A gummivore is an
omnivorous
An omnivore () is an animal that has the ability to eat and survive on both plant and animal matter. Obtaining energy and nutrients from plant and animal matter, omnivores digest carbohydrates, protein, fat, and fiber, and metabolize the nutri ...
animal whose diet consists primarily of the gums and
saps of
trees
In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are u ...
(about 90%) and bugs for protein.
[ Notable gummivores include ]arboreal
Arboreal locomotion is the Animal locomotion, locomotion of animals in trees. In habitats in which trees are present, animals have evolved to move in them. Some animals may scale trees only occasionally, but others are exclusively arboreal. Th ...
, terrestrial primates
Primates are a diverse order of mammals. They are divided into the strepsirrhines, which include the lemurs, galagos, and lorisids, and the haplorhines, which include the tarsiers and the simians (monkeys and apes, the latter including huma ...
like certain marmoset
The marmosets (), also known as zaris or sagoin, are 22 New World monkey species of the genera '' Callithrix'', '' Cebuella'', '' Callibella'', and ''Mico''. All four genera are part of the biological family Callitrichidae. The term "marmoset" ...
s and lemur
Lemurs ( ) (from Latin ''lemures'' – ghosts or spirits) are Strepsirrhini, wet-nosed primates of the Superfamily (biology), superfamily Lemuroidea (), divided into 8 Family (biology), families and consisting of 15 genera and around 100 exist ...
s. These animals that live off of the injuries of trees live from about 8m off of the ground up to the canopies. The feeding habit of gummivores is gummivory.[Plavcan, J. M., & Kay, R. (1962). Reconstructing behavior in the primate fossil record. (pp. 165–170). New York, NY: Kluwer Academic/ Plenum Publishers. Retrieved fro]
Google Books.
/ref>
Specific traits
An Old World example of a gummivore is fork-marked lemur
Fork-marked lemurs or fork-crowned lemurs are Strepsirrhini, strepsirrhine primates; the four species comprise the genus ''Phaner''. Like all lemurs, they are native to Madagascar, where they are found only in the west, north, and east sides of t ...
s, whose diet is about 90% gum exudates
An exudate is a fluid emitted by an organism through pores or a wound, a process known as exuding or exudation.
''Exudate'' is derived from ''exude'' 'to ooze' from Latin ''exsūdāre'' 'to (ooze out) sweat' (''ex-'' 'out' and ''sūdāre'' 'to ...
from a tree's branches or trunk.[Merrit, J. (2010). The biology of small mammals. (pp. 89–93). Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press. Retrieved fro]
Google Books.
/ref> Lemurs have a “ tooth comb”, made up of the lower incisors
Incisors (from Latin ''incidere'', "to cut") are the front teeth present in most mammals. They are located in the premaxilla above and on the mandible below. Humans have a total of eight (two on each side, top and bottom). Opossums have 18, wh ...
and canines
Canine may refer to:
Zoology and anatomy
* a dog-like Canid animal in the subfamily Caninae
** ''Canis'', a genus including dogs, wolves, coyotes, and jackals
** Dog, the domestic dog
* Canine tooth, in mammalian oral anatomy
People with the surn ...
. Fork-marked lemurs have more robust toothcombs than most other lemurs and use these specialized teeth to gouge the bark from the surface of a tree.[ Fork-marked lemurs also consume the gum seeping from beneath the bark of trees, via spaces created by beetles. Their long, slim tongue enables them to access these openings in the bark. They also possess a symbiotic bacterium that assists in the digestion of the gum, starting the process in the mouth.][
The ]black-tufted marmoset
The black-tufted marmoset (''Callithrix penicillata''), also known as Mico-estrela in Portuguese, is a species of New World monkey that lives primarily in the Neo-tropical gallery forests of the Brazilian Central Plateau. It ranges from Bahia ...
(''Callithrix penicillata'') is a New World example that mostly lives off of the sap from trees. To do this, the monkey uses their lengthened lower incisors to chew through the bark of a tree and obtain the sap; this classifies it as a gummivore.[ The incisors are extremely specialized, since they are the marmosets’ “tool” to acquire food. The teeth have a thickened enamel on the exterior, but lack the enamel on the inside creating a tough, chiseling tool. Both the lemurs and marmosets have a ]gecko
Geckos are small, mostly carnivorous lizards that have a wide distribution, found on every continent except Antarctica. Belonging to the infraorder Gekkota, geckos are found in warm climates throughout the world. They range from .
Geckos ar ...
-like hand and catlike claws, which are extremely useful in clinging on to trees for extended amounts of time.[
]
Feeding strategies
Before feeding time comes around, the marmosets must prepare their food by chiseling multiple small holes into the barks of trees. The actual bite left behind is about 2–3 cm across and just deep enough to retrieve sap. After about a day passes, the primates will return to their bite marks and consume the leaking sap.[
In order to consume gums and other indirect sources of nutrients, these animals must have a digestive system to compensate. Gums of trees are beta-linked ]polysaccharides
Polysaccharides (), or polycarbohydrates, are the most abundant carbohydrates found in food. They are long chain polymeric carbohydrates composed of monosaccharide units bound together by glycosidic linkages. This carbohydrate can react with w ...
that are not easily digested.[ These require a form of microbial ]fermentation
Fermentation is a metabolic process that produces chemical changes in organic substrates through the action of enzymes. In biochemistry, it is narrowly defined as the extraction of energy from carbohydrates in the absence of oxygen. In food ...
to acquire the essential nutrients. This process takes the marmoset roughly 17.5 hours (± 1.6 hours) to completely digest, while carnivores
A carnivore , or meat-eater (Latin, ''caro'', genitive ''carnis'', meaning meat or "flesh" and ''vorare'' meaning "to devour"), is an animal or plant whose food and energy requirements derive from animal tissues (mainly muscle, fat and other sof ...
take a mere 3–4 hours to digest proteins from meat. Though the digestive process takes some time, the gummivorous mammals have relatively low daily caloric needs, as they do not expend as much energy to acquire their food.
Gums contain galactose
Galactose (, '' galacto-'' + '' -ose'', "milk sugar"), sometimes abbreviated Gal, is a monosaccharide sugar that is about as sweet as glucose, and about 65% as sweet as sucrose. It is an aldohexose and a C-4 epimer of glucose. A galactose molec ...
in form of galacturonic acid. This sugar is part of lactose, which is milk sugar, so consumption of gums in early mammals or their precursors might be a cause for development of mammary glands in mammals along with maternal instincts to feed their offspring and increased body lipids in females of early mammals.
Shelter effects
Captivity in animals drives them away from their natural instincts and behaviors. Some gummivores are commonly held captive and even as household pets. A gummivore like the marmoset has the digestive system and oral tools required for feasting on saps of trees, but when fed more nutrient filled foods, there will be a severe change in the plasticity of the mammal. For example, if a marmoset's diet is changed, over the next few generations of that animal, it will adapt to those foods, rendering their natural adaptations useless such as the chiseling teeth and the bacterial fermentation.
Notes
References
{{Reflist
Wildlife
Primate behavior
Ethology
Animals by eating behaviors