Content
- What are fruit-eating animals?
- Frugivorous animals: characteristics
- Frugivorous animals and their importance to the ecosystem
- Frugivorous Animals: Examples
- 1. Frugivorous Mammals
- 3. frugivorous birds
- 4. Frugivorous reptiles
- 5. Frugivorous invertebrates
- 6. Frugivorous fish
The interactions between plants and animals are really extensive. Although it may seem like just predation, the relationship between these beings is symbiotic and both parts are not only necessary to survive, but they evolved together.
One of the interactions between animals and plants is frugivory. In this PeritoAnimal article, we'll talk about this relationship and find out what the fruit-eating animals: characteristics and examples.
What are fruit-eating animals?
Frugivorous animals are those whose diet is based on fruit consumption, or a large part of what they consume is composed of this type of food. In the animal kingdom, many species are frugivorous, from insects to large mammals.
At plants that produce fruit are the angiosperms. In this group, the flowers of female plants or the female parts of a hermaphrodite plant have an ovary with several eggs that, when fertilized by sperm, thicken and change color, acquiring nutritional qualities that are very attractive to the animals. 20% of known species of mammals are fruit-eating animals, so this type of diet is very significant and important among animals.
Frugivorous animals: characteristics
At first, frugivorous animals do not seem to have distinguishing characteristics from non-fugivorous animals, especially when they are omnivorous animals that, although they can feed on many products, have fruits as their main food.
The main features appear throughout the digestive tube, starting with the mouth or the beak. In mammals and other animals with teeth, molars are often wider and flatter to be able to chew. Animals with non-chewing teeth tend to have a row of small, even teeth that are used to cut fruit and swallow smaller pieces.
Frugivorous birds usually have a short or concave beak in order to extract the pulp from the fruits, as is the case with parrots. Other birds have a thinner, straighter beak, which serves to feed on smaller fruits that can be swallowed whole.
arthropods have specialized jaws to mash the food. A species can feed on fruit during certain stages of its life and have another diet when it becomes an adult, or even it may not need to feed anymore.
Another very important characteristic of these animals is that don't digest the seeds, however, produce in them a physical and chemical modification, called scarification, without which they could not germinate when they are abroad.
Frugivorous animals and their importance to the ecosystem
Fruit plants and fruit-eating animals have a symbiotic relationship and have co-evolved throughout history. The fruits of plants are so attractive and nutritious not for the seeds to feed, but for attracting the attention of animals.
The frugivorous animals eat the pulp of the fruit, ingesting the seeds together. Thereby, the plant achieves two benefits:
- When passing through the digestive tract, the acids and movements of the digestive tract remove the protective layer from the seeds (scarification) causing germination to occur much faster and thus increasing the chances of survival.
- The journey of food through the animal's digestive tract usually takes hours or even days. Therefore, if an animal ate a certain fruit in a certain place, it is likely that when it went to excrete it, it was far away from the tree that produced it, thus dispersing the offspring of this plant and making it colonize new places.
We can say, then, that fruits are the reward that animals receive for scattering seeds, just as pollen is, for a bee, the reward for pollinating the various plants.
Frugivorous Animals: Examples
You fruit-eating animals they are spread all over the planet, in all regions where there are fruit plants. Below, we will show some examples of frugivorous animals that demonstrate this diversity.
1. Frugivorous Mammals
The relationships between plants and animals are usually strong, especially for species that feed exclusively on fruit, such as the bat flying fox (Acerodon jubatus). This animal lives in the woods where it feeds, and is in danger of extinction due to deforestation. In Africa, the largest species of bat is also frugivorous, the hammerhead bat (Hypsinathus monstrosus).
On the other hand, most primates are frugivores. Thus, although they have an omnivorous diet, they mainly eat fruit. This is the case, for example, of the chimpanzee (pan troglodytes) or the gorilla (gorilla gorilla), although many lemurs also be frugivores.
The monkeys of the new world, like the howler monkeys, spider monkeys and marmosets, play an important role in dispersing the seeds of the fruits they eat, so they are also part of the list of examples of fruit-eating animals.
You shrews, voles and possums they are fruit-eating nocturnal mammals, however, if they encounter any worms they will not hesitate to eat them. Lastly, all ungulates are herbivores, but some, like the tapir, feed almost exclusively on fruit.
3. frugivorous birds
Within the birds, it is worth highlighting the parrots as the biggest consumers of fruit, with a beak fully designed for it. Also important frugivorous birds are species of the genus Sylvia, like the blackberry fruit. Other birds, like the southern cassowary (cassuarius cassuarius), also feed on a wide variety of fruits found in forest soils, which are essential for plant dispersal. You toucans its diet is based on fruits and berries, although they can also eat small reptiles or mammals. Of course, in captivity it is important for your health to consume a certain amount of animal protein.
4. Frugivorous reptiles
There are also frugivorous reptiles, such as green iguanas. They don't chew the food, but cut it with their little teeth into pieces that they can swallow whole. Other lizards, like the bearded dragons or the scincides they can eat fruit, but they are omnivores, unlike green iguanas, which are herbivores, and therefore they also need to ingest insects and even small mammals.
Land turtles are another group of frugivorous reptiles, although they can sometimes eat insects, molluscs or worms.
5. Frugivorous invertebrates
On the other hand, there are also frugivorous invertebrates, such as the fruit fly or Drosophila melanogaster, widely used in research. This tiny fly lays its eggs in fruit, and when they hatch, the larvae feed on the fruit until they undergo metamorphosis and reach adulthood. Also, many bedbugs, hemiptera insects, absorb the juice from the interior of the fruit.
6. Frugivorous fish
Although it may seem strange, we close the list of examples of frugivorous animals with this group, as there are also frugivorous fish, such as those belonging to the family. serrasalmidae. These fish, popularly called pacu, feed on plants, but not only on their fruits, also on other parts such as leaves and stems.
If you want to read more articles similar to Frugivorous Animals: Characteristics and Examples, we recommend that you enter our Curiosities section of the animal world.