It seems a slightly strange concept that pepper seeds are hot.
In order to thrive and spread all plants need to spread their seeds.
Plants that produce fruits rely on animals and birds to eat their fruit (including the seeds) and then spread their seeds elsewhere as they defecate elsewhere, allowing the plant family to spread and grow in numbers.
So why then have chilli pepper plants developed seeds that are coated in capsaicin, which is the chemical that produces the heat in chillis? Most animals are put off by the presence of capsaicin in peppers so why then have the plants not died out? Well scientists in the UK have recently come up with an explanation to this question.
Firstly it should be noted that most bird species are immune to the heat effects of capsaicin and so chilli pepper plants have relied on birds to spread their seeds as opposed to land based mammals.
Secondly they believe that capsaicin is produced by chilli plants in order to counter the effects of a particular type of fungus that tends to attack the seeds of chilli pepper plants.
In tests they found that the more capsaicin (and heat) present in the chillies the less chance there was of the seeds being killed by the fungus.
What this means for us then is that we have evolution to thank for ever hotter species of chilli peppers being grown.
It is worth remembering that if you bite into a chili that is too hot for you dairy products such as milk and yogurt are the best cure to the chili burn!