Or they produce it exactly because animals are entertained by it to spread its spores. Or it's random. Or who the hell knows. 🤷♂️
Psychedelic mushrooms likely developed their "magical" properties to trip up fungi-munching insects, suggests new research
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180227115548.htm
Scientists. Scientists are who knows.
Yes, in that way. Scientists can't say something is true for sure. You can argue (correctly) that gravity has more evidence backing it up. It's the accepted theory that gravity works the way it does because it lines up with every observation made involving it.
In the same exact way, psylocybin being produced by mushrooms to deter predators (certain insects in particular) comports with every observation made about it and explained with the same theories of evolution that lead to similar results with organisms producing chemicals all over the animal kingdom. Like gravity, it's bad science to say it like an absolute fact, but it's likely based on all available data.
These things usually aren't random. It takes energy for the organism to make it, so there's usually some evolutionary advantage.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. Every time I see this meme or versions of it I die a thousand times. Mushrooms are the penises of fungus who jizz peacefully in the wind. They WANT to be eaten. Spores travel far.
Psilocybin, if anything, is probably adapted to be attractive to other animals.
Just like peppers, a sort of odd evolution when humans come into play.
Peppers devolved capsaicin to keep mammalian herbivores from eating them and grinding the seeds up. Birds have no capsaicin receptors, happily poop whole seeds everywhere.
Along come humans. "Let's grown and refine that shit!"
I've been using one of the hottest sauces I've had in a long time. It's called Satan Revenge made with ghost peppers. I'm in so much pain when and after eating it. It's good stuff.
Human: I outsmarted every plant with this MO; no toxic plant can defeat me.
Manchineel Tree: Challenge accepted.
"Challenge accepted"
-Unknown person
When ingested, the fruit is reportedly "pleasantly sweet" at first, with a subsequent "strange peppery feeling ... gradually progress[ing] to a burning, tearing sensation and tightness of the throat." Symptoms continue to worsen until the patient can "barely swallow solid food because of the excruciating pain and the feeling of a huge obstructing pharyngeal lump."
Given the medical/psychological benefits being explored, it could even be "Your resistance only makes me stronger".
Peppers want to be eaten by birds. Birds love that shit, and the pepper seeds love the bird shit they'll be in after passing through the digestive tract.
The Botany of Desire is a fantastic book and also documentary that discusses, in some part, plants being desirable to humans as a selective force. Plant species that humans value have a higher likelihood of surviving because we use them for agriculture, ensuring their ongoing existence. Everything from tea to teonanácatl!
Millipedes ·('m toxic, nobody will hurt me", Lemurs "Good stuff"
Or those fungi are farming us so we keep spreading and growing them for psychoactive abilities