Edit: looking at all the elaborate replies, I cannot help being amazed. Here I thought the Fedi is overrepresented by computer geeks (such as yours truly) but obviously they've got NOTHING on the biologically inclined here! ๐Ÿฅฐ๐Ÿ˜

If poisonous mushrooms are poisonous because it is advantageous for the survival of the specific species, are non poisonous mushroom relatively speaking weaker, less well equipped for the furthering of their species? I suppose that the ability to survive and further a species is multifaceted and that being poisonous or the lack thereof is just one of many parameters?

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[โ€“] 29 points 1 day ago (5 children)

There are some flaws in the common understanding of survival of the fittest, but I will ignore that for now.

Poison is usually energy intensive to make, so there is an investment from the mushroom in being harder to eat. If there is not a strong pressure from predators, or the mushroom adopts a different strategy like making tons of fruiting bodies (mushrooms), it might not be worth the cost to make the poison.

Finally, poison doesn't automatically win the evolutionary race. We eat tons of stuff that the plant/mushroom intended to be a deterrent or poison (why are peppers spicy?).

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  • [โ€“] 24 points 1 day ago* (2 children)

    Excellent points would also like to add that sometimes passing through a digestive system is also part of the process. Hot peppers are actually a really good example of this. When a bird eats the pepper, it doesn't digest the seeds and it shits them out everywhere while it's flying. Mammals, by contrast, usually do digest / destroy the seeds. So capsaicin (the thing that makes the pepper hot) actually targets a receptor that mammals have and birds don't. You can actually buy squirrel deterring birdseed that's coated with capsaicin, but sometimes the squirrels just develop a taste for spiciness.

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  • [โ€“] 3 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    THC is also a detterant

    it's usually not good for your survival if you're stoned (if you're a wild animal)

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