simonrex22

I was watching the National Geographic Channel and there was this show about the Ituri African Forest. They showed this racoon looking animal called a sivit. He was sniffing around and caught the scent of this soccer ball sized fruit. The narrator said that the fruit was furmenting and sent the sivit into a frenzy just like a cat sniffing catnip. It got me wondering. What is nature's purpose here. Does everything need a little time to relax and get high, Is it a distraction for struggling hunters to attack a pre-occupied prey? I dont know, share your thoughts.

BigBen

Without having seen the show:

The Sivit is attracted to the scent of fermenting fruit. For some animals, the fermentation process actually helps them with the digestion process. Everyone also knows how many calories there are in alcohol (beer gut) and this would be a quick, high energy, tasty lunch for the little Sivit.

The fruit has also evolved to give away this tasty treat so that the animal will eat the seeds, walk to a fertile place, and take a big dump.

And yes, everyone needs time to relax and let loose, even the smallest of animals. I don't think that there will be any Sivit kegger party invitations going out any time soon, but you may be looking at it in the wrong way. Animals have adapted to be on guard constantly, so the smallest 'down time' for them would be like a two week vacation for us.

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Seeker

I can't comment on the sivit but we have a tree in the neighbourhood that's been reffered to as 'The Drunken Parrot' tree. I thought that name came from a wive's tale because living in the area for a few years I've never seen any physical proof that parrots got drunk in this tree.

Then the season before last it happened... swarms of parrots decended on this tree and were getting stuck into the flowers... they were noisy and honestly 'falling' out of this tree, having brawls with each other, just like they were drunk. The whole episode lasted about a week... it was amazing. They did not return this season when the tree flowered. Extreme hangovers freash in their minds? Maybe they didn't make it? It's brought many questions about nature to my mind anyway.

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simonrex22

Thats really funny seeker. I wish i could have been there to see it. Where are you from. The only place i know where parrots would live is the tropics.

As for the sivit big ben, it didnt eat the fruit. It was sniffing it and playing with it as it rolled around on its back. And fermenting doesnt necassarily mean alcohol. It may have just been a fancy way of saying really ripe. Maybe I wasnt clear in my post. What im trying to say is that its a weird phenomenon that animals get so crazy off the smell of something. Like a cat and catnip. I believe nature is designed to take care of itself. So why the catnip? Why give animals a way to get "high"? Its pretty fascinating and im wondering if there are other instances of this in other animals. Oh yeah, you got the drunken parrots and their crazy flowers. I just had a thought. This could be a good argument for the legalization of marijuana. Anyway, does anyone know of any other animals that get high off the scent of something.

Seeker

simonrex I live in Queensland, Australia

Your question about nature giving animals a way to get high, yes I've thought that with the parrots... but considering I don't know their fate (not seeing them since), I would have to say that that tells me it's not really the best thing one could do for themselves, or perhaps we should refrain and only partake occasionally... I don't know about using it as an argument for legalization though.

If you really wanted to go crazy with the concept you could look at the snake that tempted man to eat fruit from the tree they knew they shouldn't touch...

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macmanmike6100

I think we should get away from the idea that "nature" is "giving" anything to these animals.

"Nature" is not a conscious being. We need to recognize that evolution is not a cohesive process; indeed, species intertwine in one moment and don't the next. It's constantly changing.

The point is that the fruit did not evolve to get the animal high; and the animal did not evolve to get high by that fruit. It just so happened that the fruit evolved in one way -- to produce some chemicals -- and some animal crossed paths with it. The animal, feeling the chemical effects of the fruit (not necessarily via ingestion...smell is a chemical process, too), obviously enjoyed it and thus promoted the fruit's biological spread in some way.

Nature didn't give the animal a way to get high, the animal found a way to get high.

Seeker

Absolutely!

But it is interesting that animals (to a great extent) are believed to operate on instinct. I wonder why instinctually they wouldn't avoid a substance that would scatter their faculties, because surely that would have a big impact on their survival capabilities.

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Johnny Rotten

Disregarding for a moment the whole Intelligent Design vs. Evolution fracas, I'd like to detour into the nature of evolution itself. It occurs to me that the system doesn't necessarily produce long-term improvements. It can't really, because a given environment typically changes faster than genes can mutate (in the case of complex organisms like humans, dogs, whales, et cetera). Furthermore, there's no indication to me that evolution will continually produce an improved organism -- only a different organism that is best suited to the current environment.

I'm a big fan of Occam's Razor and the KISS principle, and from there it seems to me that there is no genetic or environmental requirement for the intelligence or capability of the human organism to increase. We wage war and poison the earth, but that's not anything that evolution can help with. Not in this time frame. Those activities, I think, are a result of what evolution didn't cut out. Those behaviors were not cut out because they did not present a problem until very recently, on an anthropological scale.

I am convinced of the validity of evolution, mind you. This is by no means an attempt to undermine its value. But I believe that this point should be brought up when discussing its relation to ID, because evolution is often mistakenly represented (IMO) as a steady ramp of "improvement." But it has its share of dead ends -- and mistakes like us

I add that last part jokingly, but when I think about it... When evolution creates a species that can come to the brink of self-annihilation and, I assume, an ensuing ecological catastrophe, it's done more harm than good to the system by creating us.

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Seeker

Great spin Johnny, and a good reminder!

Life is not like climbing a ladder... just like humans, it's trial and error along the way. I can see this reflected in my parrot story and more toward my thoughts of the whole scenario as an "oops" incident, and if any parrots survived, perhaps they have the capacity to say... "ok, well that wasn't really a good move"... and if they didn't survive then I'd say there is room for it to happen again. Maybe that is why there seems to be occurrences only periodically throughout the years instead of every season.

Great thoughts... thanks

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simonrex22

First, im not all that knowledgable about Intelligent Design vs. Evolution. Im not really fanatic about the idea of Intelligent Design, but there are too many things that are unexplainable which seem to fall under this idea. I do believe in evolution, there is just so much scientific proof. I think my beliefs fall somewhere in the middle. Ive witnessed too many things in my life that are spiritual and too much to be just coincidence.

I disagree with some things that Johnny Rotten has said. I dont see how you can say that evolution doesnt produce long term improvments. The human race started out banging on rocks with sticks and grunting. Now, we build cities and can communicate internationally. We may be on the path of self-destruction, but we learn from our mistakes and have the intelligence to make things better.

In your last sentance you say, evolution has done more harm than good to the system by creating us. Your statement, in some way, implies that there is an intelligence at work. Maybe not in what you were trying to say, but the way you worded it. I find that interesting.

1010011010

Firstly... It's civet. Look up Kopi Luwak. Civets seem to have a thing
for slightly-past-its-expiration-date fruit.

The entire purpose of a fruit is to entice animals to eat it and then spread the seeds far and wide with a little free fertilizer. Mostly, fruit are enticing by virtue of high sugar content. But that'sa very general sort of attraction and plants do not benefit equally from all animals that consume their fruit. Some animals may be able to digest the seeds as well as the fruit, some animals may provide more or better fertilizer than others. If a plant discovers a way to be particularly attractive to animals that benefit it the most, it will have an advantage.

The relationship between plants and their pollinators is particularly interesting. There are plants that grow flowers that look like female wasps... and you can imagine how that works out. There are plants that smell like rotting meat to attract flies that act as pollinators. I'm sure a cat rolling around in a series of patches of catnip spreads some pollen around, too.

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Charlatan

Civets... weren't they the animals that the Chinese were pegging SARS on? They culled them in the thousands.

By the way thank you Mr. Binary for correcting the spelling I was about to but you beat me to it...

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simonrex22

Hmm. Kopi Luwak. I dont know about you but i could definitely go for some ass coffee. Anyway, interesting stuff there.