Author: Matthew Taub / Source: Atlas Obscura
Has your home garden ever been been gutted by rodents? Maybe your seeds just weren’t spicy enough.
New research suggests that capsaicin—the spicy part of chili peppers—can be a robust deterrent to seed-eating rodents.
Ecologists interested in restoring ecosystems after disturbances such as wildfires conducted experiments with deer mice. They started with glass enclosures where on one side, the mice were offered regular old sunflower seeds, while on the other side were seeds that had been given a special, capsaicin-laced coating. The mice ate 86 percent fewer pepper-treated seeds than untreated ones. When they took the experiment outside to the Missoula Valley in Montana, the scientists saw the results play out. Seeds that were treated with capsaicin were far more likely to survive to become plants than ones left untreated, the team recently reported in the journal Restoration Ecology.The post To Discourage Rodents From Eating Seeds, Scientists Are Getting Spicy appeared first on FeedBox.