- [Narrator] You may take
the appearance of everyday fruit and veggies for
granted but did you know they haven't always looked
like they currently do? Through selective breeding
humans have been molding fruits and vegetables to our liking, changing the way they look
drastically over the years. Here are ten fruits and veggies
that looked very different before we started cultivating them. - Amazing! - [Narrator] Number ten, corn. The evolution of corn is a
great example of how we can significantly change
a vegetable over time. Corn actually comes from a
Mexican grass called teocinte. The barely edible
teocinte is small, skinny and it has very few kernels. Back then these kernels
were also hard to reach since they were encased by a hard shell. To peel it you had to hit it with a hard object several times. It's also speculated that it had a very dry taste like a raw potato. The link between corn and teosinte wasn't very easy to find, actually. For many years nobody
knew where corn came from since it doesn't look like
anything that grows in the wild. It was only after finding
several similar chromosomes between the two that
this link was determined. One scientist even managed
to pop a teosinte kernel. The cultivation of
teosinte to modern-day corn came about as, for each
subsequent harvest, we selective bred the more
desirable teosinte plants that had larger and more rows of kernels. This led to corn we know today which is easy to peel and a thousand times larger. Modern corn also contains
four times more sugar compared to the natural,
old version of corn. Number nine, avocado. The millenials' favorite
fruit has gone through quite a lot of change and
it's all for the better. In the wild avocados are
very small and can easily fit into the center of your palm, growing to about three inches in diameter. The pit of the wild avocado
takes almost all the space inside the fruit leaving little room for the fruit's famous green flesh. Roughly speaking, it would
take close to ten wild avocados to get the same amount of
flesh that you would get with a single modern version of the fruit. Worse yet, the little flesh that it has doesn't taste very good. It has a rougher, grittier quality in contrast to the creamy and tasty characteristic of the modern avocado. The wild avocado was also
encased in a hard shell, quite different from the leathery, fleshy kind of skin that the current avocado has. Thankfully our ancestors
improved the fruit in significant ways,
selectively breeding it, allowing us to have this tasty fruit that goes so well on toast. Number eight, peach. The peach is another
example of our ancestors using selective breeding
to create a bigger and tastier version of a fruit. Domesticated by the
Chinese around 4000 B.C., The original peach was very
small and resembled a cherry. It had a waxy skin and only
64 percent of edible flesh. It also had a taste that
was described as earthly, sweet, sour and slightly
salty, similar to a lentil. Also, a big amount of the
wild peach was occupied by the fruit's stone, close to 34 percent. After thousands of years
farmers got to the version of the peach we have today. The current modern peach has soft, edible skin and is 64 times larger. It also has 90 percent of edible flesh, a vast increase from the wild peach. The stone in the current
peach has also dramatically decreased in size, making up for only 10 percent of the fruit. The current peach is also
27 percent juicier and tastes four percent sweeter. All around, the peach has just gotten better through the ages. Number seven, eggplant. The wild variation of the
eggplant is completely unrecognizable from the
modern version we have today. Eggplants used to come
in a variety of shapes but most of them were round. In fact, the name eggplant
actually comes from the fact that they were often white and round, hence looking like an egg
that grows from a plant. They had a range of different colors like yellow, white and even blue. Some of the earliest
versions of the eggplant also had spines that
connected to its flower. It's believed that the
domestication of the eggplant started in places like
China, India, and Thailand. They were initially used
only for medicinal reasons because the wild eggplant
had a bitter aftertaste. Through selective breeding
we arrived at the modern eggplant with its purple
color and oblong shape. The spine has disappeared,
giving way to its stem that connects to its flower. Better yet, the eggplant is now
edible and really delicious. Number six, strawberry. Oftentimes, as shown in this video, humans molded fruits and vegetables to make them taste better. However, the opposite happened in the case of the wild strawberry. Known as Frageria vesca,
the wild strawberry actually tasted sweeter and is considered the better version of the fruit. However, the wild strawberry is much smaller than its modern version. So why did the modern version of the strawberry lose its flavor? Reportedly, that's because
other factors started coming into play influencing
how these fruits evolved. Farmers started favoring
size, resistance to disease, and a better and bigger
appearance which ended up decreasing the taste of the fruit. The modern strawberry
actually started to take shape when a French spy brought
the Chilean version of the strawberry over to France. This variation of the fruit
was significantly bigger than the ones grown in Europe at the time. The two species of strawberry were crossed and gave rise to the
modern strawberry of today. Fun fact, what may look like seeds in the wild strawberry are
actually called achenes. They are themselves tiny fruits with tiny seeds inside of them. Number five, tomato. We have been shaping the tomato to our own taste for thousands of years. The evolution of the tomatoes
happened in two stages. First, there was the wild
ancestor of the tomatoes. These fruits had a size similar to berries and came in a bunch of different colors like yellow, green and purple. It is reported that the first
cultivated tomatoes were small and yellow which earned
them the name golden apple. These wild tomatoes, after
a large span of time, eventually evolved into the cherry tomato. From the cherry tomato, humans ultimately developed the big-fruited red tomato which is the fruit's
most recognizable form. However, these changes
weren't all for the best. Over the years the tomato
lost some of its genes that create sugar making
it less flavorful. Because of all the selective
breeding the tomato has been through, most
consider that there is little room to improve on
the fruit's genetic traits so it's probable that the
tomato will stay largely the same for the near future. Number four, carrot. Wild carrots look nothing like the orange carrots we know today. They were found in Persia
around the tenth century and were either white or purple. These carrots were very
thin with forked roots and a strong, powerful flavor. The seeds of these types
of carrots eventually made its way to Europe where
they were selectively bred over centuries in order
to reduce their bitterness and increase their sweetness and size. These improved carrots
still came in a variety of different colors like
red, yellow and purple. The bright orange version
of the modern carrot only came about for political reasons. Back in the 17th century
the Dutch were known mainly as carrot farmers and it was there that the orange variation
started to be cultivated. The Dutch started growing
this variation in abundance because they saw it as a
tribute to William of Orange who led The Netherlands to independence. From there the color stuck and became the primary version of
the carrot we all know. Number three, cucumber. You probably wouldn't guess
that the wild cucumber is actually related to the modern version of the cucumber we have nowadays. The wild cucumber has a distinct look and is very easy to spot. It has an oval or spherical
shape and is covered in spikes. These spikes usually grow to
at least one point two inches in diameter but can go
up to eight inches long. These wild cucumbers usually
hold four seeds inside of them. Although related to the
cucumbers we're used to this prickly version of the vegetable is not edible and is considered toxic. Some reports say that ingesting
them could even kill you. The cucumber is believed
to be native to India. It was cultivated originally
for medicinal reasons. The modern cucumber bears little resemblance to its wild version. It has a cylindrical shape with
multiple seeds inside of it and it can grow as
large as 24 inches long. - Wow! - [Narrator] Modern cucumbers
are also very edible and low in calories given that they
are almost 90 percent water. Number two, banana. The wild banana is quite different from the yellow snack that we have today. Originally they were
stalky and hard, filled with large and tough
seeds that were spread across the fruit's interior. Because of the hard seeds,
these bananas were inedible. That's why most assume that these wild fruits were cooked and then eaten. Otherwise humans would not
have started cultivating it. It's believed that the
first bananas were formed 10,000 years ago in the region
that is now Papua New Guinea. The bananas we have today
are a hybrid of two wild banana varieties, Musa
acuminata and Musa balbisiana, which eventually developed
into the well known bright yellow fruit
with its peelable cover. The current banana has
smaller seeds, more nutrients and tastes better than
its wild counterpart. However, it's said that the fruit needs to evolve or they might go extinct. That's because right now these bananas lack genetic diversity. This makes the fruit
increasingly vulnerable to pests and diseases that could
devastate the banana industry. Hopefully scientists will
manage to find a viable alternative before it comes to that. Before I reveal the most
outrageous example in this list, I'd like to remind you to
subscribe to Be Amazed! We upload amazing, fact
filled videos every day. So don't miss out on learning
some amazing new information. Also, hit that bell icon
for notifications on more amazing, fact filled videos. Number one, watermelon. Watermelons have actually
been around for millennia and they're one of the fruits
that have most drastically changed in appearance over the years. The first recorded harvest of the fruit happened 5000 years ago in Egypt. Those watermelons were
unrecognizable by today's standard. They were a fraction of
the size they are now, measuring around two inches in diameter. They were also extremely
bitter, tasting nothing like the sweet fruit we have today. Over time humans kept cultivating and molding the watermelon. By the 17th century the
watermelon, from the outside, largely resembled the ones of today. However, the inside
part of the fruit would probably be considered
bizarre by people today. Paintings from the era show
a sliced open watermelon having swirly shapes inside
with six triangular pieces and a spiral of seeds. The watermelon's flesh
was also a lighter red. Over time we got to the modern, fleshier version of the watermelon. The fruit is now over
1500 times bigger than the original wild watermelon. It's fleshy interior
also increased in size and became a more vibrant red over time. All our human effort made
the watermelon bigger, juicier and taste sweeter. What fruit or vegetable do
you think changed the most? After this list will you be able to look at them all the same? Let me know in the comments
section down below. Thanks for watching.
So there you go. Forget about inventing beer or Shiraz wine, we invented the carrot.
Isn't the common apple or apricot from around these parts as well? Lots of fruit actually!