what is the purpose of fruit?
Posted in Philosophy by: adminJune 11th, 2008
fruits and their colleagues in the plant kingdom do not feel pain or danger like the members of the animal kingdom do. However, they are considered to be living as they grow and require nutrition.
So why is it that fruits such as pineapples and oranges have defence mechanisms, like those seen in animals?
Pineapples are prickly in the same way certain animals have spines.
Oranges have a peel, and underneath the peel is another layer of skin. Other citrus fruits have a higher concentration of citric acid causing them to taste bitter and unpleasant. A bit like how animals use poison. This also seems like a defence mechanism against predators who may find them tasty.
So if fruits dont think or feel, why do they evolve to survive if they dont actively place survival in their daily routenes?
June 16th, 2008 at 1:56 am
I would imagine due to the different climates and also the survival of different species the fruit has to protect itself so that all might survive. If all fruit were easily accessible then only a few, the fastest would survive.
June 18th, 2008 at 5:30 am
The fruit is the path to a plants evolution. If uneaten its seed will remain untravelled, unmoved from the bottom of the tree.
It must be attractive. it must become food.
When consumed, this tree’s seed gets scattered where the friendly predator will eat it and discard the remnants of the fruit.
Another tree will grow. And life goes on.
June 18th, 2008 at 11:21 am
Since the purpose of any living thing is to create more life, the survival mechanisms that you’ve described, if not simply convenient anomalies, could simply be intended so that the fruit can reach a level of maturity so that it can cast off healthy, mature seeds/pits when its life cycle is complete.
June 21st, 2008 at 3:54 am
“When the plant in our room turns to the light, closes her blossoms in the dark, responds to our watering or pruning by increase of size or change of shape and bloom, who has the right to say she does not feel, or that she plays a purely passive part?”
June 21st, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Remember that the evolutionary preasure to survive refers to the survival of the species, at times to the detriment of the individual. Typically, survival of the species and individual are the same, but there are many exceptions in plants and animals (probably bacteria, fungi, and protozoa too, but I couldn’t give you examples). Fruit, as mentioned is a good example. Fruit is designed to proliferate the species. Some species do best by keeping their fruit from being eaten, so they develope poisons or bad tastes or prickles. They drop off, rot, and fertilize the seeds inside. Others have a different strategy, they get eaten by animals who then pass the seeds in their own fertilizer and spread the species over great distances.
Male black widow spiders perform an acrobatic feet to allow the female to eat them after mating. The process increases the likelihood of the female conceiving and the meal makes it more likely that she will survive to lay the eggs and produce the male’s offspring.
Remember also that evolution is inherently imperfect. That’s why there are so many different ways to solve any particular problem. There are useless aspects of species in nature, but they tend to disappear over time.
However, I am of the opinion that purpose is a construction of the user. To a plant, the purpose of a fruit is it’s own proliferation. To me the purpose is to eat it.
June 24th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
Every creature from animals to insects to plants to microscopic tiny ones want to be alive, but only the most evolved and smart survive.there is a very lengthy and complicated hierarchy of which human is standing on the root.