Eli5: why do chilli plants turn red to attract animals to disperse seeds but also produce the spicy chemical to put them off?
In: 6541
Evolution doesn’t “do” things for any particular effect or reason. It just does things (mutations). Some of those things fail, and some work. Apparently both of those mutations happened to work and those variations survived. They didn’t “turn red to attract animals”… the red ones attracted some animals, and some of those animals were not bothered by the spicy chemicals so those plants lived to reproduce.
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