[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.