Why is that strange and what did it lead to?
Macaws and parrots are well-known seed predators. This means they cheat evolution. Plants invest a ton of energy in fruit production. The reason they pack hard-to-find minerals and energy-rich carbs into fruit is that they want animals to eat them! They want animals to eat fruit because then animals will digest and defecate the seeds, hopefully, many miles away.
Why?
Because seeds that fall beneath the mother tree have a high probability of dying from pathogens that will infest that area because of the high density of saplings. So plants want seedlings to go far from the mother tree.
Most birds and mammals happily comply. But parrots and macaws cheat. They eat the seeds!
So when scientists noticed a Chestnut-fronted macaw carrying a seed on its beak, they found it strange. They went on to call on biologists from South America to send them their own observations of parrots carrying seeds. Surprisingly, they discovered it was not unusual: 16 parrot and macaw species were dispersed 98 different tree species 28 times.
I love this story. It speaks of how much we can learn through random photos in today’s world. Imagine all the information that is waiting to be extracted from the zillions of photos taken on a daily basis by visitors to the Amazon.
Chestnut-fronted Macaw – Photo by Paul Bertner
Heres the link to the paper!
And as usual, sign up for your free trial of the Amazon cam here and help us identify the Amazon wildlife that is on the photos taken by our 20 square kilometer grid of 78 cameras snapping away in the middle of the Amazon jungle.
You can start practicing photo identification with our free illustrated plates of 172 Amazon Rainforest Animals.
by Kurt Holle
