How Pumpkins Outlived the Mastodons Through Domestication

PBS Eons explored the history of pumpkins and other cucurbits, examining how these fruits narrowly escaped extinction and adapted to a new relationship with humans. The narrator further explains how they evolved through human domestication, from tough-skinned, bitter wild plants to the celebratory gourd we know today.

Pumpkins only survived thanks to an unlikely partnership they forged with another type of mammal. One that still found them to be toxic and disgusting at first, but could see the potential in the relationship. Us.

The episode draws on a 2015 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that linked the extinction of mastodons and other seed-spreading megafauna to the decline of wild squashes and gourds and, eventually, their domestication by humans.

Pumpkins still meet the occasional giant, like Samudra the elephant, who squished a 500-pound one at the Oregon Zoo.