Everyone Was Wrong About Avocados - Including Us
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- Опубліковано 18 гру 2023
- If you’re a fan of avocados, you might have heard that they only exist thanks to prehistoric creatures called giant ground sloths. In fact, you’ve probably heard that from us. But as it turns out, the real story is way more complicated - so here's Hank to break down the avocado fact and fiction.
Hosted by: Hank Green (he/him)
*We looked at both paleontological and archaeological evidence for this video, and in a couple places we said one when we meant the other, sorry!*
Corrections:
2:41 This should be “the fossil record”
4:28 This should be "Paleontologists analyzed"
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Sources:
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Hey! So many nice comments! The SciShow team did a kickass job on this and I love them so much and, legitimately, if you want to help us out you can do that! You can join the over 3000 people who are our patreon patrons who, together, make up roughly 30% of the budget of this channel.
Honestly, if I were you, here's what I'd do. I'd start at the $15 per month tier and I'd gobble up some of the OVER NINETY blooper reels we have, then I'd scale back to the $8 tier so I could get through the over 50 episodes of our patron-only podcast (including TONS of episodes of "after hours" a SciShow podcast where we talk about stuff that's a little too...y'know...for UA-cam), and then, once I was done with those, I'd move to the $2 per month feed so I could make sure I was still supporting and get access to the Patron-only news feed.
www.patreon.com/scishow
I know $2 per month doesn't seem like a lot, but it's literally hundreds of times more than we make from advertising per person!
Thank you so much to all of our patrons who support what we do and make all of this free for everyone! Roughly 3000 people making a show that it loved by millions...the true MVPs.
Thanks for reading through all of this!
Hank
Y'know what, I think I'll do exactly that!
I think I'll sign up right now and consume some of that amazing bonus content and while I'm doing it I'm going to think, "OH MY GOSH! WHY DIDN'T I DO THIS SOONER!!!"
@@vlogbrothers Heck yeah! Me too!!!
Haha this has a real Spider-Man pointing meme about it 👆😂
And when I'm no longer dependent on disability stipends, I will definitely be doing this again 🙂
Great research - but, a detail:
03:11. If you are including Mylodon in the story, then you should have included Chile and Bolivia in the map. Mylodon Darwini was discovered by *the* Darwin in Bahía Blanca, Argentina, but an important site is the Cueva del Milodón in Chile, and remains have been also found in the Ñuapua Formation, Bolivia.
Edit. Suggestion. First, thanks for listing the sources. Could you put first, mark specially, highlight the source that provided the main idea of the video? In this case, *someone* must have realized the sloth attribution mishap and wrote a paper about it. That person deserves an award. If it was you/your team, you must write the paper and win an award. Checking sources is something people rarely do. ✊
always love the "WE WERE WRONG BUT LETS LEARN WHY" videos!
Yes! On so many levels. Science is not dogmatic or beholden to tradition. Science gets to call itself out when the people practicing it metaphorically throw up their hands and say we made a boo-boo. Either way, guacamole!
+
That's the great thing about science. Ideas change when new evidence is found or when someone decides "Hey, we don't have a lot of evidence for this. Has anyone followed up on it since the paper was published?"
It's also why a lot of religious people think science is unreliable. "It keeps changing all the time!"
Yeah, of course it changes. That's the strength of science. The ability to test ideas repeatedly and change our minds according to the evidence.
Make your case @@dariusrelic8590
@@glenngriffon8032 but it’s like a double edged sword because people can become skeptical or distrustful of new findings especially if they contradict earlier findings
The fact that SciShow created a new video, to correct something erroneous from an old video, rather than just unlist it, is truly honest and ought to be appreciated. Evidence-based reporting is really what science should be about!
They disproved their old video AND unlisted it!
@@aaronsushinsky1310 exactly what the comment said? Thanks for the recap i guess?
@@2wr633It wasn’t totally clear in the original comment whether the unlisting also happened or not. I actually appreciated the second comment saying both happened.
@@KayKayBayForever i thought it would have been cleared because of the "we have now unlisted" from the video and the "rather than just unlist it" from the comment, but i can see where you are coming from
@@2wr633 I was reading the comments before finishing watching the video 😬
Hank is THE BEST communicator on UA-cam.... by far! His cadence, rhythm, emphasis, and flow are all SPOT ON for the most comprehensible educational videos! You should clone him.
And here, everybody, is how true science works. New knowledge corrects and/or add to old knowledge. Nicely done SciShow!
Except there was no 'old knowledge', only assumptions based on nothing. Masking it with science label is even worse than religion.
if they were so concerned with evidence based science they would have never of made the first video
That was the point, yes. This channel has nothing to do with science - easy blacklist decision.@@user-xj5xp6qz5g
@@alsto8298 Yes it is, this is a joke and distraction.
@@user-xj5xp6qz5g i'm sure you know it all what with having joined yt in dec 2023 you bound to be very wise, wise beyond your years.
The idea that a sloth is an omnivore... is kinda terrifying.
A lot of animals are omnifores when they are forced to. Even pandas.
Even horses can eat meat.
deer have been known to eat bird eggs out of nests when they can reach them. Most animals aren't gonna turn down a bit of easy protein. I suspect scavenger/opportunist is more likely than being an active hunter as far as ground sloths go, so you could probably outrun the thing.
@@telegramsam Deer is also known to eat live mice if they can catch them, as well as carcasses. Both primarily as a source of calcium due to the bones.
@@MicukoFelton All ungulates are known to atleast occasionally eat meat. Be it sheeps, deer, duikers, etc.
We love fact checking and corrections 🙌👏
69th like
Especially ones where the SciShow team gets to go full-on, deep-dive, mystery-solve, how-does-science-actually-work mode.
they should be honest about the vax
And then creationists use this as an opportunity to disprove science
@@SciShow but just because there is a lack of evidence, it's still a nice hypothesis that makes perfect sense, maybe one day we will find a cohesive explanation for the size of the seeds.
I love the fact that they came back, admitted they messed up and corrected the mistake and gave us an awesome factual update video.
Excellent episode! Humans were selectively breeding plants thru agro-forestry long before we realize!
So random to see you post here lol. Hey Dr Berry!
It's good to see Hank back in good health presenting SciShow!
His hair is looking good!
I kinda miss nerd Jason Statham
came here to say exactly that, score one win for the science team! welcome back
I'm glad that SciShow does stuff like this. "Hey, turns out we were wrong. Here's the information we have now." I love it. I wish more media had this kind of integrity
If only science as a whole had this kind of integrity.
@@InuranusBrokoff They try to, but it's turned into some giant money grab exercise, less than about the actual science.
Plenty of places do, just nobody reads the correction/retraction.
this is how science works, it is self correcting.
@@InuranusBrokoffWhat do you mean? You don't like 'science' fabricating and perpetuating absolute bullsht for the sole purpose of securing funding???
Well, I can't say it's not a little disappointing to learn that unimaginably large sloths didn't poop guacamole into existence. BUT I really, really appreciate that all the folks at SciSchow are so comfortable owning up to and correcting their mistakes. And I'm always happy to see ancient peoples getting the recognition they deserve for the ways they influenced our world.
This channel is so cool. I'm pretty sure I saw that video. I've never been so entertained while also being told that I was misinformed. It shows a lot about the channel when you can admit to being wrong, correct the misinformation, and still have people like the video.
SciShow, you're amazing!!
The pit of avocado can be baked and ground like flour. Perhaps they were bred to have larger pits because they wanted the storable flour and pits more than the highly spoilable flesh surrounding the pit. The annoyance we find at the size of modern avocado pits may have been actually considered the ideal specimen for early agrarians.
Western scientists: it's an enigma. Locals: it's used for x. Scientists: truly a mystery. We may never know. Locals: 🤨
I was thinking similar to this. The pit could have been carried by humans to other locations where it'd be planted for food. That explains the culture and stories about trees. Larger pits could just have been a selection pressure of humans trying to get them into further distances and soils.
I thought avocado pits were somewhat toxic, even to humans. Maybe I'm wrong.
@@AlexArthur94 They are very very mildly toxic to humans and extremely toxic to dogs
@@AlexArthur94 People already prepare and eat avocado pits. No one will be dying after eating avocado seeds unless they are allergic to some compound specifically. I've heard many myths about indigenous foods being poisonous spread and it saddens me because it discounts the many native plants we could be growing for food and resources but are told instead to plant monocrops not developed for the area and requiring massive amounts of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers to do so.
So what you're saying is it's more likely avocados were eaten *with* ground sloths, rather than *by* ground sloths.
Great. Now I'm craving a ground sloth burrito. Thanks.
So what you're saying is that the sloths were ground.
@@jeffbenton6183
= @ *
@@disguysn
= @ *
😹😹I had to read that 3 times before the penny dropped 😹😹😹
Respect to any media source who realizes they told a mistruth and correct it publicly and with detail.
I absolutely love when a channel here on UA-cam is able to admit they were wrong. It gives so much more credibility to you guys. Great job 🤘
This is exactly how science is.
Super and fabulous
Cringe...
Making claims based on no data?
Nice
@@MrDexter337 No, correcting claims that had been spread via interesting headlines but which had no actual data to back it up. Setting the record straight. Learning from past mistakes and improving. This video is a classic example of science working.
It's a huge green flag when my favorite educational influencers gain access to new information and make a video saying the old information is inaccurate and here's what's going on, instead of just brushing it off or doubling down.
If there is absolutely no evidence for the sloths dispersing avocado seeds, what info did Scishow even base their first video on? And is this video based on solid science? or are they just parroting edutainment articles again?
Ain't that the truth, AND the facts! :D Well said.
This video is exactly why science is so powerful - we learn from our mistakes rather than shying away from them. That is how you progress. Compare that to say religion where it's never wrong, never grows, never learns, never changes as, well, it was wrong from the outset. If you care about actual truth there is only one process that gets you there - science.
@@ross-carlsondude religion does change 🤣 whenever there’s a new thought process it branches off into its own thing, you just don’t look into it because you think you’re above it.
@@nuclearrsage7270 Yes, but each of the denominations insist that their God didn't change, they just found an interpretation "closer to the original intent".
Good to see Hank looking good and healthy, and spreading sciencey wisdom. Nice to have you back.
Respect for admitting wrong. Not many UA-cam channels or influencers can do that.
It's good to remember that, even in the age of science, humanity still largely tends to believe ad hoc explanations that make for a good story. Never forget that the core of the scientific method is trying to disprove your ideas and keeping those that survive inquiry, not shielding useful/popular ones from testing.
what can you do though, corporations and the majority of the population stick to ideas that don't change and scorn those that do. With how advanced our world is, it is still sadly very much against "real" science. Most of the average population that claims they like science, only like the sciency facts that are easy to recreate, fully understood and don't have a history of self-confliction. These people have no imagination. Dont spend your energy on these people, spend it on the ones with vast unbound imaginations and the willingness to be reckless with ideas.
It is - yet here we are
Yeah, when I heard this fact in particular I found it too farfetched and looked it up just to find that it indeed had no evidence supporting it. Also is the root of many myths like eating cholesterol=bad or the sodium one.
It’s this precise reasoning as to why I don’t understand the widespread modern acceptance of Darwinian evolution.
Take the title of his eponymous work “On the Origin of Species” at no point are the origin of species explained or even postulated at in a meaningful way, viewed with a lens made of our modern understanding of cell structure and genetics.
Huge parts of nature remain completely unexplained by evolutionary theory. Photosynthesis being the most egregious. Literally the foundation of the ecosystems we take for granted just appeared out of thin air (biologically speaking.)
@@fioredeutchmark Is there an alternative theory that has more evidence supporting it? A gap in understanding does not invalidate the buckets and buckets of evidence for evolution. Note that the title is not "On the Origin of Life"
This is exactly how science is. Always correcting itself.
correction: this is exactly how science SHOULD be, but sadly, often is not.
@@radiobabylon
Not "YET".
Science doesn't stop, but it's not remotely instant.
I thought the science was settled?
Almost like a candle in the dark, of a demon-haunted world...
If this was the case… my kids doctor wouldn’t be pushing a dangerous covid vaccine. But ‘science’ cough cough Pfizer profits are dwindling and doctors love kick backs
I appreciate the oops and the update.
Speculation based solely on personal observation during a long lifetime of having avocado trees in my yard:
I wonder if the increase in pit size might have nothing to do with animals of any kind, including humans, but might just be natural selection of the plant itself. When avocados reach the end of their season, the pits/seeds begin to sprout inside the fruit while it's still on the tree; then a lot of fruits fall at once. Some of these take root in the leaf mold and grow. What if a larger pit conveys an advantage in rooting and growing? That would result in larger pits over time.
Also, it doesn't require large animals to disperse avocado pits. Around here, gray squirrels and raccoons do an excellent job of dispersing avocado seeds, because they enjoy avocados as take-out food. You'd be surprised how easily a squirrel can carry an avocado half their size, though they look funny doing it. They will tote them a considerable distance to a spot where they can dine in comfort, unmolested.
Avocados are rich food, so lots of prehistoric animals might have distributed them. Why that would lead to bigger seeds, I don't know.
I don't know how many varieties of avocados you have in your yard. However, having lived in several places with avocado trees and several trees with different backgrounds due to my climate now, larger fruits have larger pips.
If you select for large fruits, you get larger pips (empirically). I don't know if fruit and pip size are genetically linked or just an accident, however .
@@duanesamuelson2256, that's true. But even on the same tree, there is a surprisingly wide variation in pit size. And sometimes a medium sized fruit will have one of those ginormous pits and you end up with a disappointing amount of the good stuff. And sometimes a large avocado has a small pit and lots of meat, and it's like, "Jackpot!" 😃
@@ixchelkali I'm waiting for an avocado , which like like some other fruits, has no pit 🤔..imagine 1 pound of that pure buttery meat.
Love that you learned something new that changed what you knew and told us. Positive vibes from New Hampshire, remember to be kind to each other and yourself during these trying times.
Wild avocados are fairly small. They’re a main food item for the Quetzel bird. It’s not that big, and it swallows the fruit whole, digests the flesh, and regurgitates the seeds.
Have you seen how big and tall the avocado trees will get, if left to their own devices (not pruned radically for cropping?) Well over 20 feet high.
@@Kayenne54 they meant the fruits are small, not the tree.
@@caitzs It was just an FYI comment. I did get that the fruits were very small. There's a very old avocado tree on the main island of Vanuatu (or was) - I saw fruit on it but they looked like the regular size. The tree, however, was well over 20 feet high and looked like it had no intention of stopping growing. I'd only ever seen orchard avocado trees, all lopped off. Kind of dropped my other comment in without explanation. Lol.
True. Now they’re all genetically modified for weight.
Quetzal*
And here I've spent all these years repeating this myth in a transparent attempt to appear smart and interesting. At least now I can start pedantically correcting others who repeat it in an even more transparent attempt to appear smart and interesting. Thanks SciShow!
😂😂😂
Not just correcting others, but now you have to come clean to all those people and correct yourself 😉
I'm in this comment and i don't like it 😅
😂
I've told the megafauna avo story many times. thanks for reeducating me on it.
Great update! The idea that Mayans planted "reborn people" trees is quite touching. What a nice cultural practice.
Offset against the human sacrifice rituals. Yin and Yang.
The fact I have the same UA-cam Recommendations as @Dollightful is a pleasant surprise for my 2023 Bingo 😊
Quite a stark contrast to their barbaric human sacrifices.
It reminds me of the Pequeninos ritual from Speaker for the Dead
@@rosihantu1 Thats the aztecs, mayans didnt do human sacrifice.
Love the fact that you guys take the time (and have the humility) to accept having made a mistake. The pursuit of facts is awesome ... Could you look into other questionable studies, such as the one that led to sodium being shunned by most societies, or the whole "vitamin A" is great for eyesight? Thanks for your hard work!
I like this. But it also gets me asking what are the standards to get something published scientifically and how have they changed over time? That seems like something good to know for research purposes
Wasn't Vitamin A is great for eyesight a WWII disinformation plot to cover up why Allied flyers gunmanship at night was so much better than the German pilots?
I can actually give a brief summary of the latter, in a somewhat related story.
Carrots being good for your eyes was used as the official explanation for why British night fighters were able to successfully intercept german bombers during the Battle Of Britain. The real reason, radar, wasn't fully understood by Germany at the time, and was classified. So the official story became that their night fighter pilots ate a lot of carrots (which were also a very plentiful foodstuff during rationing.)
@@zethcrownett2946 That can vary between fields and also the type of paper. There is a lot of variation, and of course things do change over time. They only way to know what happened is to read the original papers, and know what their intended purpose was. It's also very possible that it was an example or clearly speculative. Some papers are really just to promote further research and ask questions. To say that the entire set of standards was lower when this rumor started is kind of like the rumor itself. It really has no evidence for the claim.
@@zethcrownett2946Also, you should always see if anyone else has reproduced the results. It's always possible that by some random chance some results are observed.
The part of this equation I don't see mentioned is the fact that avocados and many other seeds don't grow 'true to seed', meaning the fruit of a seed generated plant is very unlike the fruit of the parent plant. The, perhaps, most common example of this is a crab apple tree growing from the seed of a orchard grown, delicious apple. The odds of getting an avocado with fruit like the parent plant are roughly 10,000 to 1.
The fact that you guys erased Ecuador from the map left me speechless 😂 3:08
Mr. HANK GREEN is back at it again as a survivor of his Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and he looks as if nothing ever happened, he defeated cancer and brushed it off as another bump in the road and I am happy that the world still has this legendary science guy. The world wouldn’t be the same without you Hank, you just keep being you. ❤❤❤
THIS is why I trust scishow. Every retraction, correction, and update video only gives me MORE faith in you all, because youre willing to admit when you're wrong. Willing, even, to loudly broadcast that fact in the title of the video. You could have simply unlisted the video, or done a community post that not so many people would see, but instead you make the active choice to tell the world you were wrong. I admire and appreciate you all so much, thank you for your work and for the years you've spent educating me and making the world a richer place for me to exist in because i know and understand more about it.
years later to a completely different audience after doing a science based video on a science based channel without doing the proper research first... Not sure why that makes them more trustworthy, but I've been losing faith in people on the internet for a decade now, so I'm not really that surprised that people think someone not doing research for years on a topic they claim authority in is somehow commendable... What an absolutely ludicrous stance...
I love people/companies/etc. that are constantly striving for evidence backed research, and can admit when they’ve made a mistake. Thank you ❤
Technically the avocado is a berry. But like bananas and oranges (which are also berries) it’s generally accepted to call them a fruit.
In addition there are many other seeds that have evidence of being spread by animals, but the evidence of what animal has been lost. Honey Locust, Osage Orange, and Canistal are in this list.
Botanically, berries are a subset of fruits. So they (technically) are both.
I had an Anthro professor 15 years ago who also doubted the giant sloth theory, and not based on sloth data, but anthropological research. It just made more scientific sense. I guess the other side of the puzzle came together. That's what I love about science.
My anthro prof proved that avocados came from slow moving hipsters, not sloths. An honest mistake we still make to this day..
My chem 120 prof had a slide and a whole 5 minute rant about modern science ignoring glaring evidence that the KT (dinosaur) extinction wasn't just an asteroid, and that valcanos had actually been a root cause of basically every mass extinction. Now, more and more lines of evidence are pointing that way. Specifically, while the asteroid was the nail in the coffin there was a lot of other ecological turmoil going on that was starting the massive die-off, and this is common amongst all the mass extinctions, some massive eruption with some final match that kicks it all off.
@@kindlin
So like the Year Without Summer for humans in certain parts of the northern hemisphere.
@@fluidthought42 Yeah, except the whole world.
@@kindlin
Well lots of species aren't as ah prolific as modern humans are. If a species was entirely centered around Europe/North America during that time period though I wouldn't be surprised if it died out during that time period.
Good on you guys for owning up to accidental myth-spreading like this!
That said, "agroforestry"? I'd definitely like to learn more about that.
Agroforestry sounds like a scientific name for man-eating trees
What little I know: when we talk about cultivated crops, we tend to think about fields of the same plant like corn fields. This packs crops densely, making them easier to tend and maximizes land use. This is fine for grasses but not for trees native to tropical forests, like coffee and rubber. These grow healthier when raised among other species of trees.
I have no specific examples for coffee, but Fordlandia failed, in part, because planting rubber trees densely allows diseases to spread faster. (Fordlandia is an interesting tale about how theory can be defeated by reality.)
Food forests are starting to be a bit better known and popular.
ive been learning about it, the natives of the americas did not dominate their enviorment for farming. their methods were far more enviormentally friendly and even better, they used less labor. because the used the natural systems to their advantage, it took less labor to farm.
modern methods of farming destroyed the natural systems and replaced it with human labor.
while this system leveraged the existing natural systems to do the work for you.
and there is nothing preventing us from applying automation to this system. it would need vastly different machines than the ones used for modern farming, but we can invent new machines.
Look into permaculture and food forests.
The pit in the thumbnail had a frowny face. That was awesome.
I really appreciate that you guys admitted you were wrong. This is how science works and improves. A lot of people and organizations don't admit their mistakes.
I can't help but wonder if modern sloths enjoy the taste of modern avocados. 🤔
dollightful in the comments of a hank green video is like the wildest whiplash crossover for me all year omg (said with love
what taste? Avocados taste like nothing with a texture of lard, worst of both worlds.
@@ergodoodle1951No, no, no... Avocados _distinctly_ taste like acid reflux burps.
@@ergodoodle1951you're supposed to make guac man, not eat by itself what kind of animal are you?
Only one way to find out!
Seeing Hank in what appears to be in great shape, just made my day. I haven't watched the chanel in some time and I'm glad I did.
I believe he was officially declared cancer free by his doctor!
This is great. I love the honesty and obeisance to science. I'm already looking forward to the possible future video entitled "We Were Wrong About Being Wrong About Avocados". ❤
I'M A NERD AND HAVE NEVER, EVER, EVER HEARD OF THE IDEA OF FRUIT AND SEEDS INFLUENCING WHAT EATS THEM. NEVER, EVER, EVER HEARD OF SUCH CRAP BEFORE NOW. Evolution is a LOT more complicated than that.
Always a fan of the transparency of “we were wrong.” Takes significant strength of character when then other option is just to disappear old material and pretend it never happened.
Well, the usual non-popular science method is to retract a deficient paper, leaving a retraction notice in its place.
@@spvillano I’m not sure what field of science you’re in, but in the journals I read, absolute best practice is to mark each page with “RETRACTED” stamped in a bold font in the diagonal, and RETRACTED will appear before the title, somewhere at the top of the page, and a retraction notice will either be printed in full before the paper begins, or a link will be there to read. Unfortunately, many journals just mark pages and have a small “retracted” somewhere at the top of the page. …if articles were really pulled down, Wakefield would have done so much less damage. 🫤
Mesoamericans are also responsible for the artificial selection of maize, growing the seeds from a mini-grass to the modern corn-cob. That is another great video you could make. I love how this video revindicates their ancient influence. You don't need giant fauna, you could see a modern pig, cow or horse feast on the whole avocados. There's an interesting story about how the "good" fat of avocados was discovered by pigs who were fed with avocado pits and skin didn't produce as much bacon.
Lean pork. And the mystery develops. How about for old time lean chicken feed? I'm not a big fan of eating blubber and unnecessary fat, it's like eating wild game. You still need those fats though, ever hear of rabbit starvation? Not enough fat and heart failure. Kidney problems.
Humans are a part of nature, so humans selecting a naturaly occurring glitch in the genome and replanting it cause they like it, is still natural selection.
Thanks lol@@wackocheese
Glad you’re feeling better Hank
I wouldn't be surprised if the reason was that humans started to create games using the pits as balls and started to select fruits with bigger and rounder pits for propagation.
My grandfather was a life long farmer, he thought the “bigger” seeds that a plant has the more likely it was able to “survive” to germinate and then maybe able to make more seeds, assuming the seeds were not “too” appetizing to animals. He had lots of large oaks seeds on his farm…
I read a book about how early humans domesticated a lot of things, and in the chapter on wheat the author argued that we didn't really select for the traits that make domesticated wheat different, we more applied an evolutionary pressure that resulted in those things happening on their own. The reason that wheat kernels were bigger, the author argued, was that the bigger seeds have a huge advantage in the critical time just around germination, which allows them to out-compete. In a natural setting this is countered by the fact that the bigger seeds are more likely to get eaten. But once humans started chasing away the birds, the bigger seeds just took over. So your grandfather was in good company with that argument. (I'm not sure how well it would carry over to trees though).
Oak seeds?...
Acorns?
@@AtlasReburdened 😊👍I really should proof read…
Your grandfather was mostly right - bigger seeds generally means the seeds are fully developed, and fully developed seeds are more able to survive to grow healthy plants. And they're also far more appealing to animals. I'd imagine that he, as a life long farmer, had a lot more criteria than "bigger" when he was looking at the seeds, but size is probably the easiest criteria to literally filter for and probably the best one to pass down to a relative who isn't likely to be dependant on farming for his livelihood.
Yeah, that sounds reasonable.
Science paper publishers - and youtubers - are too quick to publish unfounded 'slothwash' if it supports their worldview.
The seeds getting bigger due to human intervention makes so much more sense than giant ground sloths. It is a form of human assisted evolution; just like how in a couple of hundred years of selective breeding of dogs, we get to the point we have today of hundreds of species of dogs. Even the ones that would not naturally survive in the wild like the pugs.
Human assisted evolution is called artificial selection (just so you know the term for it for future reference, I'm not trying to be a smart ass lol), and yes, we did contribute to a lot of changes in the ecosystem that wouldn't happen without our influence.
We don't have hundreds of species of dogs. Dogs are all part of the same species. Usually considered a separate one from wolves, from which they evolved thanks to human intervention, yes, but still only one species.
What do you mean, “the pug wouldn’t survive in the wild”? There’s literally wild pug populations in parts of South and Central America.
I think more remarkable about some dog breeds is that we made them so that now they have to live with sometimes painful disabilities, just because someone thought it would look cute.
@@SLYKMthat's only the term for intentional changes, right? I know that is what was mentioned, I'm just curious if it also describes different animals evolution because of humans, but without our intention.
It's wonderful to see you in Sci-Show videos!
I never imagined I'd be this surprised to learn about fossilized poop 😅
There is really a lot of avocado varieties in Mexico. I'm from the southern State of Oaxaca and there we have a type of avocado that you can eat with the skin on, since the skin is really thin and soft. Also, very tasty, one of my favorite kind of avocado.
That’s so cool
Cómo se llama?
@@davidaltamirano6828 Aguacate criollo es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aguacate_criollo
That would be very popular if you could share that with more people
@northernmetalworker Maybe the thin skin makes it hard to transport for any long distance, making it more of a local treat? I know some fruit varieties in Mediterranean are like that: Lovely taste, but they spoil fast after being picked.
This is what I appreciate about this channel. When you make a mistake or a connection between things that aren't connected you're willing to correct it. Far too many who call themselves scientists and say things with certainty bordering on arrogance. Thank you
Actually this is just an example of the Scientific Process. It's not that they don't make mistakes. It is that they CORRECT them when they find them. They don't double down and think up other lies to support their claims.
@@shakeyj4523 I know correcting an error is part of the scientific process. The thing is it's a part of that process that some others seem to want to ignore
SCIENCE!!! Self correcting and immune to dogma.
@@TheQuickSilver101 Humans are humans. That is why there is peer review.
"Science was wrong AGAIN!"... - Science deniers everywhere - That's when I come back with my "Yeah, but that's what's cool about the scientific method" argument ...They scrutinize new evidence with peer reviews and such, to leave us with the latest, greatest information as it becomes available" statement. @@shakeyj4523
Never been happier for a video update on one I saw long ago
I had an avocado grove and I can tell you what animal eats avocados: Coyotes and other dogs. The coyotes would jump as high as possible to grab the avocados that hung near the ground. They would then carry them away to peel off the bitter peel, eat the oily fruit and then leave the seeds where they finished. My dog loved them too and he would also jump as high as he could to get them. If they weren’t ripe yet he would bury them until they softened then carefully push the peel away from a small hole he bit to start peeling them, eating the fruit as he went. When he was done he would have a flat peel with the round seed in the middle. He often would carry that seed around playing with it until in fell in half. So the seeds got widely dispersed by these dogs without them actually eating the seeds.
This makes sense when you see the sheer variety of Avocados in southern Mexico. So many sizes, shapes, colors, and textures.
I just wanted to add, a lot of wild avocado species are anywhere between the size of a small cherry to the size of a crab apple and have pits that at largest barely rival a marble. There’s also some evidence that a lot of the larger fruited wild avocados may not naturally be that large but rather they are feral trees that escaped cultivation at some point, sort of akin to the feral apple trees you see throughout North America and Europe.
Feral trees is such an awesome term. And also funny, you don't think of plants escaping the farm 😂
@@kyrab7914 I live in Australia. There are SOOO many plants that were introduced by the colonists that have gone feral, although they are more commonly referred to as invasive species or weeds. That includes trees and shrubs such as elder, gorse, and broom, not just thistles, hemlock, blackberry, and other herbaceous plants.
@fionaanderson5796 wow I didnt know you had all of that over there! Sounds like ireland. Lots of things I thought were native to Ireland aren't too. Like fuchsias which grow wild all over Cork in the hedgerows are not at all native.
@@Padraigp yep, every nasty, spiny, invasive thing the colonists could bring, they did.
We also have a growing problem with agapanthus which were introduced as an easy care garden ornamental and are now taking over hillsides and waterways. They are almost impossible to exterminate, especially when you're talking of having to manually dig them out of hundreds of square kilometers of steep, inaccessible native forest.
From memory, fuchsias are native to China/northern Asia, along with camellias, rhododendrons, azaleas, yellow/orange roses, and most citrus. Most of those were introduced to the British Isles, Europe, and the various colonies during the eras when "Chinoiserie" was super trendy - Regency and Victorian, and even Elizabethan to some degree.
@@Padraigp oh, talking of hedgerows, we also have heaps of hawthorn that was planted as hedging around paddocks, and holly, willow, English ivy, oaks, radiata pine (it's American, but out competing our native pines in areas where it was grown in plantations for building timbers).
Thanks for setting the record straight --and de-listing the mistaken video. I know I can rely on SciShow's integrity
I have found a few large avocados with small pits. I have also found small avocados that barely have a green peel around a massive pit
So much respect for the honesty of this channel.
I’ve always wondered what animal mangos were meant for
Right? 😂😂😂😂
If the ones that fall around here are anything to go by, it's rats.
Giant ground flatworms.
Turns out we have a bunch of these evolutionary anachronisms (as they are called) due to the very recent mass extinction at the Holocene epoch. Lots of megafauna died out, potentially at the hand of humans, change in climate and loss of habitat. So could have been anything, given the location of the mango, perhaps something like an elephant species?
It is sad how megafauna are pretty fragile like that, just look at how hard our current rhinos, elephants and whales are having it and how few of them there are.
Monkeys, of course, aka you...
0:50 Another problem with this idea comes to mind. Ground Sloths went extinct _before_ humans invented agriculture and started propagating the avocados. So during that time period in-between, _who_ was pooping out those avocado pits???
I'm gonna guess we humans bred the avocado to be so large. [I'm not far into the video yet.] It's pretty much the usual explanation for why any of our food-crops are so unnaturally weird [bananas].
Thanks for all your great advice. I really enjoy watching your videos, they provide a lot of knowledge and are very helpful on a daily basis in choosing food when shopping, etc. Thank you ❤✨
My respect for your team grew when I found out Hank was sick.
It really grew today, when you admitted you made a mistake and not only put in the work to find out the absolute truth but to also acknowledge that mistakes happen and life goes on.
Working while sick should not merit admiration.
Also, Wouldn't those giant sloths with their giant teeth and massive jaw muscles just grind those pits into pesto?
Avocado pits are incredibly soft as far as seeds go and there's no way they would survive chewing. Most seeds meant to survive herbivores ingesting them are rock hard to prevent destruction but also deter animals from trying to chew them up.,
@@AustinLeRoux So it was crap theory from the jump.
Yeah, but then we would still have found evidence of chewed up avocado seeds in fossilized sloth poop, right? If I remembee correctly, they did not find any evidence of that.
@raskov75 well it would probably get spat out like grape or mellon seeds because its really bitter and not a fun thing to chew on
@@maxgucciardi4507 Doesn't really check out, because the point of animal dispersal is to get some distance between the parent plant and the new plant, which requires the animal to swallow the seed.
Massive respect for correcting the record when you get things wrong - this is why we know we’re can trust SciShow! 👍👌
Best part of science is that it never stops testing/researching. Thanks for the updated understanding.
The worst part is that it will perpetuate rubbish and make up complete falsehoods to secure funding. A beautiful cancer, isn't it.
I just love the fact that you have unlisted your previous video on the subject! It show such a willingness to be critical about your previous work that really is impressive and makes me respect you more as an informatinon source. Thank you!
Came to hate working with avocados in a restaurant kitchen. They are either rock hard thus jamming the Robot-Coupe or 15-minutes away from turning into a brown semi-liquid mess. After processing they have to be kept in a vacuum because they oxidize so quickly. Plus they're not as versatile as tomatoes as other foodstuffs
But they taste amazing
I think that's the species you have available. I don't love them either (my palette is underdeveloped) but we have at least 3 varieties,. They are larger than I see in North American grocery stores, smooth skinned, can be cut and last up to 2 days. I use them as substitutes for butter, (just reduce the amount of the outer green layer that enters your dish ).
Post avocado processing stress, or PAPS.
Refrigerating them as soon as they ripen will prolong their shelf life. It's never 100% though, as some just seem to go bad overnight.
I work in Restaurants for 30 years, you can make a hard avocado soft by heating it in an oven or a microwave. Look on UA-cam, find the way that is best for your use.
What an excellent narrator! Lively, natural, humorous and great diction. Some narrators are stilted and artificial sounding, but this man is the polar opposite. I’ve subscribed largely because of the narrator, but also because the material is interesting. Thanks, SciShow!
Hank Green is absolutely wonderful, both in front of the camera and behind the keyboard.
A+ journalistic integrity, all about it. I'm also glad that Hank specified that the offending video was taken down
I'd like to thank you for correcting yourselves, it's honestly quite a heroic act in this age of misinformation. Few have the strength to say "I was wrong" and you did so (I'm assuming) with no significant pressure from your audience. Bravo!
Walnuts are as big as avocado pits, but I used to regularly pick up walnut shells in the middle of fields with no trees in sight. It really was surprising how often I found them in the middle of nowhere! (All the more so since your infernal grey squirrels took over and eat every nut long before it has any chance to get ripe. :( )
However, walnut fruits are different in design. They are intended for scatter-hoarders, i.e. animals (squirrels, mice, corvids) that hoard nuts for the winter. Avocados, on the other hand, are intended for internal diapersal, i.e. being swallowed whole, whereafter the pit gets excreted in a pile of dung. The dispersal mechanisms are fundamentally different. Something must have dispersed avocados and relatives (genus Persea). This aomething mustn't have been sloths, but there are plenty more candidates. And since we know that some of the large-fruited, wild relatives of the avocado do not do very well, it is likely that the original ideal disperser is gone now.
@@gutemorcheln6134 How do you know the fruits were 'designed' to be eaten whole? (There were plenty of elephant species in the Americas at one time though.) What were the fruits like before people started selecting for them? We have for another example, the peach type fruits that range from almonds with hardly any flesh, to flat peaches with flesh in a torus around a half exposed nut, to great big fleshy peaches and nectarines. One would imagine that plants would prefer that big single seeds did not get eaten. It's the ones like apples and blackberries, or pomegranates and figs that are 'designed' to be eaten whole, with most of the seeds escaping contact with teeth. A pit the size of an avocado seems more likely to be dependent on animals like squirrels, that hoard them and then forget enough to ensure some grow.
@@spamletspamley672 An acocado pit is poisenous and slippery. Not attractive to rodents, but just right so that it ensures that an animal that eats the pulp will inevitably also swallow the pit. The pulp of an avocado is very nutritious and tasty, and for a reason. The simple fact that humans like avocados makes it pretty clear that the fruit is intended to lure large mammals. Intended as in "the feature was evolved by means of natural selection", that is. And why would one imagine plants prefer large seeds not to get eaten? It's true that there's a risk for the seed to be destroyed in the process, but this is precisely the reason why many seeds are poisonous, slippery and very hard to crack. Walnuts, oaks, beeches, hazels etc. on the other hand produce edible seeds en masse so that scatter-hoarders burry them somewhere, but they make the seed tasty, _not_ the pulp (which in most cases is nonexistent here).
I do like it when a channel owns up to a mistake. Not only is it the honest, moral thing to do, but it means I can trust that channel. Hiding your mistakes rather than owning up to them is a sign that you are not to be trusted. Nice entertaining vid, too. Cheers!
I live in Uruapan, México. Avocados here are destroying ecosystems. Everyone here hates avocados because of that. But I see people from other countries love them.
I absolutely *did* learn the megafauna argument from scishow like 8 or 10 years ago. This information would have been very useful to me up until like 2 days ago when I told my mother about the argument in passing...
She even asked how people could know that and I asserted that they must have studied their fossilized poop.
Academic honesty is an under valued unicorn; thank you ❤
Love that you guys updated everything to keep the curious kids out there from looking like a fool at dinner time
Thanks for the updated video, always love it when shows I follow are able to admit when they were wrong and use it as an opportunity to educate. I was confused by the sloth theory as in Mexico and central america there are wild avocado trees all over the place and no giant ground sloths to poop out the seeds currently.
Since the pits have gotten bigger, I would look into the history of the use of the pits.
Pits can be dried and made into flour which can be used to make breads and other things. They can also be eaten like a nut. So maybe look into that?
I'm tempted to roast avocado pits, now, just to see what they taste like. Gotta check first whether they have any potential poisons, first. The pits of some plants can have some nasty effects on your system. For example, I know that avocado is potentially deadly for your dog or cat. Don't ever let them eat it.
It’s one of those hypothesis that makes the right combo of unusual and intuitive sense that everyone buys it right off the bat and puts it in their back pocket as a “fun fact”. Always gotta be careful about “fun fact” hypothesis.
In the 90’s and early days of the information superhighway, I remember “facts” being spread around like wildfire. Like some random site would make a claim of a fact, with no cited sources or evidence. But it’s on the internet, so you know it’s true. So then other sites would post the claim as a fact (sometimes even citing the original site as if it was evidence.) Then these facts got emailed around and pretty soon people started believing and repeating things like “goldfish only have a 3 second memory”, “the average person swallows 8 spiders in their sleep every year”. I mean, most of these “facts” persisted so hard that 2 special effects artists started a show to see if these “facts” were true or not.
This is perfectly timed because I JUST went to Big Bone Lick State Park this weekend and there was a lot of Giant Sloth stuff! Those things were HUGE and I'm so happy to learn more about them.
Also, the indigenous population could have domesticated avocados with bigger seeds because you can roast and eats the seeds as well! The indigenous who domesticated the avocado probably knew about the edibility of the seed as well as the flesh of the fruit so both being enlarged could be selected for in breeding the avocado trees.
This is what real science looks like, correcting mistakes rather than doubling down. Thanks Hanks and gang
Can we go back to smaller pits?
Good to see you back and explaining science again :)
I am in awe of the amount of work that scientists performed to access dietary info from coprolites and teeth… it’s amazing we can talk about the types of grasses and sedges eaten, thousands of years ago, by any animal! Great video!
I like that the animation of the avocado seed growing a sprout actually looked anatomically correct
I'm just creeped out by the fact that I happened upon your comment at around the same time that the animation played in the video.
A perfect illustration of "just so stories" in "popular" science.
Always nice when people just come out and admit their mistake and Scishow went an extra step by putting out their own hypothesis . It's got me wondering at least.
It's plausible that domestication and selection for greater volume of tasty mesocarp ended up making the entire fruit bigger, including the seed. (Kind-of the opposite of what happened with bananas.)
Also, I seem to remember learning that the original Nahuatl name was/is used as slang for a part of the male anatomy. So maybe they just appreciated the symbolism.
The real story is that some Mesoamerican guy got so insulted by someone comparing his anatomy to small avocadoes that he decided to set the course of the next thousands of years of the species' cultivation and development to grow larger just to save face.
Interesting about the Nahuatl word being used like that ... humor is universal so it makes sense.
Even in Spanish today, I know the word avocado is slang for male anatomy in some locales. I like to point out how close it sounds to the word for lawyer in Spanish (abogado)
And the same reasoning applies to Zapote, Sonzapote, Mamey etc…also with large seeds
I could've sworn I had heard that the avocado would've gone extinct long ago if it weren't for human cultivation, so this definitely makes sense! Interesting that the pits used to only be half as big though.
Right, that was based on the sloth idea, and basically said, well, the ground sloths went extinct, so if the avocados were relying on them for dispersal, they could be in danger of extinction themselves. But then humans came along and basically took over the sloth's role. But, even if the sloth idea had been true, them going extinct wouldn't *necessarily* doom the avocado (without humans). It might have just reduced their range, or made them less common, or fragmented them into geographically separated species.
The seeds getting bigger due to human intervention makes so much more sense than giant found sloths. It is a form of human assisted evolution; just like how in a couple of hundred years of selective breeding of dogs, we get to the point we have today of hundreds of species of dogs. Even the ones that would not naturally survive in the wild like the pugs.
This is likely to be quite common amongst the plant species we now grow and consume. Corn was about the size of your little finger when first cultivated - also in Mexico!
Love the evidence-based correction videos! This was very interesting to learn more about. 🥑
I love science!
We update information. We question assumptions. Revist old evidence.
Refreshing!!!
i have occasionally had an avocado with small seeds. the first time it happened it 'freaked' me. now i wish i had saved them or at least kept some kind of avocado nerd journal. haha
Avocados do not breed true, same as apples...
I know people who would fall all over themselves to point out "SEE ! You weren't correct" But what I always point out is the fact that they weren't the ones to show evidence we were incorrect, we corrected ourselves. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Science is such a powerful tool. It's self-correcting.
Sure, just don't look down at those who question science as backwater morons who don't follow "the experts". Critical thinking and questioning should be rewarded with exactly this kind of thorough explanation.
I love science!
@@jonathanhollenbeak9047I would say there’s a pretty big difference in questioning experts and claiming oneself is an expert. The people questioning science very often fall into that latter category, and that latter category are braindead morons imo
@@jonathanhollenbeak9047 yup! the more in disagreement we are about scientific theories, the more progress we'll make. Science is the only place that thrives on conflict, everyone eventually finds peace when absolute proof manifests from the chaos.
@@tubax926 YES! science is unique that way. Until flat earthers question settled science... not sure what to do about that
I really respect that you guys admitted that you could be wrong on this. Love this show
I always liked the message "remember - even if you feel like no one loves you, avocadoes still need you". While the sloths are no longer part of that narrative, even this revised version points to how people impact the world and their actions ripple out.