Over the past tens of thousands of years, the humble avocado has gone through a lot on its journey to your Instagram feed. If you’re a fan of the fruit, you owe a lot to giant ground sloths, car-sized armadillos and some prehistoric mesoamerican humans.

Perhaps it’s a surprise the avocado's survival is strongly tied to a stroke of luck since, as fruits go, they’re nutritious and evidently appealing to human and animal taste buds alike. Not least are they high in protein, fats, and natural sugars, they’re also rich in nutrients including Vitamins C, E and K. But as perfectly edible as this fruit may be, it was almost game over for the species more than 10,000 years ago.

This video by SciShow tells the tale of how the avocado plant managed to make it into the 21st century against all odds.