Nature doesn’t literally “preslice” oranges, but the way oranges are structured can make them easier to separate into segments. Oranges are made up of individual sections called carpels, which are filled with juice sacs. This natural segmentation allows for easy separation when you peel or break apart the fruit.
The design of oranges and other citrus fruits is an evolutionary adaptation that helps with seed dispersal. When animals eat the fruit, they often discard the seeds, allowing new plants to grow in different locations. The juicy segments also attract animals, ensuring that the fruit is consumed and the seeds are spread.
I had to search 😢
Ultimately, the plant stumbled upon the most advantageous adaptation on the planet - being useful to humans.
Shouldn’t you be working intently right now, and not researching oranges??
fun fact the fruit was first, the colour was named after it. before that, people called the colour orange “yellow-red”
For the worthy, this seems a comprehensive reply on this precise subject.
Bonus rabbit-hole. Enjoy!
Nature didn’t do shit.
Sure, maybe the original mandarins, pomelos, citrons, papedas, and possibly kumquats (there’s also Buddha’s hand, but we don’t talk about Buddha’s hand) were sort of pre-sliced, to help with seed dispersal, but like with practically every fruit and vegetable we eat we took that small, dry, bitter crap and started selecting for larger, juicier, tastier, and easier to eat.
And then we went, nah, that ain’t it yet… and we started grafting (because apparently plants are kind of ok with us playing Frankenstein with them while they’re still alive, or at least we can’t hear them complain, and probably wouldn’t care if we could).
We made oranges, and most of the citruses we eat.
Why do oranges come pre-sliced…? Because we made it so.
Hear hear!
^This one’s for the cheap seats 🤘🏼
PSA: “GMO” is a bullshit term to distract the masses. FFS, everything is GMO, citizens. 😅 (No, but seriously. It’s the core concept of agriculture itself.)
Also, read more. Always. 🤗
Fascinating, but it doesn’t really explain why mandarins come pre-sliced, since they’re at the top of that chart.
Although being easy to eat seems like an evolutionary advantage for fruit even if humans aren’t doing it.
They come pre-sliced now, who knows what they looked like when we started messing with them. Probably mostly rind, with a ring of seeds inside, each surrounded by a bit of excessively bitter fruit, like the citron.
Then we selected the juiciest, largest, sweetest, and easiest to eat, and grafted them onto each other, over millennia, until we got to something that’s actually edible and seems to come pre-sliced.
Just look at teosinte to see what maize started like, for instance, or how many “different” vegetables we made out of brassica.
Whatever fruit Eve is supposed to have eaten way back when must have been some bitter nut, or a poisonous berry, or a tuber barely distinguishable from a root, or Adam’s gay brother Bob, or possibly a fig (wasps made that particular abomination, not us); anything else we didn’t make until much later.
Okay, thanks, makes sense.
A lot of sweet fruits are designed to be digested by animals and their seeds shitted out in a pile of organic animal poo to fertilize it and allow it to grow.
![[ADHDinos] sigh](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/05b8464a-507f-483a-a1ee-cc0a7ebefab4.jpeg){kind=link}