The black palm is one nasty tree should you wish to try and climb one. But up there at the top are some very important fruits and many a person and animal have thought about how to get up there. And just for the record, there are a couple of animals that can climb this tree and a couple that leap to the top from nearby trees so it can be done.
So, while some try to reach the fruit at the top, the Central American agouti sorta just hangs out around these trees and waits for the fruit to fall. And by all accounts this is their favorite food and I often see them under these palms.
The kinda interesting part of all this is that the agouti is a scatter hoarder. So like a squirrel might bury an acorn the agouti bury the palm fruits. And then, they dig them up and move them and bury them again. And again. And then the neighboring agouti might come along and dig them up, steal them and re-bury them somewhere else. This can honestly go on a couple dozen times before they are eaten. But with the fruit only ripening for about 4 months of the year, they need those buried seeds to get them through. So the tree feeds the agouti and the agouti disperses the seeds for the tree. This is known as mutualism.
And finally, my blog software is not working well at all right now so sadly I am going to have to put the photo of the agouti as a separate posting.
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