Plants and animals have great adaptations to survive in the wild. The audience of nearly a dozen people who attended the presentation “Strange But True Facts About Nature” March 17 at Sanborn Public Library got a glimpse of some of the strange, wacky, and amazing behaviors or adaptations found in nature.
O’Brien County Naturalist Abbie Parker shared a 45-minute presentation as the third and final installment of this season’s Winter Library Series.
Parker opened the show with the sloths of Central and South America. Their hair grows away from their arms and legs and parts down the middle of their chests and bellies. In their rain forest environment, this helps the sloths to shed water as they hang upside down. The green tint of that hair serves as camouflage and is the result of algae growing in the hair. The fur is also home to insects and is the only place to find the sloth moth.
The wings of the common buckeye butterfly feature multiple false eye spots which serve to ward off predators. The large eye spots also direct any attacker toward the lower wings and away from the butterfly’s head and abdomen. The common buckeye has been known to survive with as much as two-thirds of its wings missing.
With some species of the giant water bug, the males really man-up when it comes to child care. After adults mate, the female will lay eggs on the back of her male partner. The male then cares for the eggs for the 1-2 weeks until they hatch, even assisting with the hatching process.
Chomping on prey can be hard on a shark’s teeth, especially with the teeth having no roots. Not to worry. Parker explained that sharks have layers of teeth with the new ones growing in behind the old. A shark may lose tens of thousands of teeth during its lifetime. Even though Iowa has no sharks, the teeth of sharks have been found in the state. That serves as a good clue that water once covered our region.
If you’ve ever met a beaver face-to-face you will notice its orange teeth. That hue comes from the iron contained in the thick enamel. The softer back side of those teeth wears down faster and helps give the rodent sharp, chiseled teeth, the better for felling those trees. The Naturalist also shared that, since a beaver’s teeth are continually growing, the beaver needs to constantly gnaw to keep the teeth from growing too long.
Patience is definitely a virtue for the great blue heron. The wading bird is able to stand very still in the water for long periods of time as an aid to catching fish. The great blue heron can be recognized in flight by the sight of its legs hanging behind.
Parker brought up humpback whales and the way they hunt schools of fish. After the whales call to each other, announcing that it’s time to feed, the leader of the pair or group will dive below the fish to blow a “net” of bubbles, forcing the fish upwards. Then its time for the whales to open wide and gulp both fish and water, using their baleen plates to filter the food from the water.
For those who may have wondered if trees “talk” to each other, Parker related the tale of the African acacia tree. When under attack from a hungry giraffe, the tree will alert neighboring trees by releasing ethylene gas. This signals its neighbors to release tannin into their leaves. This bitter substance can cause sickness and even death in an animal. Giraffes have countered this defense by looking for their snack upwind or more than 50 feet away from the tree releasing the ethylene.
Moving from plant prey to plant predator, the Naturalist referred the group to the Dodder. It appears to be a mass of yellow or orange string but is alive and will bleed if broken. This parasitic plant doesn’t possess the chlorophyll which gives plants their green color and allows for photosynthesis, so it needs to depend on plants which do. The Dodder wraps itself around a plant, sending out “roots” to invade the host’s vascular system to feed. With the dodder no longer needing to be attached to the soil, the bottom of the plant then dies.
Next up was the stinkhorn mushroom. With the presentation noting that “sometimes you gotta be smelly to attact others” it was revealed that the stinkhorn gives off an odor similar to rotting flesh or poop. The fungus is also coated with a slime that contains spores. Their smell is effective in attracting flies which eat the slime and then transfer the spores from the slime to other locations as they buzz around.
Parker concluded with one more example of grossness: the turkey vulture. She pointed out that due to their diet of dead stuff, these scavengers have a very high acid content in their stomachs. This helps them to safely digest the carrion. They don’t get the feathers on their head messed up when feeding because their heads are featherless. To avoid becoming carrion themselves, turkey vultures will vomit up some of their meal, discouraging predators with the stinky stuff and lightening the load should they have to fly away to escape. If that information wasn’t gross enough, they also will pee or poop on their legs to help keep cool.
The Winter Library Series was presented each of the first three months of the year by the O’Brien County Conservation Board, in partnership with the area libraries.