Why fruit-eating bats eat dirt

[Squirrel Girl]

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/why-frui ... 16050.html

“Don’t eat the green parts of tomatoes, cut the green off the potatoes.” Any child would know that eating these parts of vegetables is a bad idea. The reason behind this is that they contain secondary plant compounds which may have detrimental effects on the consumer.

Each night, tropical fruit-eating bats ingest large amounts of secondary plant compounds with their food. This may become particularly problematic for pregnant or lactating bat mothers, since secondary plant compounds may damage the embryo or the juvenile. Now,a scientific study describes for the first time how female fruit-eating bats deal with this situation. In a study published in the online journal PLoS ONE, researchers from the Berlin Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW), Boston University and Cornell University, found evidence that fruit-eating bats take up large amounts of mineral rich water and clay from so-called mineral licks to detoxify the secondary plant compounds they ingest in fruits.
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