Seed-spitting mice

Credit: Samuni-Blank et. al., Current Biology, volume 22, number 13. Copyright Current Biology/Cell Press.

These two video clips show two species of spiny mouse -- first the golden spiny mouse, and then the common or Cairo spiny mouse -- eating fruit from the shrub Ochradenus baccatus and spitting out the seeds. If the seeds are chewed with the fruit, a chemical reaction creates a "mustard oil bomb," so the mice have learned to spit out the seeds while eating the fruit. Thus the plant has turned the mice from seed eaters into seed spreaders that help the plant reproduce, according to a new study by Israeli and University of Utah scientists.

The videos were made by the the study's first author, Michal Samuni-Blank, a doctoral student and ecologist at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. She conducted the study in the journal Current Biology with University of Utah biology Professor Denise Dearing and other scientists from the Technion, the University of Haifa and the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

For a video abstract on the study by first author Michael Samuni-Blank of the Technion in Israel, please see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaTFV0...

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[insectour]

Look for "Fruit chemistry alters animal behavior" in You Tube

[Arno Schlick]

Part II: I like very much the Brassicacea family with, e.g., their genus of cress plants, like the species of Maca (Lepidium peruvianum, in yellow, white red and brown) and the species of Pepperweed or Dittander (Lepidium latifolium).

The latter one tastes really like Horseradish roots, - if you pick and eat the younger green LEAVES!

[Arno Schlick]

Part I: The so-called mustard bomb is a complex multi reaction with th outcome of mustard oils including ingredients like those of the group of Isothiocyanates.

What nearly no one knows is, that those substances are able to inhibit carcinogenesis and tumorigenesis and as such - they are likely useful chemopreventive agents against the development and proliferation of cancers! They work on a variety of levels, e.g inhibition of carcinogenesis through inhibition of cytochrome type enzymes.

[wymoosehead68]

Please set up the closed caption!