Caffeine!

Hema'ehu was reading a fascinating article about tropical birds and coffee plantations when a comment from lead researcher Cagan Sekercioglu (his real name!) struck us: "Most birds don't like to eat the coffee fruit. Caffeine evolved as a pesticide to keep pests away."

So true, for the birds! Taking a page from Michael Pollan (in re: The Botany of Desire), it could also be supposed that coffee has evolved caffeine as an intoxicant that some species (humans and, according to legend, goats) find pleasurable and therefore want to spread! That, at least, seems to be a reasonable supposition seeing as coffee, native to East Africa, is now grown around the tropics, and sold even more widely. Thank you, Starbucks!

In effect, what is poison to one is pleasure to another, and either strategy - or both! - may be successful, from the plant's point of view.