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Why Plants???

It's actually true- anything produced without a reason will eventually be phased out. That doesn't mean that we don't have things out there for no reason that just haven't been phased out yet.

But regardless, those things that don't have any beneficial effect but we have found a beneficial effect for us will not be phased out- as obviously something entirely useless just became incredibly so.
 
murphy, you say all plant psychs are for defense purposes but don't some plants produce compounds that attract (along the lines of tripping discomonk's thought)? A symbiotic relationship is not possible with your explanation.
 
well obviously there will be some exceptions- but it's unlikely a psychedelic would be used as an attractant, since AFAIK, there's never been an animal found that self-administered 5HT2a agonists.
 
Hammilton said:
well obviously there will be some exceptions- but it's unlikely a psychedelic would be used as an attractant, since AFAIK, there's never been an animal found that self-administered 5HT2a agonists.
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what about humans?

I've often found I have an affinity to the fruiting bodies (and mycelia 'roots') of psilocybe/stropharia cubensis. I feel as if it is calling to me to care for it.

I've felt this pull hunting wild mushrooms in the field (been attracted to certain spots).
 
^^you have to remember though, humans occupy but a tiny fraction in the history of life on earth. plants and mushrooms were producing psychoactive chemicals long before humans ever showed up
 
Feeling a pull is awfully unscientific though.

But yeah, like Wungchow said, these things were producing these chemicals for millenia before we came about. Humans have only been on the North American continent for a blink in times eye (we weren't even in Africa for that long in the grand scale of Earth's history)
 
wungchow said:
^^you have to remember though, humans occupy but a tiny fraction in the history of life on earth. plants and mushrooms were producing psychoactive chemicals long before humans ever showed up
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couldn't they have been preparing themselves for us? oh wait does that contradict your working theory? sorry :D
 
Man, when i created this thread i had no idea it was going to generate so many interesting responses. Some very intriguing ideas have been put forth, but it does seem that things have gotten sidetracked abit. it looks like the direction has shifted towards a discussion of the role these chemicals play in plants (which is fine). but i am still left wondering why plants seem to dominate the CNS active landscape. There were some posts which addressed this but i still find myself wondering. The post which made the most sense to me was one in which someone brought up the fact that most animals cannot produce aromatic compounds. And indeed, aromatic compounds often seem to be the backbone for CNS active substances. interesting stuff.
 
Gaian Planes said:
murphy, you say all plant psychs are for defense purposes but don't some plants produce compounds that attract (along the lines of tripping discomonk's thought)? A symbiotic relationship is not possible with your explanation.
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Oh yes, it IS indeed. For this I tried to clear out that there are numerous tasks that secondary metabolits can fulfill. Including being a deterrent, a attractant (for symbiotic partners, pollinating insects, etc.), for communication reasons (yes, some plants do in fact communicate with each other) and so on.
 
fastandbulbous said:
Any evolutionary process that used up energy, but didn't confer an advantage is de facto placing that organism at a disadvantage and would be 'phased out' through natural selection. Just because we don't know why a plant does something doesn't ,mean it doesn't have a valid evolutionary role
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Would this still apply to a species that mutated and then went through a severe genetic bottleneck (geographic isolation in combination with some natural disaster or something that reduced the non-DMT producing plants)?
 
Hammilton said:
well obviously there will be some exceptions- but it's unlikely a psychedelic would be used as an attractant, since AFAIK, there's never been an animal found that self-administered 5HT2a agonists.
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Homo sapiens (obviously!) and higher primates in a severe sensory deprivatiuon situation have been observed to self administer DMT


Would this still apply to a species that mutated and then went through a severe genetic bottleneck (geographic isolation in combination with some natural disaster or something that reduced the non-DMT producing plants)?
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They're still competing with other plants for the same resources, so any mutation is gong to have a very limited time of existance (unless turned into a cultivar by man)
 
Hammilton said:
well obviously there will be some exceptions- but it's unlikely a psychedelic would be used as an attractant, since AFAIK, there's never been an animal found that self-administered 5HT2a agonists.
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Lol, I know many. Human-imals.

It's actually true- anything produced without a reason will eventually be phased out.
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Hmm, nature is intelligent and uses reason? Moreso, I think anything that doesn't promote survival is phased out. The human coxic bone; the appendix...they serve no reason as such.

I dunno, this is a great topic, very interesting :) Consider the plant Salvia Divinorum and how humans have shaped its evolution, and what was it that shaped our evolution into shaping its????
 
fastandbulbous said:
Any evolutionary process that used up energy, but didn't confer an advantage is de facto placing that organism at a disadvantage and would be 'phased out' through natural selection. Just because we don't know why a plant does something doesn't ,mean it doesn't have a valid evolutionary role
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I would have to disagree on grounds of this being a severe oversimplification. What about useless traits that have no significant effect on survival or mating preference? Here is a rather extensive list of some of those traits in humans: https://notes.utk.edu/Bio/greenberg.nsf/0/0765bb50d404455385256f0000680854

Also with reguards to people speculating entheogenic plants and humans directing each others evolution I think its a very valid concept. For example the harvesting of claviceps purpuria by the anchient greek on the rarian plane for use in elusinian mysteries, and the administration of said compounds effect on our cultural evolution which certianly played a role in changing mating preferences (as culture and mating preference is intriniscally related in humans).

Or cannabis being selectively bred for increasinly higher potency gentics by human beings while the influence of the drug can select out members of our population who abuse it and therefore become less fit. Or how about the many guys that get pussy because they have the finest buds? Sounds stupid but this is real world natural selection and mate preference!
 
even those pointless traits will eventually be removed- but it may take hundreds of thousands of years before it happens. We'd never observe it happening.

Regardless, they do still take extra energy to produce. If they're taking extra energy away from useful production, they're putting the creature at a disadvantage.

But still, unless they're taking lots of problems, we'd never see it happen, and it's unlikely we could just look at the fossil record and see something like this as the reason it failed.

still, on the animals that'd administer a 5HT2a agonist, I admit I should have added the 'except for humans' thing- because I'm pretty sure I was aware of that ;) However, the primates administering them under really unique conditios is new to me.

I'm still fairly certain there are no lower species like were mentioned that'd self administer (or if they did, would obtain any benefit)
 
theWorldWithin said:
I would have to disagree on grounds of this being a severe oversimplification. What about useless traits that have no significant effect on survival or mating preference? Here is a rather extensive list of some of those traits in humans: https://notes.utk.edu/Bio/greenberg.nsf/0/0765bb50d404455385256f0000680854
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Sorry, but this is completely pointless! If you would have read the previous post you ought to have known better:
Most of those "useless traits" either have a task but we still don't discovered it yet (the minority, if at all), or, what is by far more likely, they are just left over from evolutionary deletion.
One must not forget that it doesn't work like an organ disappears from one generation to another but it will be gradually diminished. And then - after several hundreds or maybe thousands of generations (if there's no major event that forces the evolution to happen a bit faster, like a meteorite-impact), THEN we will see this organ disappear. Gradually!

Additionally, we do not have to forget that humans withdrew from the usual means of evolution thousands of years ago. With our complex psychological implications and the (recent, i.e. ~ last 150 years) development of medicine, we are now able to make a) much more people stay alive and b) to make much more people propagate their genes. Also, natural selection is mainly influenced by social status rather than by muscle-power, to simplify it a bit.

Peace! Murphy
 
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