The avocado is an evolutionary anachronism

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/why-the-avocado-should-have-gone-the-way-of-the-dodo-4976527/

by collapse • 7 years ago

101 61 7 years ago

Could it be possible that avocados were just smaller then and are only the size they are now because they have been bred by humans?

I didn't see any mention of avocado fossils or remains.

kissickas• 7 years ago

It does say the fruit has been changed by humans, so presumably there is some evidence supporting that.

Back when the giant beasts roamed the earth, the avocado would’ve been a large seed with a small fleshy area—less attractive to smaller mammals such as ourselves. Through cultivation, humans have bulked up avocados so there is more flesh for us to eat.

maxerickson2• 7 years ago

It also mentions that there are still wild varieties around.

Those could still show some effects of cultivation though, it depends on how much information there is too study and so on.

tinco• 7 years ago

If it was artificial selection, wouldn't the nut be smaller? All cultured fruit has really small nuts/seeds.

Psyonic• 7 years ago

peach pits are pretty big

maxerickson2• 7 years ago

You can only go so fast when it takes 10 to 15 years to see what you got. They also don't breed true, so lots of those plants will produce uninteresting fruits.

Trees like oaks have the potential to be great producers of crops but have largely eluded cultivation, because they take decades to fruit for the first time.

hetman• 7 years ago

The article indicates the opposite:

"The fruit had a larger pit and less flesh than today’s avocados..."

bluedino• 7 years ago

There are two types of avocado that I see. One has a large pig, close to ping pong ball sizes. Then there's another with a much smaller, marble-sized pit.

pugworthy3• 7 years ago

Given it mentions Cenozoic, etc. I assume there is a fossil record. Leaves, wood, seeds - all definitely fossil-worthy.

idlewords• 7 years ago

The avocado did nothing wrong!

plorg• 7 years ago

It's never been 100% clear to me what the accepted timeline of human inhabitation of the American continents was, but it seems clearly possible (or likely?) that humans and other megafauna existed close together. Given that fact, it's entirely possible that the plant (and the others mentioned) were cultivated by human, and one megafauna was replaced by another.

empath75• 7 years ago

I’m pretty sure the consensus is that humans wiped them out.

barberousse• 7 years ago

The fate of one of Daenerys' dragons in Game of Thrones comes to mind. A real good look at ecology and evolution really reveals how fragile everything really is.

pugworthy3• 7 years ago

Here's a way to view evolutionary theory: a plant that is extremely tasty becomes cultivated, and protected by the species that eats it. As a result, the plant prospers.

This actually has a name - Mutualism. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutualism_(biology) for example.

pugworthy3• 7 years ago

Also, don't get too caught up in the idea of Avocado in the popular way - don't think about Guac and Avocado Toast.

It has a "higher fat content than most other fruit, mostly monounsaturated fat, and as such serves as an important staple in the diet of consumers who have limited access to other fatty foods (high-fat meats and fish, dairy products)." to quote Wikipedia.

dehrmann5• 7 years ago

I've heard cattle described like this. Cattle struck a bargain with humans where we spread them everywhere, protect them, and give them ample grazing room in exchange for their slaughter.

AnIdiotOnTheNet3• 7 years ago

If cattle could speak, I wonder if they would appreciate this perspective of the situation. Personally I doubt it, which makes calling it "mutualism" a euphemism.

kochikame• 7 years ago

But this falls down a little bit if you apply it to animals.

I mean, chickens are tasty and all, and there are probably billions of them in the world right now... but do you call living in a cage with your beak cut off "prospering"? From a purely genetic propagation point of view they are prospering I guess... but at what cost?

mijamo• 7 years ago

I don't think evolution cares about anything really. Plenty of species live pretty miserable lives, and evolution can lead them to even more miserable lives.

Evolution is not a conscious being, it is not positive nor negative, it does not try to achieve anything, and particularly not happiness for anybody.

In a similar way, we don't need to protect the environment in the sake of nature. Nature does not care, evolution does not care. Humans are the ones who care. We are the ones worrying about other animals lives, preserving species and landscape, both for romantic and practical reasons.

A super foreign virus could come tomorrow and kill all complex life on earth. Would that be a disaster? For us yes, but in general life would follow its course anyway and evolve again. Nothing has a meaning except the one we are to give.

DyslexicAtheist• 7 years ago

chicken evolution might simply be biding it's time.

until one day when an avian virus spreads through chicken and wipes out humanity, leaving them to become the ruling species on this planet.

"the one who clucks last, clucks the loudest" (-- old chicken proverb)

senorjazz2• 7 years ago

but do you call living in a cage with your beak cut off "prospering"?

Take dogs, 6-12 in a litter, can give birth twice a year. Naturally (street dogs) most young will die, those that end up in to adult hood will be half starved and diseased.

Not exactly a pleasant life, but having so many young, they can survive the high death / suffering rate.

I am not sure I would say street dogs prosper, but they are evolutionary successful

pvaldes2• 7 years ago

but do you call living in a cage with your beak cut off "prospering"?

Better than die at ten days old by any of the dozen predators living in a rainforest, that is the destine of 90% of the wild chicken

antisemiotic• 7 years ago

Obligatory mention of rye [1] and Vavilovian mimicry [2].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rye#History

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vavilovian_mimicry

crazygringo• 7 years ago

The fruit had a larger pit and less flesh than today’s avocados, but it really served as a quick snack for big mammals like the mammoth... How the avocado still exists in the wild after surviving its evolutionary failures remains a puzzle. But once Homo sapiens evolved to the point where it could cultivate the species, the fruit had the chance to thrive anew. Back when the giant beasts roamed the earth, the avocado would’ve been a large seed with a small fleshy area—less attractive to smaller mammals such as ourselves.

I don't see the puzzle at all.

13,000 years ago yes humans hunted and killed off the megafauna. But they wouldn't be agriculturalists yet for thousands more years -- they still hunted and gathered. Avocados had a lot less fruit to them (since cultivation wasn't a thing yet), but that was true of many, probably most, wild fruits and vegetables at the time. Humans ate them all despite how they had less flesh -- they just ate more of them I guess. (And it's not like the avocado was more attractive to a mammoth than a person...) And so humans would have presumably been distributing the seeds as they took home sacks of them and some fell out, or they dumped leftover pits somewhere else in the forest.

The fact that avocados became cultivated in the first place almost certainly implies we were eating them already, and therefore transporting their pits often enough too.

I don't understand on what basis the author can assume humans weren't eating the original avocados...???

ars• 7 years ago

And couldn't a new world monkey simply carry the avocado somewhere else to eat it?

Does it have to pass through the gut?

dehrmann5• 7 years ago

I've seen squirrels carry them to eat later (it's a ridiculous sight), but humans imported both the squirrels and avocados here (the Bay Area).

HillaryBriss2• 7 years ago

you're right. it doesn't. i've seen pits that have germinated and taken root all by themselves in the leaf litter below an avocado tree.

hombre_fatal• 7 years ago

I had an avocado tree in the backyard growing up and the avocados would fall and grow new plants.

The next avocado you eat, leave it in an inch of water and it will sprout in a couple weeks, splitting in half to extend roots and a small canopy.

Had I not had to weed the backyard as a kid during avocado season, the plants would've kept growing from fallen avocados. They have these massive yolks that let them grow pretty much anywhere, as long as they find their way to some soil after a while.

I'm sure megafauna gave them a nice travel system.

senorjazz2• 7 years ago

No, our compost hole in the garden has about 10+ small avocado trees growing from it and around when the chickens disturb it.

Tend to see them sprout up best after sustained rain, temps 25c-30c in the shade

pvaldes2• 7 years ago

it really served as a quick snack for big mammals like the mammoth...

As a metaphor it works, but is unprobable that a species carefully adapted to extreme chilling cold and another species adapted to do no stand any cold would share space and a trophic link

caf• 7 years ago

I wonder if the same is thought to be true of the larger mangoes.

austincheney• 7 years ago

At least humans eat avocados. Nothing eats the horse apple.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maclura_pomifera

HillaryBriss2• 7 years ago

Rodents like squirrels and mice may have also contributed, as they traveled and buried seeds in the ground, rather than letting it rot on the surface.

Even today, it's common to see North American squirrels eating avocados right off the tree in Los Angeles.

gdcohen• 7 years ago

They only do that to annoy us humans!

fencepost• 7 years ago

(2013)

FrozenVoid• 7 years ago

Thats a common myth, birds eat and spread avocado seeds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resplendent_quetzal#Feeding

DonHopkins• 7 years ago

Guard: Where'd you get the avocados?

King Arthur: We found them.

Guard: Found them? In Mercia? The avocado's tropical!

King Arthur: What do you mean?

Guard: Well this is a temperate zone!

King Arthur: The resplendent quetzal may fly south with the sun, or the house marten or the plover may seek warmer climes in winter, yet these are not strangers to our land!

Guard: Are you suggesting avocados migrate?

King Arthur: Not at all! They could be carried.

Guard: What? A resplendent quetzal carrying an avocado?

King Arthur: It could grip it by the husk!

Guard: It's not a question of where he grips it! It's a simple question of weight ratios! A five ounce bird could not carry a one pound avocado!

dTal• 7 years ago

Where is this from? It sounds for all the world like something out of Holy Grail, but I don't remember this bit.

vfc1• 7 years ago

It's a very unique fruit, unlike most commercial fruits available in the west it's 85% fat, it's got 7 grams of fiber, and a single fruit has about 320 calories.

That is about the caloric equivalent of 3 medium-sized bananas. It's a great source of healthy fats, and very satiating due to the high fiber content.

Definitively something to be included in a healthy diet, but bear in mind that due to the high caloric content, if you eat a whole avocado with some toast that is going to give you the caloric equivalent of a whole meal.

So if you eat them every day in addition to your standard diet, it's going to add a lot of calories to your daily total. The suggestion is to eat them occasionally as guacamole making a meal out of it, or eat a smaller portion as a snack.

In their natural state, avocados are ripe about two weeks per year, so it's not something that we had the opportunity to eat a lot of in the past.

Definitively a healthy thing to add to the diet, I eat maybe one or so a week.

Quipunotch104• 7 years ago

100 pounds? That ain't so mega. Wouldn't the prefix mega- imply they'd have to be, oh say... around a million pounds or so? A measly 100lb critter would just be a centifauna, right?

Jedd• 7 years ago

An even better 'at the next party' factoid about avocados is that they're technically monoecious, but practically you need two plants to get good pollination.

Monoecious means they have both male and female flower parts on the same plant ... but interestingly with avocados both bits don't work at the same time.

There's two types of avocado trees, helpfully called type A and type B. Type A is functionally female first, and then (a day or two later) male. Type B is the other way around.

They're one of very few plants to work this way, though I don't imagine it would have confounded early practitioners of agriculture.

leejoramo• 7 years ago

Connie Barlow is an eloquent speaker on Evolution. I have seen her presentations several times. Highly recommended.

http://www.thegreatstory.org/CB-writings.html

The avocado is an evolutionary anachronism

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