this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2025
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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.