[tofof]

Liquid capsaicin treatments for bird seed are an effective squirrel repellent.

They also illustrate the evolution of this protein: birds have no receptors for capsaicin, while mammals do. Birds eat seeds mostly intactly. Their digestive systems are capable of breaking them down - but it's stochastic and some seeds make it through the bird undigested, being redistributed elsewhere. Obviously, having an agent sow your seeds widely is a fitness advantage, and so seedy plants are ultimately served well even if 90+% of their caloric investment into seeds goes into the birds.

Mammals, on the other hand, have teeth - particularly molars. Mammals that eat seeds grind them apart orally before even swallowing. As a result, any seeds ingested by mammals are very likely to be completely destroyed. Plants - peppers, anyway - found a chemical irritant that repels the mammals without even being sensed by birds.

I've used one such treatment (with an amusing logo illustrataion - https://i.imgur.com/JAl8vyW.png) to good effect to discourage squirrels at my feeder, so that they stick to my dedicated squirrel bungee with a log of compressed corn instead.

[nkrisc]

Interestingly, that very irritant is now the key to the widespread success of some pepper species by the way of a specific species of mammals.

[tofof]

Oh? Which pepper species and carrier mammal are involved here?

Edit: DERP duh you mean humans. :D Literally made the comparison without recognizing it, too. /Edit

Not challenging you, just curious and not immediately finding the answer myself with a quick search.

The capsaicin receptor is TRPV1, which is a critical protein for thermoregulation and detection of being burned. In other words, it's not just a quick and easy evolutionary path to have a mutation break the receptor for capsaicin and now be immune to the taste. Obviously the animals could evolve behavior or even simply learn as juveniles to tolerate or even enjoy the taste (as many humans do).

There are some other interesting things that happen with avian carriers, like reductions in fungal infection and attractiveness to other predators (ants). https://www.washington.edu/news/2013/06/21/airborne-gut-acti...

[jumhyn]

I believe it’s a cheeky reference to humans intentionally cultivating hot peppers specifically because of their capsaicin-producing quality. :)

[bobmcnamara]

I do declare I thought it was a cheeky reference to those tomato plants that grown down by old railroad tracks.

You see a long time ago, someone at a tomato. Could've been a slice in a cold sandwich. Could've been a fresh one, maybe with A little cheese and pepper. But chili just won't do. Neither would spaghetti.

Then, before we had such regulations as we do today, they deposited that tomato seed, post digestion, in the train lavatory toilet. Being back then as it was, the tomato seed and associated fertilizer was dropped from the train car to the track ballast below where it germinated.

It's the same process where researchers deposit tomatoes on new volcanic islands.

You know what they say: when you gotta go, you gotta go.

[grimgrin]

Recently Howtown talked about some of the theories:

https://youtu.be/dutpBSKj8JY?t=196

It looks at a couple non-competing (iirc) theories

[14]

I mentioned in another comment about growing a Carolina Reaper last summer and trying it with my dad and 13 year old son. My dad and I instantly knew how bad the next half hour or so of our life was about to be. My son also found it hot but no more then 5 minutes later comes out of his room (after we all chewed a pepper and spat it out he went to his room with a slurpee) he casually walks out and says dad is it okay for me to have a shower. He didn't have his slurpee and really did not seemed bothered by the experience at all. Me on the other hand was in insanity pain. Could not stop running water over my tongue or suck on ice and suffered for at least a half hour. I just couldn't believe he took it so well. My only thought was he must not be so sensitive or lacks something like the receptors that detect it.

After writing all that I did a search about people with low TRPV1 receptors and found an interesting study done on a couple people lacking functional TRPV1 channels. They were insensitive to the application of capsaicin to the mouth and skin. Furthermore they had an elevated heat pain threshold as well as an elevated cold pain threshold. Why I found this interesting is because my same son who barely reacted to this insanely hot pepper I can never get to wear a jacket to school. He does not mind the cold at all. He will if we were up a mountain or something but he always complains the car is too hot when I am cold. Anyways not sure he lacks function TRPV1 receptors but still interesting to think about. Article linked below.

https://www.jci.org/articles/view/153558

[throwup238]

> Could not stop running water over my tongue or suck on ice and suffered for at least a half hour.

Capsaicin is a nonpolar molecule that is fat soluble and hydrophobic, so running water over your tongue either has no impact on the problem or makes it worse.

You want to consume anything with fat like milk or sour cream or even pure olive oil which will dissolve the capsaicin and carry it down your digestive tract. For something as strong as a reaper challenge, you’ll want to gargle olive oil because the mechanical action of the bubbles helps break up anything coated on your tongue like soap does when washing your hands. Alcohol based mouth wash also works as does ethanol (Everclear) in general. Edible surfactants and emulsifiers work best but unless you like drinking blended raw eggs or mustard, that might not work for you.

To help when it comes out the other end: drink lots of dairy because the casein helps and eat a bunch of starch (rice, potatoes, bread, etc) and bananas, and stay well hydrated.

[14]

Definitely. And I did do thinks like swish milk and wiped my tongue with a paper towel and a cracker and a couple other things. But ultimately the running water and ice was a huge relief but only while I was actively doing it. It didn't lessen the pain if I stopped. Where I am the water is very cold this time of year so it helped. As for the other end I really didn't want the pain in my throat or other end so I chose to only chew a big chunk briefly and spit it out. At the end of the day I had to know what it felt like. It is pure pain lol. Will not be doing it again.

[eru]

You might want to drink just the egg yolk?

[AngryData]

If he consistently avoids dressing warm the human body is pretty adaptable to cold conditions so I wouldn't look to deep at that. Both a persons circulatory pattern and metabolism change when exposed to the cold, and people who expose themselves to cold consistently enough respond in far better ways. Their metabolism will shoot up near immediately when someone not adapted will only gain that after they are already cold and shivering. And blood flow is maintained to the extremities but just avoiding more of the skin's surface, where as the unadapted will have just a general decrease in bloodflow to that entire extremity.

If you go extreme enough humans can even walk barefoot through the snow without a problem all day without a real problem, where as someone who wears socks and shoes when it is freezing cold will get serious frostbite on their feet in like 30 minutes or less if they tried it without adapting themselves over time.

For a direct application of this, ice climbers will soak their hands in ice water for 45 minutes every day in the weeks leading up to a climb so that their hands don't freeze and maintain blood flow when on an ice climb, because obviously you can't just stop and warm up your hands by a fire when you are halfway up a frozen waterfall and having stiff or frostbitten fingers makes climbing more difficult/dangerous.

[RobotToaster]

Reminds me of the theory that wheat domesticated humans.

[fsckboy]

driving down the road I was inspired to taste some fresh wheat grains in a field: tasted a lot like flour. what is that "thing"? an attractive tasty flour nodule? the energy yolk to the seed's egg?

[ASalazarMX]

I picture your ancestors impulsively tasting mushrooms, and figuring out which ones were not poisonous enough to kill them. Thank you for your lineage!

In Mexico, our ancestors cultivated corn despite not knowing fungicides to prevent mycotoxin contamination. Somehow they discovered nixtamalization, which is boiling corn in an alkaline solution that destroys mycotoxins and improves nutritional value. Guess they really loved corn.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization

[sliken]

If you have a few 100 people in an area literally spending their waking hours worrying about having enough food. Areas without enough of the right nutrients are pretty common. People are pretty good at figuring out what makes them feel better/healthier.

Some places are iron poor, some even resort to eating dirt, especially when pregnant when you need more iron. Some areas are salt poor and animals will go to extreme measures to get to salt. Some areas have poor bioavailability and require crushing, special cooking, soaking, or a narrow range of acidity to be available, which of course becomes the norm for cooking in those areas. Some even become religious standards, things like fish on fridays or avoiding pork (before trichinosis was controlled).

[lawlessone]

>Somehow they discovered nixtamalization, which is boiling corn in an alkaline solution that destroys mycotoxins and improves nutritional value.

that one always amazes me. How did they figure it out? it's not exactly intuitive, especially when they wouldn't have known about the chemistry underneath.

It would probably take weeks or months to notice if doing A instead of B was making people sick or not

[kjellsbells]

It might not be that the process was discovered so much as the method of cooking pot production happened to suit the food being cooked.

In particular, lots of civilizations learned to strengthen the basic clay pot by the addition of lime-y things, eg burnt mussel shells. If all your pots are made in this manner then you dont so much discover nixtamalization as experience it only by its absence when you meet settlers that have pellagra and dont use your style of pot.

See [0] for a technical write up on this and many other pot themes.

[0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/arcm.12986

[lukas099]

Maybe some people with sensitive stomachs are able to detect things like this quicker than others. Further, maybe the gene for a sensitive stomach confers a survival advantage not just to the individual, but to relatives of the individual (who can ‘free ride’ on their relative’s discerning stomach).

[smegsicle]

boiling corn in limestone pots makes it taste better

[codezero]

> How did they figure it out?

My guess: boiling water purifies it and makes it safe to consume... how about put things in boiling water to see if it makes them safer?

[pickledoyster]

> your ancestors impulsively tasting mushrooms

There are other animals humans can observe instead of impulsively risking their lives.

[petesergeant]

Sure, there _are_, but also don't underestimate humans...

> Nine young backpackers were rushed to hospital in the west Australian city of Perth after snorting a drug they mistook for cocaine. Three remain in critical condition after *ingesting the mystery white powder which arrived in the post addressed to someone else*

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-42563523

> The bystander states that the older man is a “death with dignity” patient who invited loved ones to be present while he consumed the [Medical Aid in Dying] medication. After his first swallow, he remarked, “Man that burns!” The younger man said, “Let me see,” and then also took a swallow.

https://www.jems.com/patient-care/emergency-medical-care/dea...

[nemosaltat]

I was in Cape Cod for a wedding late last year with some friends, and came across what we later learned was a Yew. Some of us had popped into an ice cream shop, and one of the members of my party apparently decided to eat a sweet berry while they waited.

When we came out, we were initially incredulous but they clarified that the flesh of the berry was sweet, but the seed was disgustingly bitter. Which prompted the rest of us to quickly do some research on what this plant was. The mood was initially somewhat light-hearted, however articles with titles like “Why is the Yew Berry sometimes called the Death Berry?” had us on the phone with poison control pretty quickly.

Poison control was very professional, and once they confirmed that it was indeed a Yew Berry that had been ingested, things got pretty serious. Apparently even small doses can quickly cause irreversible heart failure, with death the earliest “symptom” in some cases.

My friend didn’t die— just experienced some terror and gastric distress— the latter likely exacerbated by the terror). No drugs or alcohol or involved, just an impulsive decision, and a sobering reminder about the fragility of life.

One of the other replies in this thread mentions mushrooms. Which reminds of the aphorism: _There are old mushroom foragers, and bold mushroom foragers, but there are no old AND bold mushroom foragers._

[ascorbic]

Oh wow that was a journey. As soon as I saw "yew" I started internally screaming.

The route that my kids walk to school took us underneath a large yew tree, and the road underneath is often covered in hundreds of delicious-looking pink berries. Since they were tiny they have had to know all about how yew berries look lovely but even one can kill you. What I didn't ever tell them is how apparently the flesh is actually not toxic and is tasty, and it's the seed that will kill you.

[drjasonharrison]

The aril (the red flesh of the “berry” surrounding the seed) is tasty, and not toxic. But the leaves, stems, roots, and seeds are poisonous. Our elementary school has evergreen yew bushes growing around it and I taught my children not to eat the seeds. A fellow parent advised use not to eat them because other children might not be so careful.

[TRiG_Ireland]

Are yew rare where you are? Here in Ireland (and also in Britain), they're traditionally found in churchyards (where grazing livestock cannot get at them) and are well known to be poisonous. (Agatha Christie used yew as a poison in one of her novels.)

[nemosaltat]

I read this and thought; I sure hope so if I’ve made it this far in life not knowing. I believe someone’s rectangle plant-identified this particular one as European Yew (Taxus baccata). None of us had encountered it before and this particular plants arils (thanks drjason) were quite strikingly pink.

Apparently, there are others in North America, but mostly not in the Southwest. I lived in the Pacific Northwest about a decade ago which also has a yew (Taxus brevifolia) but I don’t recall if I ever saw the berries.

That said, most folks I know were raised with a baseline of “don’t eat random berries you don’t recognize.”

[taejo]

The berries (but not the seeds!) are apparently edible, and I have myself eaten one without noticing any ill effect. IIRC it was indeed the berries that were used in the Agatha Christie novel, so apparently a mistake.

[vintermann]

This is an example that mushrooms unfairly get a bad rap - there are much nastier things in the plant kingdom. Some of them you don't even have to eat to get seriously hurt by, and they're not even that rare (e.g. giant hogweed)

[klik99]

Yikes - I love foraging, but I am extremely conservative about what I eat. This makes me thankful I'm not a bold forager.

My friend has a running joke calling Yew poison berries, but I never looked up the effects before. Great that you called poison control.

[fsckboy]

while it's incredibly coincidental that you replied to me to say this

>I was in Cape Cod

it give me the chance to tell you, "we say on Cape Cod". There are a number of towns on Cape Cod that you could be in.

[jcgrillo]

Nightshade (atropa belladonna) is another one to watch out for.

[msrenee]

I'd add hemlock in there in too. Both are plants you'll see in parks in town. A toddler died here a few years ago because his parent allowed him to play in the big plants with the pretty white flowers. They don't look dangerous and don't have to be eaten to be deadly. Breathing too much pollen is enough, especially for a child.

I'm pretty confident with berries as I've got plenty of experience, but I don't mess with wild carrot or even elderberry as I don't feel I have the knowledge at this point to make it worth the risk. There are just too many lookalikes.

[marbro]

And, other nightshades such as tomatoes, bell peppers, and goji berries contain lectins.

[Terr_]

> driving down the road I was inspired to taste some fresh wheat grains in a field

Fun fact: The danger in eating raw cookie-dough isn't primarily from fresh eggs (though they can have problems too) but rather from the raw flour, which before cooking may have a bunch of bacterial nastiness in it.

[throwaway519]

Choking on the mixture is the main danger.

[bigiain]

I wonder if that has a higher death rate than driving to the store to buy it?

[nkozyra]

Raw flour is generally not pasteurized, it's true, but most cookie dough mixes are.

The eggs are a far more likely vector for illness unless you're making the cookies yourself from scratch.

[philsnow]

You can easily pasteurize both eggs* and flour at home, and make Cookie Dough That Won't Kill You (Nearly As Quickly)

* with the right equipment

[account42]

> unless you're making the cookies yourself from scratch

This isn't the default assumption?

[Terr_]

> most cookie dough mixes are

At least where I live, only a minority are advertised as "ready to eat". It's more common to see the opposite, an explicit warning that it must be cooked.

[nkrisc]

Basically, yes. Though wheat didn’t look like that initially. We’ve cultivated it to become like that over thousands of years.

Same for corn (maize). There is no naturally occurring plant that looks like what we’ve turned it into.

[eru]

Wild potatoes look pretty close to some domesticated potatoes I had.

Also I had lots of wild berries (of various species) in forests, and they look pretty much like the berries you can find in a garden. (Though probably not like the berries you can get in a supermarket?)

Wild grass also looks pretty much like some of the domesticated variety. (Well, some varieties do.)

[nkrisc]

My understanding is that most berries weren’t farmed until recently because they couldn’t be domesticated like other plants, rather they were typically foraged. I remember reading that initially wild blueberry bushes were simply dug up and replanted. Not certain of the veracity of this, however.

Wheat still generally looks like wild grasses, but like maize its seeds are much larger than you’ll find on wild grasses.

[msrenee]

Wild corn relatives, however, just look like most other grass.

[meindnoch]

It's called endosperm. A bunch of starch that nourishes the embryo when the seed germinates.

[Diti]

Speaking of sperm, it reminds me of that funny theory about choanoflagellates: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38865865

[fsckboy]

thank you! the only one who answered my legit question, if only I could upvote you more

[looofooo0]

Well wheat co-evolved such that seeds stayed attached after being ripe. Without humans resowing them, it would have been impossible.

[cjbgkagh]

One of many in a long list of evolved pesticides

[BurningFrog]

Others are nicotine, caffeine and cocaine.

What else?

EDIT: and morphine!

[cjbgkagh]

THC from the cannabis plant. It is a very long list though, plants go to a great deal of effort to deter pests so the list would be more limited by the subset of plants that humans find useful to cultivate.

[BurningFrog]

Since species are both different and similar, I think it makes sense that chemicals will affect different species differently.

So what kills some animals will have mind altering effects on others.

[mofunnyman]

Those are resticides.

[IIAOPSW]

I don't care what you call it, if it ends in "ine" its good enough for me.

[tonymillion]

Strychnine

side note: It kills you by making all your muscles tense so strongly that you can't breath any more. The muscles in your face tense in a way that it gives you whats called a "Strychnine Smile".

[tonymillion]

Amphetamine Dopamine Ketamine

Now thats a party!

(and as I said in another reply) Strychnine

[cluckindan]

Ephedrine, from ephedra.

Cathinone, from khat (Catha edulis)

[markdown]

Kavalactones

[thayne]

Being delicious to humans is a pretty good evolutionary advantage. Although, not necessarily good for the longevity of individuals of that species, see, for example, cattle.

[bobthepanda]

It is also somewhat anti microbial, so it became useful for food preservation. See: kimchi

[cnity]

Though you're right, in kimchi the primary preservative is initially the saltiness and then later the low pH caused by lactobacilli producing lactic acids.

[bobthepanda]

I don't dispute that. My understanding is that the introduction of chili allowed a reduction in salt content, which was important in an era where salt was expensive to produce.

[cnity]

I didn't know that, that's really interesting thanks!

[jorvi]

Apparently (some) peppers are anti-inflammatory, which I guess I have to accept the science of, but still disagree with on an empirical level.

[cyberax]

You can make fermented cabbage without any hot peppers. It's common in Slavic cultures.

[ssl-3]

It's common all over. Fermented cabbage is also called sauerkraut.

[bigiain]

Now I feel a need to spin up and emulator or something capable of playing Castle Wolfenstein.

(Dear god, I'm showing my age there, aren't I?)

[ssl-3]

What, the C64 game?

Whatever it is, I'm absolutely certain that it can be launched in a few seconds on archive.org, with no special software requirements besides the JavaScript interpreter that a web browser already has, and that all of this can happen even on your standard-issue pocket supercomputer.

(Every couple of years I fire up an Apple ][ version of Oregon Trail on archive.org because even though we had a PC at home way back when, that's the version I remember playing in school. That game is still hard and I'm not sure exactly what it is that it is supposed to teach except that dysentery is evil.)

[dunham]

I'm guessing it was common in Korea before chilis were brought back from the americas.

[neom]

Chilli was introduced to Kimchi during the Imjin War. The Portuguese had brought them to Japan perviously, as far as I've seen all kimchi recipe prior to that is only garlic heavy, I like that style of kimchi better personally.

[bobthepanda]

my understanding of the development was that chili was used to cut the amount of salt, which wasn't cheap to produce

[ssl-3]

[citation needed]

(My peppers ferment just find using microbes.)

[bobthepanda]

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8042654/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4643145/

https://www.ijrar.org/papers/IJRAR1944311.pdf

Antimicrobial doesn't necessarily mean it literally kills everything.

[jasonpeacock]

Yep, you can get spicy bird food which completely eliminates squirrel, rat, rabbit, racoon, and other issues with your bird feeders:

https://order.wbu.com/shop/bird-food/hot-pepper

It's a game changer, it's the only bird food that I use now.

[natebc]

Your squirrels are wimps. I use WBU's no-mess spicy version ... Squirrels have little problem with it. Every now and then one will bounce around a bit after eating it but they still come every day.

[GZGavinZhao]

Squirrels in Sichuan: yesssir more spicy bird food plz!!! XD

[foobiekr]

I find that it is an effective rat repellent - a neighbor has a rat colony they will not address - but while it was effective for squirrels at first, they seem to have gotten over it, and we now see them eating dropped seeds without any pause at all. I think the first generation never overcame it but now they do eat whatever the birds spill.

[FuriouslyAdrift]

Mint... it will grow like crazy and reodentia hate it. Catnip is even better because it attracts cats.

https://www.evergreenseeds.com/do-mint-plants-keep-mice-away...

[mauvehaus]

A mouse died in my plow truck this summer and the smell was unreal. Like, thank god I got the power windows working bad.

I was told that Irish Spring soap is minty enough to repel mice. Based on the scratch/tooth marks in the bar I left in the glovebox, it apparently isn't.

Next summer, I'll try something with peppermint oil. Assuming I can get the transmission fixed for a reasonable price. Not having reverse is proving to be a hassle.

[jbotz]

Pure essential peppermint oil definitely works as a rodent repellent, even in very small quantities, although the effect wears off pretty quickly (that's the thing about essential oils, the essence is volatile). Plan to reapply every 3-7 days. Btw. the reason it works that that for rodents the sense of smell is primary, and mint smell overpowers everything else, so in its presence they are effectively blind.

[kragen]

Be careful with essential oils. In most cases the lethal dose for an adult human is about 5 grams.

[throwup238]

Do you drink your essential oils? Unless they’re laced with DMSO, I don’t see how five grams of the active ingredient could be absorbed.

[jcgrillo]

Plowing without reverse is a sport I'd pay to watch lol

[mauvehaus]

I promise it's not as exciting as you're imagining. Getting the truck back out of the snow bank, on the other hand, would probably be amusing in a schadenfreude sort of way. Lacking traction (because winter), we used a lot of momentum. It was pretty undignified.

[jcgrillo]

I was imagining high speed 4 wheel drifting and momentum preserving gymkhana turns.

[dunham]

In my previous house, I had mice get into a bag of gochugaru, so I guess some mice can tolerate it. For squirrels, I've only sprinkled it on the ground to keep them from digging up my garlic cloves.

[doubletwoyou]

for those unaware like I might’ve been, gochugaru is Korean red pepper powder

[natebc]

.. and it turns Kewpie mayonnaise into a godlike substance.

[timewizard]

> Mammals, on the other hand, have teeth

Chewing is also an imperfect process. Mammals, and I can tell you this personally and with some disdain, sometimes pass seeds as well.

> found a chemical irritant that repels the mammals

Deer, and I can tell you this personally and with some disdain, seem to love peppers as much as we do. They're also harder to keep out of your yard.

[astrange]

> Chewing is also an imperfect process. Mammals, and I can tell you this personally and with some disdain, sometimes pass seeds as well.

That's how you get poop coffee.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_luwak

[adamrezich]

Not a good deer repellant, though—at least for the mule deer around here. My mom once sprayed some plants she had to prevent the local pests from eating them, but instead, they just ate the plants anyway, and then proceeded to shit all over the yard everywhere.

[intrasight]

>shit all over the yard everywhere

They do that in any case

[adamrezich]

It was particularly messy in this case.

[jongjong]

It's wild to think that plants are engaged in this constant struggle to produce seeds that have an outer shell that is just strong enough not to be consistently dissolved in a bird's stomach but not so strong that they won't ever dissolve.

One one hand, some seeds must survive passing through the bird's digestive system intact to later grow into a plant, on the other hand, some seeds must be digested in order to keep the birds interested in consuming that seed... Alternatively, a bird species interested in eating indigestible seeds may become extinct due to malnutrition.

[14]

I can not remember the tree or plant and the following is only my best recollection and may be slightly incorrect, couldn't reach my dad to ask, he told me about a plant and I forget if it had basically been eradicated possibly to human harvesting and was unique to a region if I remember correctly and it was believed to be gone. But then some seeds were found and they tried to germinate them but continually failed. As I remember what he told me was that someone going through some ancient writings or paintings and it showed the tree and birds eating from it. He then said the person had the idea to feed the seed to a bird and see if it did anything. Apparently it was successful and he was able to grow this lost plant/tree what ever it was. The whole story sounds far fetched but my dad is not a bullshitter he would have seen it on some history channel or similar. Looking up birds eating seeds and germination explains that the digestive enzymes in a birds stomach can help break down the hard outer coating on some seeds helping germination. I will ask him when I can and report back if I can verify anything he said.

As for spicy peppers funny to me story. I grew a Carolina Reaper plant last summer and the plant did well and I got something like 200 peppers from it. Of course I had to know what it felt like so me my dad and my 13 year old son tried them. We all threw a big chunk in our mouths chewed for about 5 seconds and spat it out.

The pain was basically instant. It was at about 2 seconds I knew this was not going to be good. It was insanely hot which lasted about half an hour, the entire time me running my mouth under the tap or putting ice on it, trying crackers and milk, even tried to wash my tongue. Some how my son after about 5 minutes very calmly says can I go have a shower. He was hardly bothered by the pepper.

Funny thing happened couple weeks later. I was telling my friend how insane these peppers were. He then asks if he can have some as he has a bear knocking over his garbage every night and wants to leave some for the bear to eat and hopefully encourage it to stop. So he makes a burrito and fills it with 5 or 6 nice sized reapers and leaves it out before bed. Well middle of the night his phone dings and his outside camera detected motion. Fires up the video and what does he see, not the bear but some stray dog walking the neighborhood run up and down the thing in a couple bites. Oh man I hope that dog didn't suffer too bad when it came out the other end.

[buildsjets]

It might be on the list of plants at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_taxon ?

Of that list, we have a Metasequoia / Dawn Redwood tree in our yard, it's great fast-growing shade tree with deciduous leaves that are so small you don't need to rake them. Thought to be extinct, re-discovered in China in 1944, availability in nurseries is pretty good.

[gkoberger]

If the above comment was interesting to you... you might really like the YouTube video "The truth about Hot Ones sauces"! It goes into this theory, along with how spice levels are measured.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dutpBSKj8JY

[RachelF]

>birds have no receptors for capsaicin, while mammals do.

True. I suspect it is only placental mammals. Brush-tailed possums (a marsupial mammal) do not seem repelled by it at all. I've had my birds eyes and Carolina Reaper chilly plants and fruit eaten by them.

[msrenee]

I'm seeing quite a few websites suggesting cayenne pepper to keep Virginia Opossums out of your plants. I've never tried it myself, but that's a marsupial that appears to not like spicy food. The only species coming up in these increasingly useless search engine results as liking spicy food is Chinese tree shrews.

I'm getting so frustrated anymore trying to use google, bing, brave search, startpage, etc for finding anything except reddit or quora answers and business pages. If you find any more info on marsupials and peppers, I'd love to see it. It's a super interesting question.

[rtkwe]

I friend of mine got that and spilled it in their house and I had me coughing the whole time I was over there till they were able to air it out so be careful if you're handling it indoors some people get got by it worse than others.

[afpx]

The fox population has grown a lot near me. I often have a couple foxes sleeping in my back yard at night. I used to have a major squirrel problem, but The foxes ate them all.

[conductr]

We have coyotes around in DFW. Not too many in the urban core areas (mid-century suburbs), so the squirrel are rampant. Out in the exurbs (more recent suburbs), the coyote population is high enough I practically never see a squirrel.

Granted - the older areas have more mature oak, pecan, and other nut producing trees too. But there should be some squirrels out in the exurbs and I never see any. I've spent some significant time out there too. They have more rabbits than I see intown, which I imagine is the coyotes main food source.

[jader201]

I need a good bird repellent for windows.

We eventually took our feeder down after birds kept crashing into our windows near the feeder.

I can only assume they were trying to get to "the other bird feeder".

It was great while it lasted, though. We -- and our cats -- loved watching them crowd around the feeder to enjoy some seed.

[olyjohn]

At my house, they crash into the windows because they are so damn aggressive. They see themselves in the reflection and attack the other bird. They shat all over my cars this year because they kept seeing themselves in the side view mirrors. Then shat all over the back of my car because it has a chrome bumper. I have watched robins sit on the side of my car for an hour just attacking the sideview mirror over and over. They regularly crash into the one window in my house that has a tree next to it, because they land in the branches, then decide to attack the other bird in the reflection. They will sit there for hours doing this until they finally hit the window hard enough to scare themselves off.

[mrspuratic]

I've used the UV reflective "anti-collision" stickers with reasonable success. You can get discrete (to humans) ones that look like etched bird silhouettes. Just make sure to put them on the outside.

[throwawaymaths]

> capsaicin

they have no heat receptors?? capsaicin literally triggers the ion channel for thermosensing.

[sitharus]

Capsaicin binds to TRPV1 receptors, which are mammal-specific. Other animals have different proteins in this role and birds in particular are not sensitive to it. Also TVRP1 is only triggered by temperatures over 43°C, lower temperatures are sensed by other proteins.

Capsaicin isn’t just effective on mammals, it also has an effect on some fungi and insects, though mostly through metabolic disruption.

[throwawaymaths]

Thanks!!

[burnished]

Probably a different channel that isn't triggered by capsaicin

[widforss]

Have you seen birds swimming in the winter? Doubt they care much about temperature. /s

[scubbo]

> I've used one such treatment

What brand? I've been wanting to figure out a squirrel deterrant for my bird feeder, and personal recommendations are always greatly preferred to ads.

[dweekly]

Wait, I want to see video of the squirrel bungee now...

[Eduard]

maybe they mean the "Squngee Squirrel Feeder"

https://youtu.be/Ao6T-atMSYU

[nubinetwork]

So you're saying that if I wanted to eat a lot of hot peppers, I should just swallow them whole? Asking for a friend of course...

[lupusreal]

That'll work the day you eat them. The day after however...

[jbotz]

It's called "the ring of fire".

[kragen]

This is potentially fatal. Do not attempt it.

[wodenokoto]

Can I get bird seeds that the birds hate and then they stay away from my balcony because of bad associations?

[slantyyz]

Reflective bird tape might work. For me, it was effective in preventing birds from attempting to build a nest on my transom window.

[natebc]

Just get a fake owl.

[olyjohn]

The birds near me either become friends with it, or shit all over it.

[javea71]

Ok but how did the plant know that is wasn't being successfully spread by mammals..

[puetzk]

Evolution doesn't plan ahead. Various plants got various random mutations that produce various random chemicals. The ones that were tasty to birds but disgusting to mammals for their seeds spread all over and ended up pretty widespread, so they survived and became common.

The ones that were repulsive to birds but tasty to mammals got eaten by something that grinds up their seed, and so they are extinct. Or, (after humans invented agriculture), possibly got domesticated and became extremely numerous since we'd intentionally save some seeds to plant despite eating the rest.

But there was no awareness and no plan, just chance and history and whatever happened to work.

[billfruit]

Then what do we do if we want to repel birds, especially pigeons.

[lloeki]

There's some products that you spray and it's supposed to give them a nasty headache and then they learn and stop coming. It gave me headaches as well though.

Contrary to what the internets want you to believe, there are bird murder machines called "cats", which seems to skip most of the "learning" and the "headache" part.

[cdaringe]

Incredible image. My squirrel neighbors may get a dose this spring

[unnamed76ri]

How exactly did plants find this chemical irritant?

[bun_at_work]

Using a random walk algorithm through genetic space over millions (or billions) of years.

[cyberpunk]

Survival of the fittest. One plant was a tiny tiny bit more spicy by freak chance and it did a little better than the others, over many years..

Probably.

[Terr_]

> They also illustrate the evolution of this

One of my pet-peeves: Certain science fiction writers (often amateur) posit that humans will greatly impress aliens with our willingness--no, zeal--to consume capsaicin, a terrible death substance all sentient races flee from etc.

This is nonsense since it's basically an narrowly targeted false-alarm trick between relatively closely related creatures. It's not acidic, caustic, corrosive, etc.

> this protein

Just to head off the ambiguous phrasing here: Capsaicin itself is not a protein, but a much simpler kind of chemical.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenylpropanoid

[sargun]

Where does the capsaicin go? How much ends up in the bird's blood, egg, and muscles?

[jbotz]

It gets metabolised. No you can't make Chili Chicken by feeding chilies to the chicken before killing and cooking it.

[znort_]

Mammals that eat seeds grind them apart orally before even swallowing. As a result, any seeds ingested by mammals are very likely to be completely destroyed.

not really true, mastication isn't practiced to perfection in the wild, which is why you might often see seeds right on the poop. a portion of them get distributed intact.

[jcoby]

Squirrels kept trying to get my squirrel proof bird feeder and then they’d get mad and chew on the furniture when they couldn’t get the seed. And they’d poop in the rails because they’re squirrels.

I smeared some Last Dab on the bird feeder support and cayenne on the furniture and railings and haven’t seen a squirrel since.