Author: Abbey Perreault / Source: Atlas Obscura
Walnuts are grown in orchards and peanuts can be planted, but it takes a forest to raise a Brazil nut.
Though the crescent-shaped, creamy seeds have found their way into the hearts and mouths of humans around the world, they hail from a hardy, round seed pod found only in the treetops of the Amazon.
The global Brazil nut industry is founded on a delicate equation of bees, trees, rainfall, and one particularly toothy rodent.Scattered throughout the lowlands of the Amazon, the Brazil nut tree grows in remote parts of the rainforest in Bolivia, Brazil, and Peru. Towering above other fauna at a formidable height of 150 to 200 feet, they can live for hundreds of years. But to those unfamiliar with the forest, their survival as a species is perplexing. They only bear fruit in nearly pristine, undisturbed forest—and when they do, their seeds are trapped, encased in the ourico, a spherical, coconut-like shell so tough that it requires the force of a machete to break open. Seed dispersal seems impossible.
When an ourico falls, it falls fast. Shooting downwards at nearly 50 miles per hour, the five-pound shell rockets to the ground, hitting with such force that it embeds itself slightly into the soil. Brazil-nut foragers are mindful of this. They wear broad, wooden hats and stay home on windy days, as a blow to the head from an ourico is almost always fatal.
While humans have long harvested Brazil nuts, one mammal has been cracking the seed pod sans machete for much longer.
A massive, squirrel-like burrowing rodent with beady eyes and incredibly sharp teeth, the industrious agouti is the Brazil nut tree’s secret weapon when it comes to seed dispersal. It responds to the sound of falling ouricos, and gnaws the shell open with its impressive incisors. But the agouti doesn’t…The post Brazil Nuts Are Brought to You by Rodents appeared first on FeedBox.