The hot pepper suet cakes for wild birds that we carry are laced with hot peppers that birds cannot taste but drives squirrels elsewhere for food.
We have a number of different hot pepper solutions:
- RTU Hot Pepper Delight Suet Log – 2 lbs
- Hot Pepper Suet Dough – 13.5 oz.
- Hot Pepper No Melt Suet Dough Log Wild Bird Food
- Hot Pepper Premium Suet Cake 11.25 oz.
- Never Melt Hot Pepper Suet Cake 13 oz. (Case of 12)
- Hot Pepper Suet Cake for Wild Birds – 12 oz.
Birds do not have receptors for capsaicin, the protein that makes peppers hot – which is the key to these innovative products.
The reason chilies incorporate capsaicin in their fruits (and red/green peppers of course are fruits in a botanical sense, not vegetables) seems to be to ensure that their seeds are dispersed properly. When small birds consume the fruits of wild peppers the seeds pass through the gut undigested and, due to the birds’ flight range, are deposited in distant places where they can grow with less competition. If the fruits were consumed by larger mammals the seeds would either be digested, or deposited much closer to the parent plant.
Studies have shown that the seeds of wild peppers are in fact dispersed almost exclusively by birds.