In Sydney Australia, swamp wallabies and other herbivores have been eating protected plants to extinction. The University of Sydney had an idea, what if you protect the plants by making them smell toxic? So they put it to the test. The idea was to put eucalyptus seedlings with chili oil and other chemicals around it out in the wild. At the end of the study the plants that were protected were 20x less eaten. The problem is that animals get used to foreign scents easily but by using natural smells they come across regularly in the forest they take much longer.
Animals eating plants can remove valuable resources from the community, but killing animals is not a good solution. Elephants, deer, squirrels and wallabies all eat plants but killing them all isn’t viable. After forest fires herbivores left unchecked can eliminate half of to all of the new plants and this can prevent that while keeping animals safe.
In conclusion scientists from Australia used new and innovative engineering to protect endangered species of plants and the animals eating them. Even though this is a new idea it could revolutionize farming and other agricultural sciences.
RELATED STORIES
https://phys.org/news/2024-02-herbivorous-animals-nose.html
https://researchoutreach.org/articles/thats-disgusting-how-primates-decide-what-not-to-eat/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/meet-the-meat-paradox/
https://www.treehugger.com/what-is-a-defense-mechanism-373406
https://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-panda-diet-bamboo-protein-carnivore-20190503-story.html
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