Whether it's sliced on top of a salad, tucked in a California sushi roll, or mashed as guacamole in a burrito, people seem to love avocados.
In fact, people in the United States munched through four billion of them in 2014 alone.
They taste great, they're good for you, but one of the most amazing things about avocados is that, they still exist.
See, they had a special relationship with huge beasts that lumbered around Central America tens of thousands of years ago.
And when these animals went extinct, avocados could easily have gone down with them.
But, luckily for us, they were saved by some prehistoric farmers.
The word "avocado" comes from the Aztecs, specifically, the Nahuatl word ahuacatl, which means . . . testicle.
I mean, you can kind of see where they got the name, it probably has something to do with the, uh, you know the shape and texture of avocados, the way they hang from trees.
Anyway, before they became popular in the rest of the world, they were cultivated in Mesoamerica for thousands of years.
Avocados are a fruit – basically, swollen plant ovaries.
