Would We Have Pumpkin Pie If Mastodons Had Survived?

Pumpkins as we know them only evolved after North American megafauna like woolly mammoths and mastodons died off. Learn the connection in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://animals.howstuffworks.com/extinct-animals/megafauna-died-for-pumpkin-spice-latte.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey
brain Stuff lorn vogoba here. Back before pumpkin pies were
even a glimmer in the eyes of Bakers, Eistocene era mastodons,
mammoths and giant sloths were spreading the seeds of these
fruit far and wide. Anywhere that these huge animals, collectively

(00:24):
known as megafauna roamed would become a dumping ground, if
you'll pardon the pun. Before these seeds of pumpkins squash
and other members of the genus Cucurbetta, which would then
spring up from those seeds. But while these wild fruits
were nourishing giant animals, these ancestral pumpkins were not yet
part of the diet of humans or smaller animals due

(00:46):
to the plant's toxicity and better taste. A study by
an international group of researchers who looked at Gordon squash
seeds in Mastodon dung has shown that the extinction of
megafauna about twelve thousand years ago lead in a rather
roundabout way, to the evolution of Cucurbitda from the toxic
and bitter into the pasty pumpkins and other winter squash

(01:08):
that we enjoy for Thanksgiving, and which in turn evolved
into the now ubiquitous pumpkin spice lattes, beers, and ice creams.
Though note that there is a difference between pumpkin flavoring
and pumpkin spice flavoring. The latter may be made up
with fall pie spices like allspice, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg,

(01:29):
and have no actual pumpkin flavoring involved. But how could
the extinction of megafauna back then a lad us even
in a roundabout way to autumn's most used fall flavor. Now,
I think of coevolution, that is, when two or more
species mutually affect each other's evolution. For the article, this

(01:52):
episode is based on How Stuff Works. Spoke with Lee Newsom,
co author of the studying question and an associate professor
of anthropology at and State. She said, there's a whole
suite of plants that have co evolved. It's called dispersal mutualism.
With animals, there's a large number that are co evolved
with mammals. Some just hitch a ride on mammal fur

(02:13):
then ultimately fall off somewhere. The fruit of other plants,
such as the wild gourds that giant sloths and wooly
rhinos chowed on, are eaten and their seeds expelled, maybe
miles from where the original plant grew. Imagine automobile sized
mastodons running rampant across the environment of what's now North

(02:35):
Florida and Georgia, eating wild gourds, then expelling seeds which
are still lodged in the dung that Newsome and her
team found and studied. As the environment warmed following the
most recent ice age and the large mammals became extinct,
Newsome explained, quote the plants were left without their primary
partner and disperser, but enter a new partner us and

(03:01):
Nuson explained, by then humans were present, and we're starting
to make use of wild gourds and squash for containers,
and ultimately humans are planting the seeds and changing them.
As the plants evolved, it adapted to the new environment.
Smaller animals found that some of the cucurbidda didn't taste
as bitter anymore. Over that dozen millennia that have passed

(03:23):
since the end of the place to see an ice age,
wild gourds and squash evolved into the tasty foods we
eat today. So next time you're chowing down on a
pumpkin pie, squash casserole, or pumpkin spice latte, remember the
mastodons and they're dung. Without the demise of megafauna, pumpkins
might have remained bitter and unpleasant to our palate and

(03:44):
would have a much less flayorful diet. Today's episode is
based on the article Mastodons and mammoths gave their lives
so you could have pumpkin spice latte on house to
Works dot Com, written by Karen Kirkpatrick. Brain Sets production
of I Heart Radio and partnership with has stuff works
dot Com, and it is produced by Tyler Klang. Four

(04:06):
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