are there to support the seed during its journey.
Nope, the fruit is for the humans or whatever pollinators, as a reward, in a similar way that pollen is a reward for bees. The food for the seed is inside of the seed, which is often not the fruit. Most fruits are different anatomically, but you will find that an apple has little seeds, you open it and you will find endosperm in it, mostly food for the little embryo in the seed. For stuff like wheat we really do eat…