Dupes and seeds. Since when?!

[sakura_sk]

How can you produce more seeds (apart form farming or using an exploit)? Make dupes eat more of that raw plant!

I'm not sure how well known is the mechanics (or if it is even intended mechanics) but there is a 5% chance a dupe produces a seed of the respective plant when eating mushrooms or bristle berries.

I've seen blossom seeds in front of my dupes' mesh tables before but I thought I just misplaced them or dupes dropped them accidentally. I never thought a dupe produced that seed after eating!

So what do you think? Is that behavior intended? If so, why is it not described anywhere and why are fungal spore and blossom seeds the only ones possible? Maybe mealwood is different because dupes only eat the meal lice from it but shouldn't spindle grubfruit have the same mechanics? 

And the most weird of it all in this seed production... Dupes poop seeds from their head?!!

Thanks a lot to @Kastrella for the clear video capture of a dupe producing a seed.

 

Save files, if you want to roll the dice and observe the 1/20 chance to make dupes produce seeds:

Mushroom: dupe seeds mushroom lunch.sav

Bristle berry: dupe seeds berry lunch_.sav

 

[arvenil]

"Dupes poop seeds from their head" = chewing and spitting out the seed. Think oranges

[Sanchozz]

If I remember correctly, this old mechanic has existed since the First Alpha for berries and Outbreak Update for mushrooms.
It is not described anywhere, because probably just forgot about it in five years.
and to be more precise - the chance is 5% for each kg of eaten mass.

[blakemw]

I knew it!

 

 

[sakura_sk]

The answer (2 years later...) is yes! 

Bristle berries do drop seeds when eaten

[blakemw]

So I couldn't resist seeing if this could be gamed. I used a Conveyor Meter Valve setup to split Bristle berries into 0.1 g morsels and had a mob of dupes eat hundreds of such morsels. No seed ever dropped. This suggests that either the probability is reduced when eating smaller amounts (like if the full probability is for 1 kg then 0.1 g would just be a 0.005% chance), or a certain amount needs to be eaten in a meal to have a chance of a seed drop.