New extended cut of an upcoming video!! Patrons only 😊 (Patreon)

Did you know that figs are *brutal*? Extended cut 😁

Did you know that figs are brutal?? First of all, they’re not a fruit - they’re actually inverted flowers, where the fruit is smushed together flower petals that bloom inside the pear-shaped pod. SEcond of all, do you know about fig wasps???? Figs can’t pollinate without the help of a fig wasp, and fig wasps can’t reproduce without figs. Female fig wasps tunnel into male figs to lay their eggs and die there, and only their female offspring make it out of the fig to lay their eggs into another male fig. Male fig wasps only ever exist INSIDE figs, serving their life purpose to mate with their sisters and tunnel a way out of the fig for HER to escape. The good thing is that we don’t eat the male figs that are exclusively for the purpose of pollinating other figs and breeding fig wasps. We eat female figs. THE LAST BRUTAL FACT about figs is that if a fig wasp accidentally burrows into a female fig, and dies there, because there is no escape, the fig uses an enzyme called ficin to break down the wasp into protein, though it doesn’t always break down the entire exoskeleton. Feeling freaked about figs? 95 percent of figs produced and sold in the US are externally pollinated, and don’t rely on the brutal life and death cycle of the fig wasp.