Hot Stuff

It's weird when you may learn something new.

Imagine, for a moment, a chili pepper. Jalapeno, bell, habanero, ghost...there are a large variety. Chilis are what the aboriginal Americans named them (Aztecs?), and the "pepper" was thrown on the end by Columbus. Having taken a lot of money to go on a sailing voyage to find black pepper---and other spices---Columbus noticed that many chilis are spicy, some as hot as holy hell, and claimed that he found a version of what he was looking for.

Anyway, the active ingredient in chilis that makes them hot is called capsaicin, and there's a naming connection to the genus Capsicum, the nightshade family of plants that are the chilis themselves.

This is what I learned about the hot stuff:

Capsaicin, in mammals, produces the sensation that your mouth is actually on fire, rather, it tells the brain that your mouth is actively burning.

Birds, contrarily, suffer no such sensation, and enjoy the botanical fruits just like us, but without all the mouth burning.

The reason makes sense and is obvious once you hear why: mammals, ones that eat vegetation anyway, have grinding teeth, and the chewing action destroys the seeds; birds don't have the grinding teeth, and apparently the gizzards don't threaten the seeds, and so they pass through mostly intact.

Mouth on fire, people!