Some Plants Want to be Eaten.
Animals run & cry when attacked by predators. But plants have adapted to appeal to animals and birds that spread their seeds. Over millions of years, these plants have developed ways to communicate with animals through fruits, new research suggests, saying something like “choose me.” With traits evolved to match each animal’s sensory capacities or physical abilities, fruits can signal dinner time, and further their plant’s survival as a species. Red berries and orange figs hang in the rain forest’s canopy. They are waiting for monkeys, apes or birds to scan the foliage, eat the ripe fruit and either spit or defecate seeds far from their sources, spreading their next generation to a new location. In the similarly mountainous rain forests of Madagascar’s Ranomafana National Park, yellow berries or fragrant, green figs await lemurs. They will search the forest all night for their feast, later scattering the seeds. Kim Valenta, an evolutionary ecologist at...
