It therefore pays to know your Habanero's from your Poblano's and your Guajillo's from your Jalapeno's . The heat rating of chile peppers is related to its Scoville number. In order to survive, plants need to produce metabolites in to ward off animal predators. Dr. Michael Need of the New York Botanical Society, thinks capsaicin in chiles serves that purpose. Mammals get a burning sensation from capsaicin but birds do not.
Seeds pass through the bird's gut intact and get spread in new areas.
Chile peppers where unknown to world outside of the American continent until Christopher Columbus landed on the island of Hispaniola in 1492. This island forms part of the Greater Antilles, which lie across the Caribbean Sea from Venezuela and Colombia. The chile peppers that Columbus had found on the island had been bought there by the islands first settlers, the Arawaks and Caribs, who migrated there from the original homelands on the Upper Orinoco river in Venezuela. They referred to peppers as Aji . Chiles that were originally found only in South America are now found growing wild on the border between Mexico and Texas.