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this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2024
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Potentially. But think of it this way, there are somewhere around 400,000 plant species out there.
https://news.mongabay.com/2016/05/many-plants-world-scientists-may-now-answer/
Based on this list, something on the order of like 99.5% of plants are either not safe, or not useful/beneficial. If other species on our planet share a similar rate without complete overlap, then it's practically a guarantee that there will be thousands of plants that are safe and useful for us but not for other species. That doesn't feel particularly strange or unlikely. So even with a specialized diet, I don't think the numbers would be much different.
It also could be the case that being scavenging omnivores is a strong precursor to becoming intelligent. If your species is on the rise in terms of intelligence, you're probably using that to expand your food sources wide and far.
That's based on species though, so it would overrepresent unlikely encounters. I can go eat pine bark or grass on any continent and probably be A-OK.
I do wonder how that data compares with other mammals though. Is it just average, or is it significantly higher?
That is fair, but also consider that an intelligent species isn't going to be limited by chance encounters. I regularly eat bananas, but I don't live in India. I regularly eat pineapples, but I don't live in Costa Rica. Very little of my diet is comprised of food that is native to my area. As an intelligent species, we farm food en masse, ship it around the world, and plant things outside of their natural habitat.
Purely speculating, I'd wager slightly above average as a result of the thing I said about omnivores being a precursor to becoming intelligent.
That's actually a fantastic point, we change our environment to be more suitable to ourselves, including cultivating unique yet safe species. I've never heard of a poison dart frog farm, nor a field of death caps.