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I don’t go a single day without throwing some sort of spice on my food. I’m using more hot sauce than I’d ever like to admit (check out TRUFF by the way!). I’ve never really stopped to think about why peppers are spicy, I’ve just accepted them for what they are.
For the longest time, scientists believed the reason that peppers are spicy was an evolutional deterrent to stop animals from stealing the fruit on pepper plants. There’s some solid logic to this. The pepper plant produces an incredibly spicy pepper that no animal wants to eat and in turn, that plant is able to flourish. But the scientists were wrong and that’s not why peppers are spicy.
In the latest SciShow episode on YouTube they break down why peppers are spicy and set the record straight. After watching this you’ll be able to go forth into the world and drop some knowledge on people:
I had no idea that other mammals actually enjoy spicy food. There’s no conclusive evidence of this because the ‘rats eating spicy foods’ test was way too small to be considered robust, but it’s interesting that there’s at least some data out there suggesting other mammals get down with the spice too.