If spice is supposed to be a plants method of defence, why does it taste good?
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Humans are weird. Birds don’t have the receptors for capsaicin, the chemical that feels spicy, so they don’t care. The theory is that peppers evolved to discourage mammals from eating them, because mammals typically have grinding molars that can destroy the seeds. The birds that eat peppers won’t destroy the seeds and will just poop them out.
No mammal/* other than humans *likes* spicy food. Scientists studied dogs in areas where spicy food is an important part of the culture. The dogs were fed table scraps, which were often spicy. That meant the dogs would have been exposed over generations and may possibly have acquired the taste.
They did not. Given the choice, these dogs would *always* choose food that was not spicy first. They *would* tolerate spicy food when no other food was available – unlike a control group which would avoid the spicy food. But none of the dogs willingly chose spicy food over bland food.
Humans are *weird*.
/* The only other mammal is a tree shrew in China. Genetic tests show that due to a mutation they, like birds, do not have the receptors for capsaicin (or a lot fewer of them) so they are unaffected or less affected by the chemical.
To all other mammals (and arguably most humans) spicy food does *not* taste good.
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