Completely unrelated but JLD is so freakin’ gorgeous in this pic.
Aliens would extract our bile and earwax.
My precious bodily fluids!!
Rain water and grain alcohol for me
Goddamn I need to watch it again.
People who have accidentally eaten death cap mushrooms (amanita phalloides for the autists out there) say that it’s fucking delicious (before their liver shuts down). Rabbits can eat them without problems. So if we use rabbit genes, we can crispr cas 9 our way to a good meal.
Not sure if the article is legit, but there is hope for an antidote: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/worlds-deadliest-mushroom-may-now-have-an-antidote/
I don’t think we even need to do that, just extract the poison shit from the mushrooms and eat them poisonless?
Or determine what chemical (or combination of chemicals) is causing the delicious flavor, isolate them, and then add them to tofu or some shit.
Let’s gooo
I’ll just leave this here.
Nettle tea is also great!
Sooo actually why land mammals can’t filter out salt from seawater?
Actually if you are on a raft with a limited amount of fresh water, you can mix in some sea water to stretch it out a bit. I think if you use a third seawater its ok, but don’t quote me on that.
PSA: if you’re on a remote island or dysfunctional yet floating ship do not abandon it unless truly necessary - raft will be always more dangerous
Erm, if im on a raft im gonna be quoting you so you better be right.
Just imagine how many of these were first consumed on a drunken bet.
Rhubarb: most of me is poison. The rest of me is kind of bitter.
Humans: Hold my pie crust.
Rhubarb crumble is legitimately delicious though.
Strawberry rhubarb :)
Don’t get me wrong, I love rhubarb. But whoever first figured out it was edible must have been desperate.
Polk salet, anybody?
The best bit about the mint and chocolate thing is that chocolate is also poison, so we spice up our poison with more poison.
Don’t forget…
Yeast: oh man I love sugars so much, I just wish they didn’t make me shit so bad.
Humans: dude this stuff is fucking awesome!
Yeast in sugar is going: I’ll just convert this to poison (ethanol) to keep everything away, then whenever I’m hungry I’ll break that poison into acid
Humans: hold my… Wait a minute let’s make beer!
Parrots: tasty tasty poison
Fruit flies: bonanza!
And if my yeasty poison goes bad, I’ll just pour it over some poisonous leaves, I love salad.
Don’t forget to season it with minerals you chipped off a rock in a dried out lake bed.
All valid Points. But also, humans: i will care for this plant and create huge fields where you can live prosper and in peace. We kill everything who comes near you and try to harm you. And we will ensure you will live forever. You dont need birds who shit your seeds out.
Those plants domesticared us!
Sidenote: monocultures are devastating, long-term.
Also humans: we will breed you until your fruit no longer bears seed, because we decide when and how you reproduce
Botany of desire
Hot peppers anyone?
Funnily enough we try to cultivate everything we like, so in a roundabout way they were successful.
I guess… If you consider factory farmed chickens to be “successful.”
I think the book Sapiens makes the point that wheat has trained us into cultivating it for selfish needs.
(Except that it’s wheat, and that we annihilated 99% of its brethren to pick out the one that we liked so we could effectively clone it. But yes, we are the slaves…)
Sapiens and Homo Deus are both such good books. Lots of little anecdotes like that we’re just so fascinating.
I think that’s basically what The Botany of Desire is about, right?
Would aliens actually be weirded out by this quality of humans?
I feel like any sufficiently intelligent species living on a planet will have some degree of biodiversity on said planet. And the chances of something being made to be a poison/deterrent for creatures other than the intelligent species is probably a large one, because it’s pretty hard for plants and animals to make a poison/deterrent that kills everything without also killing itself. So if there is a gap for itself, there is a gap for other life to coexist with the toxin. And that’s before accounting for the fact that something can be safe at low levels, provide benefits/stimulation/good feels at low levels, and toxic at high levels.
So I’d think it would be pretty natural for intelligent life to consume things that are harmful to huge swaths of other creatures.
Works best with the Earth-is-a-deathworld trope
Level 12 Deathworld.
It is kinda weird that humans are so resilient to so many things though. It’s part of being scavenging omnivores, but alients with a more specialized diet might be weirded out.
Dogs can eat rotting meat and lick unwashed balls and ass but die from fucking grapes. 🤷🏼♂️
Humans can fuck grapes with impunity
I… I don’t think I can.
Seems like a skill issue to me.
nothing worse than getting a grape seed stuck in your peehole…
Sounds painful. Like gallstones, but backwards. On the plus side, probably less scratchy. On the minus side, maybe more citric acid.
Dude, I don’t mean to boast, but honestly, I think my dick is just WAY too big. Like, I would DESTROY that grape instantly if I tried. It’s not just a trick of the camera angle, it just is that big. Honestly, I don’t even need to get out a measuring tape to tell you that even with a massive grape, it’s just not going to fit.
You’re not being creative enough. You could have a bowl/cup of grapes, and use that. Or maybe alternatively you could blend/mash them up, let them dry out a bit to stiffen up, then use that.
Not with that attitude
I just can’t see it ever happening.
I don’t mean any disrespect, and I don’t want to kink shame, but that kinda thing is just not my bag, baby.
C’mon David. They want you to. Do it for them, buddy.
The grapes? I can never tell when a grape wants some action. My whole life, I’ve missed every single signal. Well, that, or the grapes just don’t find me attractive, like, EVER.
Potentially. But think of it this way, there are somewhere around 400,000 plant species out there.
https://news.mongabay.com/2016/05/many-plants-world-scientists-may-now-answer/
Based on this list, something on the order of like 99.5% of plants are either not safe, or not useful/beneficial. If other species on our planet share a similar rate without complete overlap, then it’s practically a guarantee that there will be thousands of plants that are safe and useful for us but not for other species. That doesn’t feel particularly strange or unlikely. So even with a specialized diet, I don’t think the numbers would be much different.
It also could be the case that being scavenging omnivores is a strong precursor to becoming intelligent. If your species is on the rise in terms of intelligence, you’re probably using that to expand your food sources wide and far.
That’s based on species though, so it would overrepresent unlikely encounters. I can go eat pine bark or grass on any continent and probably be A-OK.
I do wonder how that data compares with other mammals though. Is it just average, or is it significantly higher?
That’s based on species though, so it would overrepresent unlikely encounters.
That is fair, but also consider that an intelligent species isn’t going to be limited by chance encounters. I regularly eat bananas, but I don’t live in India. I regularly eat pineapples, but I don’t live in Costa Rica. Very little of my diet is comprised of food that is native to my area. As an intelligent species, we farm food en masse, ship it around the world, and plant things outside of their natural habitat.
I do wonder how that data compares with other mammals though. Is it just average, or is it significantly higher?
Purely speculating, I’d wager slightly above average as a result of the thing I said about omnivores being a precursor to becoming intelligent.
an intelligent species isn’t going to be limited by chance encounters.
That’s actually a fantastic point, we change our environment to be more suitable to ourselves, including cultivating unique yet safe species. I’ve never heard of a poison dart frog farm, nor a field of death caps.
For mammals we are, sure, but there’s loads of things that’d kill humans that other animals chow down on perfectly happily, especially when it comes to microorganisms, mushrooms and the rotting things they’re often found in/around
I don’t think scavenging is right also given that humans used to mainly pick fresh fruits and persistence hunt, both of which are very fresh food which is not overlooked or left by others… Given the fact we picked fresh fruits and hunted for fresh meat, being resistant to berry and fruit based poisons was more important than microorganism based ones, so it makes a lot of sense that so many of the non-intoxicating poisons we like are from fruits and berries
Scavenging carcasses and chasing predators away from a kill is definitely a behavior we had in the past. Particularly during droughts and famines, scavenging would be an important food source on the Saharan scrubland. IIRC, this would’ve been before persistence hunting was a thing, back in the H.erectus days, maybe even as far back as some Australopiths.
We would also scavenge fallen fruits and berries that were at least partially decayed. It’s most likely how we discovered the intoxicating effects of alcohol.
I know it’s just a typo, but the image “alients” conjured in my head is pretty funny. I have less than zero artistic talent or I’d share it with you all. Hopefully the mental image is enough.
Aliens tree people is an interesting picture indeed.
If we were the aliens and came across two worlds inhabited by intelligent life I would probably be more weirded out by the one where nobody uses any mind altering substance like caffeine that are poisonous to other animals.
I evolutionary terms being edible to humans is quite useful.
It worked for chickens…
Chickens are the most numerous bird on the planet, wheat covers more land area than any other plant.
Chickens are the most numerous bird on the planet
And live their lives in fucking misery and suffering, at least most of em.
But they keep reproducing, which is really all that it takes to make a successful species. It’s really not about suffering when it comes to evolution. Alleles don’t care whether or not suffering is involved.
I’m not advocating chicken farming, I’m just saying that in evolutionary terms, chickens are one of the most successful species on the planet.
I disagree.
Evolution is not so much a numbers game. Otherwise Bacteria, Ants, Viruses and the like would have to be crowned winners. So the point op brings up is
mutemoot.The point you add, that they keep reproducing, is also not relevant in evelotionary terms. The short amount of time that we have domesticated chickens, let a side the very resent industalisation of animal farming (it started in the 1950s ish), is just not relevante in evelotionary terms.
I’d say what makes a successfull species is resilience. 99 % of all species have gone extinct. The “winners” of evelotion are, in my opinion, those species that have lasted the longest. And in that regard, chicken ain’t looking to good. They are highly dependent upon humans. Most industrial chickens are genetic aborninatons, bred for beeing fat, fast growing, egg laying machines to the point where their own bones brake because they lack calcium. I’d argue that chickens in their current form would not last long in “the wild”. Hence once humans are gone their is a high chance chickens will follow.
Otherwise Bacteria, Ants, Viruses and the like would have to be crowned winners.
They are. And you mean ‘moot.’
Also, you don’t know what evolution is. It’s a change in allele frequency over time. All that is needed for that is continued reproduction.
Doubtful. Look what will happen with our bred plants and animals, if humans aren’t around anymore.
