Why Avocado Seeds Are so Ridiculously Large
Who swallows avocado seeds?
Fruits are nature’s way of convincing animals to swallow seeds. The point of that is of course for the seeds to hitch a ride to places far away from the mother plant — places where seeds may eventually end up being deposited in a pile of nutrient-rich dung, germinate, and grow into a plant of their own, thereby claiming new land for their species.
This all makes sense enough for apples, watermelons, grapes, and countless other fruits. But if you’ve ever tried to swallow an avocado seed, you’ve probably realized that there’s a problem:
That’s right. You’ll die of asphyxiation with that egg-sized seed stuck in your throat.
This inevitably raises some questions. Why are avocado seeds so chokingly large? Is it because corpses are particularly good fertilizers and it helps an avocado tree if dead animals pile up under its canopy? Or is there some other reason?
Volkswagen beetles and giant Chewbaccas
The size of avocado seeds is what’s called an evolutionary anachronism — a trait that evolved to interact with…
