快猫短视频

The Ghosts of Evolution by Connie Barlow, Basic Books, $26, ISBN
0465005519

AFTER the destruction of paradise, only the plants survived. But this
paradise isn鈥檛 the familiar Garden of Eden; it鈥檚 the Americas during the last
ice age.

The story does begin with fruit, though鈥攖he large native fruits of
tropical Central America, such as avocado, mango, papaya and watermelon. These
fruit trees all cater to fruit-loving animals, and in return for eating the
fruit, the animals disperse their seed. But there鈥檚 a mystery: nowadays large
plant eaters such as the tapir and capybara enjoy the fruit without dispersing
the seeds. So two American ecologists, Daniel Janzen and Paul Martin, began to
wonder where the animal 鈥減artners鈥� of these fruit trees were. The animals that
coevolved with the avocado are lost in the mists of time, so which animals kept
them going?

Ghosts of Evolution tells a wonderful tale of ecological investigation of how
the ice-age mammoths, mastodons, horses and ground sloths of America鈥�68
per cent of its genetic richness鈥攂ecame extinct while 98 or more of 112
tropical fruits still thrive.

The answer to the seed conundrum? It鈥檚 all thanks to cultivation by humans.
We鈥檝e become the companion animal to a host of plants. A thought to recall when
you tuck into your next mango or papaya.