Examples I hadn't thought about: root vegetables (carrots, potatoes, etc.) are storage organs, optimized for storing carbs (kinda like livers). Underground to make them harder to eat.
Show this thread
Fun convo with @csvoss: categorizing foods + organisms based on how much they've been optimized by natural selection to be edible. Easiest examples: milk, (botanical) fruits, honey all optimized to be eaten by something. Seeds and eggs optimized to become an organism.
-
-
-
Speculative: among animals, predators might actually be more edible than prey, overall. Prey have more incentives to be less edible (leads to shells, poison, etc), and predators don't have to worry as much about this.
Show this thread -
Confusing (to me): grains (wheat, rice, corn, etc). Glancing at the Wikipedia articles, their wild ancestors spread by wind. So not optimized to be eaten! (Although still seeds / fruits.) Then why so dominant as food crops? Do they just grow fast or something?
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.