this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2025
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Sadly I've still never seen any real papers on this being an actual theory.
I still want to believe I'm Ent livestock though.
It’s because it doesn’t really make sense, plants came before animals. Plants do not need us to survive, but we need plants to survive.
Plants came before moths, but there are some desert plants whose life cycle is dependent on a species of moth pollinating them. How things were in the past influences but isn’t the sole arbiter of how things are in the present or future.
Which isn’t to say that it’s strictly true, I think it serves more purpose as a thinking exercise than a scientific theory. But I don’t think it’s impossible that it’s true, either.
“Some” being a key word there. Plants, as a whole, are not dependent on mammals for their existence.
Yeah, I don’t think the OP was saying every plant in existence is dependent on humans. But crops are, and we’re dependent on them. Co-domestication, I guess.
most of them, but they all can naturalized and go feral and become weeds. plants that are triploid which is artificially induced by people are totally dependant on humans for survival, aka watermelon, cavendish banannas ,,,etc. crops become feral overtime.
the advatange of plants becoming feral, is that most of them have high ploidy numbers for chromosones, rather than the usual 2 copies. some can have 1-20+ copies of thier chromosome., even crops, this allows plants to have copies of genes that can be somewhat detremental, but not affect the plants fitness, because they multiple copies of the same normal gene, those same copies can also evolve to give selective advantage. thats why some weeds or invasive plants are very hard to eradicate. reproduce extremely fast, asexually or otherwise or poisonous which makes them highly resistant to pests.
I'll save you a Google: NO, high ploidy numbers in people sadly do not seem to be quite as positive and delicious.
plants like magnolia used beetles for pollination, magnoliads being a very ancient lingeage of plants. its only very later before bees, moths, and then butterflies became the dominant pollinators, and then mammals.
We don't need chickens to survive either. It doesn't mean we didn't domesticate them.
Plants need us animals to turn that oxygen they produce back into carbon dioxide for them.
Nope, fungi and other decomposers do that.
I'm decomposing with the best of them, my friend.
You're more of a decomposee than a decomposer.
Eh, oxygen builds up, fire, CO2...
Which MOST plants seem to want to avoid... (although for others it has become a necessity, depends on what you are used to I guess)
Things change tho, they can “evolve” so to say.
plants came from red algae i believe, that was able to survive on land as primitive bryphytes, or thier ancestors. carbiniferous period is when they really took off. Plants encorporated both chloroplast and mitochondria endosymbionts in thier evolution.
Consider the Navel Orange. Completely unable to reproduce on its own, yet it has millions of progeny because of people like you!
Every seedless fruit is a testament of how humanity has deviated from its original, seed nurturing purpose.
Navel gazers?
its a clone of a clone, much like the cavendish bannana, and cultivars of watermelons. and apples too.
fun fact, there is actually a cold tolerant wild orange that grows in the wild, the trifoliate orange, but its not super edible because its extremely bitter flesh, and it has thorns, and its more resistant to disease than domesticated oranges.
That reminds me. Need to go clone some grape cultivars and do some more guerilla gardening at my buddy's house
Bacteria grow us for their homes. They run the show.
Brb, gotta go buy some cat food.
No, toxoplasmosis is a parasite! Very different! Parasites are also susceptible to bacterial and viral diseases!
The botany of desire is a fun book written on the subject. Michael Pollan is not a scientist though, he’s a science and environmental journalist and Harvard professor.
Against The Grain by James C Scott touches on the “who actually domesticated who” question.