Chile Birds

All wild chile plants bear ferociously hot pods which stick up above the leaves so birds can see them. That’s because in nature, chile seeds are mostly spread in bird droppings. This is so well known that tiny, very hot chiles are known as “bird peppers” in countless languages.

You’d think the fact that birds must like hot chiles, but scientists seem to find this idea vaguely scandalous. About 20 years ago, a zoologist actually argued that parrots’ well-known taste for chiles is attributable to an evolutionary contract: Central American parrots agreed to spread chile seeds if Central American chile plants would make parrot flesh taste bad to mammals.

The starts to look silly when you ask which mammals parrots are afraid of. (Bats? Flying squirrels?) Even worse, it turns out that not just parrots but all sorts of birds, all around the world, have a taste for chiles. A couple of years ago, researchers at Texas A&M; drove the final nail in the coffin by putting chiles in chicken feed to see whether chickens could be internally pre-spiced, as it were. But when the chickens were cooked, they didn’t taste spicy.

Possibly chile plants just want to keep mammals from eating the pods. But why should they bother? Birds beat mammals to most fruits as it is. And anyway, why wouldn’t chile plants want animals to spread their seeds? Senseless prejudice?

Of course, birds might actually like something about chile peppers. About 20 years ago, some scientists tried to check out this possibility by injecting red-winged blackbirds with chile extract to see whether this would make them prefer chile-flavored water, but it was a badly designed test that proved nothing, apart from the fact that red-winged blackbirds hate it when you rub chiles in their eyes. One day we may find out what birds like about chiles, and it might just be what we like--the thrill of the burn.