How Avocados Survived After Their Ancient Seed Dispersers Vanished

Avocados once relied on Ice Age megafauna to spread their huge seeds; after those animals vanished, people helped keep the fruit alive by cultivating and planting it.

Biology

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Modern avocados have a strange evolutionary history. Long before supermarkets and guacamole, avocado fruits were eaten whole by large Ice Age mammals. Those animals could carry the seeds long distances and leave them in new places, helping avocado trees spread. When much of the Americas lost their large mammals near the end of the Ice Age, that old relationship was disrupted. The avocado did not simply disappear, however. Small animals may have helped disperse some seeds, and humans eventually became important partners by eating, cultivating, selecting and planting avocados. Archaeological evidence shows people were consuming wild avocados in Central America roughly 11,000 years ago, while signs of deliberate selection for larger fruit appear thousands of years later. More recent genetic research also indicates that people carried avocado varieties northward through the Americas around 5,000 years ago. This history helps explain why the avocado we know today is very different from its earlier forms. Ancient avocados generally had less edible flesh and large seeds, while generations of human cultivation favored traits that made the fruit more useful as food. The story is therefore less about a fruit that was literally incapable of surviving without humans and more about an unusual plant whose ancient relationship with large animals was followed by a long history of human cultivation and dispersal.

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