If plants develop to protect themselves in their growth why are all plants and flowers not poisonous?
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For some plants, getting eaten isn’t detrimental to their reproduction. They release their seeds/pollen/etc. once in their lifetime, and then after that it doesn’t really matter if they die. So as long as enough of them survive to the age where they release their reproductive material, then it’s fine if they get eaten and die. Plus many plants follow the “quantity over quality” reproductive strategy that many animals follow: just have a fuckton of babies, and even if most of them get killed because they’re defenseless, a lucky few will survive, and that’s good enough. It’s sometimes not worth evolving strong defenses from predators. Sometimes its better to just pour all your energy into having as many kids as possible.
But also as the other commenter said: all of life is an evolutionary arms race. You evolve some camouflage, your predator evolves keener eyes. You evolve to hide in holes, your predator evolves claws that can dig. This process never stops. No species looks the same today as it did a hundred million years ago. Evolving to be poisonous can usually only work for a time. Eventually the predators will evolve to be immune to the poison. If being poisonous were a fool-proof 100% guarantee of survival, then sure all plants would do it. But it isn’t. Some animals can eat the poison.
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