Do trees grow from seeds that goats eat and later expel?
That is a question that has long bedeviled ecologists.
Let’s say it’s a small seed. The goat will swallow it, poop it out and a tree could sprout.
But what if it’s a sizable seed? It probably wouldn’t make it through the goat’s digestive tract intact. And so … no tree.
Unless … the goat spit out the seed instead of pooping it out.
Go Ahead, Little Goat, Eat Some Poison Ivy. It Won’t Hurt A Bit
GOATS AND SODA
Go Ahead, Little Goat, Eat Some Poison Ivy. It Won’t Hurt A Bit
A new study probes the question of excretion vs. expectorate. The answer has important consequences for the birth of baby trees — in particular, the gnarled argan tree of Morocco.
We were interested in this study for two reasons. First, our blog is, after all, called Goats and Soda. (Here’s why.) And second, argan trees are an important part of the economy in this lower-middle income country. They bear fruit. And the seeds of the fruit are valuable — they can be pressed to yield argan oil, valued in beauty treatments and foodie circles. By some reports, argan oil exports bring in $6.5 million.
It’s not easy to harvest seeds from atop a 30-foot-tall tree. In the arid parts of Morocco where argan trees grow, goats are encouraged to climb, dine and deliver the seeds to earth, where they are collected by humans and eventually turned into argan oil.
But argan trees don’t always thrive because of overharvesting and climate change. It would sure be helpful if the goats did a little planting of their own.
The study is titled “Tree-climbing goats disperse seeds during rumination” and was just published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.