sharr_zeor t1_iugoqc1 wrote on October 31, 2022 at 4:38 AM

Reply to comment by HazeThere in ELI5: How do plants know that they will be eaten and therefore their seeds will be spread and regrow? by HazeThere

It's the same, they just ended up adapting differently.

The basic premise still applies, one plant mutated to be sweet/sour/bitter/spicy etc It's neighbour plant mutated to be less so

Animals/humans liked one version more, and liked the other version less, so those plants get eaten, and the seeds get spread

In some cases, humans specifically liked certain tastes so we manually selected and bred plants with specific mutations and variations to get the flavours we wanted

sharr_zeor t1_iuggebo wrote on October 31, 2022 at 3:14 AM

Reply to ELI5: How do plants know that they will be eaten and therefore their seeds will be spread and regrow? by HazeThere

Natural selection

The sweet fruits got eaten, and the seeds spread, causing those plants to thrive, and reproduce, and so on

the ones that were bitter didn't get eaten, and therefore couldn't spread and thrive and eventually died out.