Sex and drugs

Jim Farmelant farmelantj at juno.com
Mon May 21 01:47:57 PDT 2001


On Mon, 21 May 2001 01:15:51 -0700 (PDT) Chuck Grimes <cgrimes at tsoft.com> writes:
>
> Paragraph of the week already folks........
>
> Ian
>
> -----------
>
> I'd love to take credit for it, Ian, but the truth is that insight
> was
> stolen from my ex-father-in-law who was a botanist, with a speciality
> in the micro evolution of plants and insects. He used to teach a
> course on Plants and Man, back in the old days and wrote a nice,
> short
> little book on it. He included marijuana, coca, and opium as part
> of our biological, cultural and social dependence on plants.
>
> Although he didn't investigate the idea that plants might have
> evolved
> this dependence on their pharmacological properties, I don't see any
> reason not to think they might have. If they can evolve nectars to
> include the particular lipids and proteins that their pollinators
> require for basic nutrition, I don't see why they wouldn't have found
> themselves selected by the animal world for their ability to produce
> various other complex chemical substances as well.
>
> Strictly judging on how stoned my cat used to get, I would assume
> that
> a lot of animals were fooling around with drug plants long before we
> did.

I think that Richard Dawkins made an argument to that effect in *The Extended Phenotype*.

Jim Farmelant


>
> Chuck Grimes

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