By Mark Brown, Wired UK
In a bizarre example of a symbiotic relationship, tiny bats in Borneo have been found using a carnivorous plant as a toilet, feeding the pitcher plant with their droppings, while they safely roost in the plant's traps.
Ulmar Grafe, an associate professor at the Universiti Brunei Darussalam, was researching the pitcher plant -- a giant, carnivorous vine with deep, pitfall cups that are used to trap prey -- for a study published in Biology Letters. Grafe wanted to find out how the pitcher managed to find the nitrogen needed to survive in the nutrient-poor peat swamps of Borneo in southeast Asia.
His team found Hardwicke's woolly bat -- a tiny, four gram animal no bigger than a car key -- consistently sleeping in the carnivorous plant's traps during the day. Sometimes alone, sometimes with a partner or with a child. Roosting on top of each other, two or three bats could snugly fit in the pitchers.
But the plant wasn't getting its nutrients by munching on the tiny bats. In fact, the plant has adapted to stop the winged critters from tumbling down into the bottom of the trap and drowning in the digestive fluid. The vine's pitchers have a tapered shape and an unusually low amount of fluid, to stop the bats accidentally becoming dinner. That also prevents the monkeys from eating the insects that the plant catches.
Instead, the plants get their nutrients from the bat droppings, absorbing the feces and urine for nitrogen.
It's only the second time that researchers have documented a case of a mammal using a carnivorous plant as a natural toilet. In 2009, researchers found tree shrews defecating into another type of plant. But the shrews didn't seem to use the plant in return, exhibiting a nonchalant poop-and-go attitude.
The bats, however, have a mutualistic link with the plant, choosing its cozy, dry cavity and lack of blood-sucking ectoparasites as a perfect place to roost.
Image: Ulmar Grafe
Source: Wired UK
See Also:
- 200 New Species of Frogs, Spiders, Mammals and More Discovered
- Micro Frog Discovered Inside Bornean Pitcher Plants
- In the Bowels of Carnivorous Plants, a Tiny Model of the World
- Carnivorous Plants Are DIY Ecosystem Monitors
- America's Most Common Bat Headed for Eastern Extinction
- The Desperate Battle Against Killer Bat Plague
