Why do plants need animals?

You know that animals need plants. Well, plants need animals too! You see, animals make sure that that plants keep growing. Of course they don’t take care of the plants the way that you and I do. Surprisingly they take care of the plants by eating them. That sweet smelling, juicy fruit tempts the animal. The animal eats it, than they carry it in their bellies until they digest it. Some of the fruit like the pit or the seed can’t be used as energy. Later in the day the animal drops the indigestible seeds onto the ground. This scat (animal poop) has the nutrients to grow a new tree.

I was thinking about these ideas today because, I spent the day with Camilia and Mauro, the scientists who want to find out who eats what in the Pantanal. We went out after a very large rainstorm passed through to look for fruits that were ripe and ready for the animals to eat. We also set up a camera trap. This is one way they find out who is eating the ripe fruit. The cameras take pictures. We put out a big pile of fruit to lure the animals to the bush. We also discovered a large “tapir latrine.” This meant, I figured, that the large piles I thought were rocks, was actually tapir scat. They were happy to collect a lot of scat samples to take back to the lab. I helped collect. It wasn’t as bad as I thought. I had my hand in a plastic bag and it was hard as a rock. I hope next time I get to see the tapir instead.

Animals we saw today were crab-eating fox, deer, feral pigs, and spoonbill (a bright pink bird with a beak that looks like a spoon). The best sighting, at the end of the day, was the scarlet macaws. Two were flying together across the sky while the sun was setting. Their brilliant red feathers flashed like jewelry with the sun’s light. Magnificent