The best bit about the mint and chocolate thing is that chocolate is also poison, so we spice up our poison with more poison.
Basically humans will have sex with you, eat you, or make you a pet.
Sometimes more than one.
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.
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.
Sometimes, when a fruit or seed isn’t toxic enough for our taste, we make it liquid then make it ferment or age until some of its sugar turns into the deliciously neurotoxic ethanol.
“Hmm tastes good but could taste a bit closer to death.”
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!
TBF, life’s objective is to reproduce and keep its genetic materials continuing on. Even if humans propagate and consume said plant because they find it desirable, that is still a success for the plant. So even if it has toxic caffeine or fiery capsaicin to deter some pests and humans find it enjoyable, the plant wins.
Especially since many of the plants die after 1 year anyway so it’s not even like we shorten their lives anyway.
Caffeine is poisonous to us too, so I think it’s more accurate to say that humans enjoy the side effects of that particular neurotoxin. It’s generally not possible for someone healthy to drink enough coffee to die, but they sell pure caffeine (for research) and even seemingly small amounts of that will kill a person.
You can buy 200mg pure anhydrous caffeine pills at Walmart for like $5. It’s abundant and as safe as coffee if you don’t go nuts. The max daily recommended dose is 400mg, anything past that could cause harm
What I had in mind is more like this 25kg bucket. That’s enough to kill about 2,000 people, which is actually a lot fewer people than I would have guessed before I looked up the LD50.
I’ve never actually seen caffeine in a bucket myself, but I worked in a lab once that had a big plastic jar of it.
Rhubarb: most of me is poison. The rest of me is kind of bitter.
Humans: Hold my pie crust.
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Don’t get me wrong, I love rhubarb. But whoever first figured out it was edible must have been desperate.
Strawberry rhubarb :)
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Let’s gooo
Is they plant that’s made into cocaine in this same category?
Listing the manufacturing steps needed to get cocaine from plant into a wall street trader nose is mind blowing
Step Chemicals Used Harvesting Coca Leaves N/A Soaking in Solvents Gasoline, Kerosene, Diesel Fuel, Water Alkaline Treatment Sodium Carbonate, Lime First Filtration N/A Acidification (Coca Paste) Sulfuric Acid Evaporation N/A Further Alkaline Treatment Ammonia, Sodium Bicarbonate Solvent Extraction Ether, Acetone, Kerosene Precipitation Hydrochloric Acid Oxidation (Purification) Potassium Permanganate Conversion to Cocaine HCl Hydrochloric Acid Drying N/A Cutting/Adulteration Baking Soda, Sugars, Levamisole, etc. And that doesn’t say how many coca leaves it takes. Which is a whole shitload.
I once had coca leaf tea (mate de coca). Obviously a fraction of the strength of cocaine. I did not care for the taste, sort of like damp straw, but the effect was so much better than caffeine. Total alertness without a jittery feeling and it wears off after 3 or 4 hours.
Honestly, if they could do something about the taste, I’d find ways to import it.
I have either seen the documentary that came from before or something extremely similar.
She looks so familiar, who is this? Is this from Veep?
Poppies kill things?
Heroin, opium and morphine are derived from poppies. Too much of any narcotic and you die
Yeah but we need to process the shit out of it. Is anything really going to die from eating some raw poppy seeds?
Well, we are pretty big for insects
People die almost every year overdosing on tea made from poppy seeds.
The potency of the seeds vary so much that you can buy two jars and drinking a tea made from one will give you a decent buzz and the other will kill you if you drink half.
If an animal were to eat a seed pod, it could definitely die.
It doesn’t really need to be processed much. Heated plant parts for tea and the sap is ready to smoke after drying. Both of these processes do count as processing but I would not say it counts as "process[ing] the shit out of it. "
To overdose to death on it you need to also purify and concentrate it. Animals aren’t even heating and smoking it.
You don’t need to purify to drink it just extract it. It’s hard to smoke enough opium to OD (which I guess counts as concentration through evaporation but isn’t purified to seperate alkoloids) to death without other drugs but it is pretty easy to over do it with just tea. Like a previous poster said tea extractions will have wildly varying potencies so they can kill even those with tolerance.
Onion and leek too btw.
Aliens would extract our bile and earwax.
Obligatory symbiosis is a sexy, sexy vehicle for propagation.
What does anyone have against “u”, fucking fuck?
Americans have been trying to eliminate the letter “u” for centuries.
No u
