eh, ok, I was wrong, I just did a google search and found some stuff that blows mine away:
You can bet your behind that I more than one bottle of the revenge.
I read some years ago of one study that posited that the popularity of spicy foods in warmer climates was the result of capsaicins antibiotic properties. The theory being that early peoples in warmer climates had a more difficult time storing food. addition of capsaicin to their diets helped protect them somewhat from foodborne diseases.
Googling turns up a number of articles on the use of capsaicin in the poultry industry to fight salmonella cite.
I started eating really spicy food far more regularly after a friend of a friend recommnded it as a cold remedy. And it surely seemed to me that when I had a mouthful of roast beef sandwich layered with jalapeños, my stuffed up nose did indeed open up to let the air in.
I was going to say…I got some 2 milliion Scolville Wanza’s Wicked Hot Sauce sauce in my fridge, and I know there’s even hotter sauces than that. After a certain Scolville point, it really doesn’t seem to make much a difference. I really can’t say Dave’s Insanity is that much less spicy than Wanza’s. I also think it’s getting silly at this level, as it’s mostly pepper extract and no flavor. The habanero hot sauces, though, are quite nice flavor-wise.
It’s also interesting to see that other people have problems with pickled peppers (pepperoncini and habaneros) as I do. Wonder if there’s something to the pickling process that makes it burn more on the way out.
Hmmm… I wonder what would happen if you presented some of our resident fire-eaters with some curry or chili that was 2% capsaicin? I predict cries of surrender and pleas for anasthesia within seconds.
I dunno… above a certain level, the effect is going to be limited not by the concentration or amount of the active substance, but by our ability to perceive it - the number of available sites is finite upon which the molecules of the active substance can work.
That corresponds to about 300,000 Scoville units. (I’m calculating using the figure that one ppm of capsaicin ~= 15 Scoville. You get 320,000 Scoville if you calculate that pure capscaicin is 16 millions Scoville). That’s about the level of a habnero. Fiery hot, but doable, depending on the quantity. I’ve eaten whole habaneros (stems and seeds and all) before.
A common misconception. In fact the seeds of Capsicum and most other solanaceous plants will pass equally unharmed through the digestive tract of a human or even a cow. It’s got nothing to do with the length of the length of the digestive tract or the transit time, the seed coats of the this family are just very tough.
Capsicum has adopted birds as the primary dispersal mechanism not because of the length of the digestive tract, but because of the lack of teeth. The seed coat is more than tough enough to survive transit through a mammal gut, but if the coat is cracked the seed will be digested. And of course animals that chew their food will likely crack the seeds.
Many of the other solanaceous plants are quite happy to be dispersed by mammals: gooseberries, tomatoes, even many of the nighshades are designed to be attractive to mammals as well as birds. The difference is that those plants have evolved very moist fruits with slippery seeds that squirt out from between teeth to avoid cracking. In contrast Capscium fruits never evolved that mechanism and are fairly dry. Instead they have evolved a mechanism to deter those mamals woth their nasty teethses.
Be careful with the extremely hot stuff. I have a bottle of the 3AM sauce that I won’t touch. (I ordered a bottle of Megadeath at the same time and discovered it provides plenty of heat when heavily deluted. The 3AM is useless for flavoring.) A friend wanted to try some despite my warnings that it was “hotter than the seven layers of hell.” Some people can only learn the hard way. As he was licking a drop of it, he said it didn’t have much flavor at all. About 10 seconds later, he was puking from my porch. I think I’ll give the next stupid person the Megadeath instead. It’s hot enough to provoke a reaction that’s humorous to observers but won’t cause sickness.
I think birds like the flavor. I have seen parrots eat dried hot peppers, they specifically go after the seeds inside and crunch them up with gusto. Then they sit on top of the cage and beg humans for kisses. If you kiss a parrot that has been crunching hot pepper seeds you can get a swollen lip from the chemical residue.
As has been mentioned, birds are virtually insensitive to the compound that makes peppers “hot.” They may like the taste of the seeds themselves, but they are unable to “taste” the hotness.
Years ago, I was eating a burrito while watching TV. The burrito was smothered with some dang hot salsa. When I finished the burrito I set the plate on the floor, intending to take it to the kitchen during the next commercial break. My cat trotted over and sniffed at the plate (which still had plenty of salsa on it). I thought, “This should be funny!” Mayhem (the cat’s name, and yes, he earned it) proceeded to lick the plate clean without batting an eye. So perhaps some mammals are immune to the heat? That stuff had me sweating like a pig while I ate it.
As for Dave’s Total Insanity sauce … a friend received a bottle as a Christmas gift. I noted the warning on the bottle to “use one drop at a time” and thought, “I gotta try this.” So I dipped a toothpick into the sauce, shook off all the excess, and touched it to my tongue.
I literally could not breathe for about ten seconds after that. And I thought my heart was going to stop.
Wow…don’t get near the really hot stuff, then. 
(Just kidding. Dave’s Insanity is pretty much as hot as I’ll go and still enjoy the flavor. Anything much hotter than that, and it’s nothing but machismo. However, it’s really weird to see how quickly you can get used to it. When I bought the bottle, I was using it a few drops at a time. After awhile, though, I could use it almost as liberally as Tobasco.)
Thanks for that. Is it true for any other types of seeds?