Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain Stuff lorn vogoba here. Back before pumpkin pies were even a glimmer in the eyes of Bakers, Eistocene era mastodons, mammoths and giant sloths were spreading the seeds of these fruit far and wide. Anywhere that these huge animals, collectively known as megafauna roamed would become a dumping ground, if you'll pardon the pun. Before these seeds of pumpkins squash and other members of the genus Cucurbetta, which would then
spring up from those seeds. But while these wild fruits were nourishing giant animals, these ancestral pumpkins were not yet part of the diet of humans or smaller animals due
to the plant's toxicity and better taste. A study by an international group of researchers who looked at Gordon squash seeds in Mastodon dung has shown that the extinction of megafauna about twelve thousand years ago lead in a rather roundabout way, to the evolution of Cucurbitda from the toxic and bitter into the pasty pumpkins and other winter squash that we enjoy for Thanksgiving, and which in turn evolved into the now ubiquitous pumpkin spice lattes, beers, and ice creams.
Though note that there is a difference between pumpkin flavoring and pumpkin spice flavoring. The latter may be made up with fall pie spices like allspice, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg, and have no actual pumpkin flavoring involved. But how could the extinction of megafauna back then a lad us even in a roundabout way to autumn's most used fall flavor. Now, I think of coevolution, that is, when two or more species mutually affect each other's evolution. For the article, this
episode is based on How Stuff Works. Spoke with Lee Newsom, co author of the studying question and an associate professor of anthropology at and State. She said, there's a whole suite of plants that have co evolved. It's called dispersal mutualism. With animals, there's a large number that are co evolved with mammals. Some just hitch a ride on mammal fur
then ultimately fall off somewhere. The fruit of other plants, such as the wild gourds that giant sloths and wooly rhinos chowed on, are eaten and their seeds expelled, maybe miles from where the original plant grew. Imagine automobile sized mastodons running rampant across the environment of what's now North Florida and Georgia, eating wild gourds, then expelling seeds which are still lodged in the dung that Newsome and her
team found and studied. As the environment warmed following the most recent ice age and the large mammals became extinct, Newsome explained, quote the plants were left without their primary partner and disperser, but enter a new partner us and Nuson explained, by then humans were present, and we're starting to make use of wild gourds and squash for containers, and ultimately humans are planting the seeds and changing them. As the plants evolved, it adapted to the new environment.
Smaller animals found that some of the cucurbidda didn't taste as bitter anymore. Over that dozen millennia that have passed since the end of the place to see an ice age, wild gourds and squash evolved into the tasty foods we eat today. So next time you're chowing down on a pumpkin pie, squash casserole, or pumpkin spice latte, remember the mastodons and they're dung. Without the demise of megafauna, pumpkins might have remained bitter and unpleasant to our palate and
would have a much less flayorful diet. Today's episode is based on the article Mastodons and mammoths gave their lives so you could have pumpkin spice latte on house to Works dot Com, written by Karen Kirkpatrick. Brain Sets production of I Heart Radio and partnership with has stuff works dot Com, and it is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.