Why Avocado Seeds Are so Ridiculously Large
Who swallows avocado seeds?
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Who loves avocados? I do!
I eat them almost daily. I take some whole grain bread, pour some olive oil over it, spread some ripe avocado on it, and then cover the whole thing with some sliced tomatoes. Mmmmmh... A quick and delicious snack!
After having devoured thousands of avocados in this manner (not in one sitting) I finally realized that I had no idea why avocado seeds are so huge. Now I know. Here's the answer:
Why Avocado Seeds Are so Ridiculously Large
Who swallows avocado seeds?
Image by the author. Based on a photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash.
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:
Image by the author (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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?
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—David
