Have you ever tried chewing an olive pit? If you don’t crack it open before eating it, the only way you’ll get it down is to swallow it whole and then it will do just what it evolved to do in other animals: pass right through your intestines. The olive fruit is a drupe with moist, oily flesh that functions to attract animal dispersers and a seed enclosed within a hard, woody pit that serves to protect it from damage on its way through the digestive system. Compared to the gizzard of birds which the wild ancestor of the olive probably used for seed dispersal[1], your digestive system is a wimp.

Footnotes