"All right, I've been thinking, when life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade! Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don't want your damn lemons! What am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life's manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I'm the man whose gonna burn your house down - with the lemons!"
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2025
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I expected a Cave Johnson reference and was not disappointed.
In a more general way, other creatures don't experience taste the same way we do.
Bird poop is really nutritious to seeds. It makes sense for those plants to be eaten by birds (with the seed passing through the digestive tract untouched), but avoid other creatures.
Enter capcasin. Mammals find it intolerable (except for one subset of a goofy bipedal species), but birds love that shit.
Enter capcasin. Mammals find it intolerable (except for one subset of a goofy bipedal species), but birds love that shit.
I know someone with a dog that loves jalapenos. So its not just us.
A friend of mine has a dog who likes to chew on large landscaping rocks. The vet said to put hot sauce on the ones in the yard. Dog was like "OMG, you SEASONED them for ME???" cromch cromch cromch
Also birds fly, meaning they tend to disperse the seeds further
Tree Shrews also seem to enjoy it. Though they have a genetic mutation that makes them less sensitive to capcasin.
Where's the lime?
In the coconut.
Lemon x mexican (key) lime
shout out to pomelo, fucking og i'd never even heard of, responsible for two of my favorite fruits
I always thought pomelo was some kind of over bred accident that was trying to be passed off as gourmet citrus with its two inch thick pith and its disappointing flavor. I suppose it gets a pass as it's an actual naturally occurring fruit.
~~g~~rape fruit? 😱
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We're all so fucking sick of our lemons! Yeah they got so sour, please take them away. No it ain't too much to be wishing for better, cause I'd sooner dry right up than make lemonade from this.
Source: Lemonade - Fox Stevenson
Also, not all animals experience sour taste in the same way. For example rats actually love eating lemons! There are literally guides online on how to stop them!
https://pestcontrolweekly.net/how-to-stop-rats-from-eating-lemons/
you don't even need to resort to other animals, lots of humans are fucked and will happily suck on a lemon wedge with 0 indication that it's remotely sour
like, i enjoy sour stuff, but if i touch my tongue to a raw lemon my entire face inverts
Same goes for chilli peppers, which aren't hot for birds, since their receptors are incompatible
Cool Thing about that is that the theory is that it was selected for exactly to ward off non birds so that only birds eat it and the seeds go further!
Woah. Imagine the first spicy plant. The mammals stay away from it, but the birds still eat it. They then bring the plant to a place where the plant doesn't exist yet. Plant flourishes. Repeat.
I was today years old when I realised that "When life gives you lemons" might be a metaphor for bitter/sour situations you experience but are outside your own control...
What did you think the expression meant?
Like if life gives you oranges, make orange juice, just because that’s what it’s made with?
Yes
Evolution by artificial selection is still evolution.
Yeah, they should've have specified natural evolution.
It's not even selection, though.
We grafted those citruses into existence.
They're delicious Frankenstein style abominations unto nature.
It is different if it is a passive or active process though. The initial question is, in how far lemons benefit from this evolved trait. The benefits might be very different between passive or active evolution here. If it were passive, lemon plants might benefit by avoiding some disadvantageous animal species feeding on them. As it is active though, the benefit is that they are grown more by humans. The feedback loop between evolution and trait selection is very different if it is active or passive I'd say.
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This just vindicates my long time thought: people make their own problems.
When life gives you people
Life didn't give me lemons, my goddamn ancestors did
"LEMONS?!"
🫢 humpf
😮💦🍋 phaaa
So then why are citrons sour?
I wonder if that isn't a protection against mould reaching the seeds.
Completing the circle with le citron de Menton, that is mild and sweet enough to be eaten raw with the peel. https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20220328-the-return-of-frances-lost-menton-lemon
When life gives you lemons, take credit.
My understanding is lemons are a hybrid that arose without human intervention. Their persistence is because of humans intervention.
When life gives you sour fruit, make better sour fruits!
It was the scientists all along!
This exemplifies everything that's wrong with our species.
According to Wikipedia lemons have been around for about 2000 to 3000 years old.
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