The chemical in chili peppers is used to ward off elephants, insects, squirrels and mussels, among other animals. Only humans eat them on purpose. Why?
Humans like to eat a lot of strange things—decomposed shark, Namibian warthog rectum, British food—yet among the strangest is our taste for chili peppers: a fruit that, ecologically speaking, specifically evolved to repel us.
Although chilies meet the culinary definition of a spice or vegetable, from a botanical point of view, they are fruits—berries, to be specific. But whereas other berries have thorns to protect against seed-destroying predators, chilies have a defense mechanism in the form of the chemical compound capsaicin, the principal function of which is to cause pain for predators. The scientific term for this is “directed deterrence.
Birds, which are natural seed dispersers and excrete seeds whole and intact, are immune to capsaicin, a biological reward for helping chilies to spread and propagate. Humans, by contrast, are an ecological threat to chilies, because our mammalian teeth tend to crush and destroy seeds. We can sense capsaicin at a minuscule one part per million .
It’s not our sense of taste that’s doing the work here but our trigeminal or chemical sense, which registers sensations of irritation, temperature and touch to alert the body of potential harm. In fact, the same pain sensor that alerts us to capsaicin, TRPV1, also responds to physical heat, specifically temperatures above 109°F.
Bite into a habanero pepper or order your food “Thai hot,” and your body essentially thinks it’s being attacked by a chemical weapon. Beyond the burning pain, which is supposed to compel you to reject or eject spicy food, you’ll probably begin to sweat as your body attempts to flush your system; your nose will run to protect your nasal passages; your eyes will water to protect your corneas; you’ll produce excess saliva to purge your mouth; and you might cough or sneeze to protect your airways.
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