What a fig is.

If you are squeamish and like figs, this may comfort you.<p>According to a comment in the original post, majority of commercial ones do not contain insects:<p><i>"Only some kinds of figs (so called 'Smyrna' types) are pollenated by wasps. The vast majority of figs eaten come from varieties that produce fruit parthenocarpically. It is highly unlikely that the fig you ate at the supermarket was of a variety pollenated by wasps: most north american commercial figs are not."</i><p><a href="http://scienceblogs.com/oscillator/2010/09/edible_symbiosis.php#comment-2792506" rel="nofollow">http://scienceblogs.com/oscillator/2010/09/edible_symbiosis....</a><p>I chose to believe this explanation :)

Ripe figs are delicious, and knowing that they've also, potentially killed a wasp - man's greatest enemy - only makes their nectar sweeter to my tongue.

This is only a copy of <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/oscillator/2010/09/edible_symbiosis.php" rel="nofollow">http://scienceblogs.com/oscillator/2010/09/edible_symbiosis....</a><p>It is better to link to the original article. It has some photos and videos of the figs.

Take a fig.<p>Okay, take about 8 of them.<p>And take 8 strips of thick-cut, maple-smoked, peppered organic bacon, the best you can find.<p>Wrap the fig in the bacon, secure with a toothpick, and place on a pan.<p>Roast at 425F for about 25 minutes, checking after about 15 minutes.<p>I assure you, you will not be disappointed.

The concluding chapter of Dawkins's _Climbing Mount Improbable_ is all about this, and it needed a whole chapter because it's mind-blowingly intricate.<p><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=erRC0ELnZdsC&#38;pg=PA300&#38;dq=climbing+mount+improbable+a+garden+inclosed" rel="nofollow">http://books.google.com/books?id=erRC0ELnZdsC&#38;pg=PA300&#...</a>

I have to say from experience...<p>If you move into a house (purchase/rent/otherwise) with a fig tree and plan to relandscape. Be very careful. Fig tree roots run very shallow, and even older trees are susceptible to damage to the roots.<p>I found out the hard way - rototilling an overgrown back yard due to too much grass, weeds, bulbs, etc. The 'till chomped through two or three large surface roots (&#60; 8" deep which were more than 4 feet from the tree). The result - one dead 20+ y/o fig tree.<p>Be careful when gardening/redoing a yard.

At first glace it seemed like this species of wasp was inbreeding. But after reading a Wiki article [1], it seems like different female wasps can lay eggs in a single fig.<p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fig_wasp#Life_cycle" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fig_wasp#Life_cycle</a>

Just a note: there is usually only one wasp in the edible fig, and it has been broken down by the plant.

We got figs in at a restaurant I cook at this past week. We have fig ravioli on our seared scallop app (with frisse, radiccio, butternut puree, and reduced port), a fresh fig salad with fig vin (and mesclun, candied pinenuts, fried onions, and goat cheese mousse), and bruleed figs on our whipped chocolate dessert (with mint sorbet). Fun product, and, for us anyway, insect free.

Fascinating. Here is a video showing the wasps collecting the pollen inside a male fig flower (as described in the first paragraph): <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZCYoEdavDk" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZCYoEdavDk</a>

Why this sudden interest in me? :)

Nature at the macroscopic scale may be red in tooth and claw, but at smaller scales it gets positively Lovecraftian. (See also: the cockroach brain parasite <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/loom/2006/02/02/the_wisdom_of_parasites.php" rel="nofollow">http://scienceblogs.com/loom/2006/02/02/the_wisdom_of_parasi...</a> )

The man came in the restaurant, pointed to a meal looking like meat and asked: "What it that?" The attentand replied: "that's our special: cow tongue!" And the man said: "Argh, I won't eat something that comes from the mouth of that animal... Just give me an egg, please."

So, in other words, a fig is a righteous bastard. And, in its choice of symbiont (a wasp, of all things), reveals a sense of irony that's as delicious as the fruit itself. It's the WINfruit!

What? Figs are not vegan? How about kosher?

Biology is strange. If I had read this in a sci-fi book, I would think the author went overboard.

What little love I had for figs has now been squelched. Thank you.

I knew there had to be an explanation why I never liked figs.

I'll just be putting these figs back on the shelf now.

Hence why I stopped eating figs.

thank you, didn't want to know that.

So, is Monsanto plotting to kill off the fig wasps and replace them with something they can profit from yet?

Sorry, I don't read Andrew Sullivan. Supported invasion of Iraq, no mea culpa, wrong about pretty much everything else too.