SPEAKER_02: TED Audio Collective. You're listening to TED Talks Daily.I'm your host, Elise Hu.Today, we're talking about the possibilities of poop.It turns out the droppings of tapirs in the Amazon have forest regenerating powers.Ecologist Ludmila Hachis reveals the research on how this kind of waste is far from wasteful in her talk from the TED Countdown Summit in 2023. Ted Talks Daily is brought to you by Progressive.Progressive helps you compare direct auto rates from a variety of companies so you can find a great one, even if it's not with them.Quote today at Progressive.com to find a rate that works with your budget.Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates.
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SPEAKER_00: When I was a child, growing up in Brazil, I would play by stepping on cow's poop barefoot, just to feel the warm and soft sensation of the digested organic matter going through my toes.But for my family, animal waste had another level of importance.My grandma would sell the manure and split the money with my mom. That was my mom's only income as a housewife, raising her four children while my father worked on our farm.On that very farm, my grandpa had a stroke of a genius.Instead of ordinary fences, he carved out some ditches surrounded by trees, creating forest corridors for animals to cross.It was like Mother Nature's highway system, allowing critters to commute from one leafy paradise to another, My mom never wanted me to rely on animal waste for a living.My grandpa did not know he was increasing the landscape connectivity for animals to cross.But they were both working on nature-based solutions before the term became trendy.
Two aspects of ecosystem restoration, investing in soil fertility and increasing the landscape connectivity, bringing back the nutrients, bringing back the forests, both with positive consequences for the entire system. I believe a healthy ecosystem should stand behind every plate of food.So today, as a scientist, my role is to understand how to produce food while we let animals work in ecosystem resilience, in a changing world.So I started where those changes are happening, in the tropics, in Brazil, in the Amazonia. And it's in there, in the wilds of the tropical forests, the tropical South America, that beholds the star of our tale, the lowland tapir.Those pig-like creatures grace the landscape from the Amazonia to the Pantanal.When it comes to big animals, they tend to eat a lot of low-energy food, like leaves, but tapirs are different.Up to 36 percent of their diet is based on fruit. and they have a very long digestive system, and they love to go for a walk.So let's picture that.
They go for a walk, they find fruits along the way, they eat them while they process, and they keep walking in degraded areas, and eventually, they poop.And when they poop, they help to spread the seeds in the fruits they love to eat. Tapers are big, tapers are tough, and tapers poop a lot.And how do I know that?Because at the research station that I work on at the Southeast Amazonian, among many other things, we wash poop.We walk in the forest looking for their latrines, and latrines are something like a toilet, but without the large bowl.Just a lot of poop together. We find them, collect, wash, count and identify as many seeds as possible.In one dung, we find an average 733 seeds belonging to up to 24 different species. we can see hundreds of seedlings emerging from one dung.
And they can become trees, big trees.And because large-seeded trees tend to be deep-rooted and drought-resistant, those seed dispersers are helping to create a tree community resilient and resistant. But sometimes, tapirs poop too many seeds in one place, leading to competition among the seedlings.So other animals come in to help, luckily.Some of those animals is the dung beetle.Dung beetles help to disperse the seeds throughout the forest.There are two kinds of dung beetles dispersing seeds, rollers and tunnelers. Rollers roll the poop away from the source and bury it underground, while tunnelers bury the poop right by the source.When they bury the seeds, they revolve around the soil and make it better for the seeds and increasing the chances of them to grow into plants.These animals' interactions
can really reseed the forests.But we must preserve their habitats to increase their chances of survival.When people ask me if forests can regrow without our help, I say we always have to help, even if it is just to get out of the way. But another more active way to help is by leaving forest patches in the landscape.Forest patches are something like VIP lounges for plants and animals, where critters can hop, skip and jump from one leafy hot spot to another.And when they do that, they act like real gardeners, bringing back the forests. And they need to do that because the future of those forests is at stake.As scientists, we are concerned with deforestation and degradation.Deforestation takes away those forests those animals are helping to plant for thousands of years.Degradation makes those forests less healthy, harboring fewer animals.
I truly believe that those animals are trying to bring back the spring despite all the efforts to stop them.So let me throw you some questions.How powerful is the tapir's poop?How far can they travel?How charming do my friends, totally unconcerned with social conventions, need to be in order to revert the tipping point we are possibly about to reach? My colleagues and I at the Woodwell Climate Research Center and at the Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia are trying to answer those questions.But we already know some of the answers.We know that the resilience of those ecosystems is on the diversity of plants and animals living there.Our future is intertwined with the future of those animals, and it depends on how good a job we do trying to protect them. And people, I'm not afraid to say, our future lies in poop.
Thank you.
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