Lesson Of The Dodo: we are all connected (not a short read)

I just read these two pages last night and was blown away.  It's from an excellent book, The Panda's Thumb, More Reflections In Natural History by Stephen Jay Gould.  I highly recommend snagging a copy from any bookseller, you can find stores that sell it and even locate it in a local library at that link.

     "The dodo, a giant flightless pigeon, (twenty-five pounds or more in weight), lived in fair abundance on the island of Mauritius.  Within 200 years of its discovery in the fifteenth century, it had been wiped out-- by men who prized its tasty eggs and by the hogs that early sailors had transported to Mauritius.  No living dodos have been seen since 1681.
     In August, 1977, Stanley A. Temple, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Wisconsin, reported the following remarkable story (but see postscript for a subsequent challenge).  He, and others before him, had noted that a large tree, Calvaria major, seemed to be near the verge of extinction on Mauritius.  In 1973, he could find only thirteen "old, overmature, and dying trees" in the remnant native forests.  Experienced Mauritian foresters estimated the trees' ages at more than 300 years.  These trees produce well-formed, apparently fertile seeds each year, but none germinate and no young plants are known.  Attempts to induce germination in the controlled and favorable climate of a nursery have failed.  Yet Calvaria was once common on Mauritius; old forestry records indicate that it had been lumbered extensively.
     Calvaria's large fruits, about two inches in diameter, consist of a seed enclosed in a hard pit nearly half an inch thick.  This pit is surrounded by a layer of pulpy, succulent material covered by a thin outer skin.  Temple concluded that Calvaria seeds fail to germinate because the thick pit "mechanically resists the expansion of the embryo within."  How, then, did it germinate in previous centuries?
     Temple put two facts together.  Early explorers reported that the dodo fed on fruits and seeds of large forest trees; in fact, fossil Calvaria pits have been found among skeletal remains of the dodo.  The dodo had a strong gizzard filled with large stones that could crush tough bits of food.  Secondly, the age of surviving Calvaria trees matches the demise of the dodo.  None has sprouted since the dodo disappeared almost 300 years ago.
     Temple therefore argues that Calvaria evolved its unusually thick pit as an adaptation to resist destruction by crushing in a dodo's gizzard.  But, in so doing, they became dependent upon dodos for their own reproduction.  Tit for tat.  A pit thick enough to survive in a dodo's gizzard is a pit too thick for an embryo to burst by it's own resources.  Thus, the gizzard that once threatened the seed had become its necessary accomplice.  The thick pit must be abraded and scratched before it can germinate.
     Several small animals eat the fruit of Calvaria today, but they merely nibble away the succulent middle and leave the internal pit untouched.  The dodo was big enough to swallow the fruit whole.  After consuming the middle, dodos would have abraded the pit in their gizzards before regurgitating it or passing it in their feces.  Temple cites many analogous cases of greatly increased germination rates for seeds after passage through the digestive tracts of various animals.
     Temple then tried to estimate the crushing force of a dodo's gizzard by making a plot of body weight versus force generated by the gizzard in several modern birds.  Extrapolating the curve up to a dodo's size, he estimates that Calvaria pits were thick enough to resist crushing; in fact, the thickest pits could not be crushed until they had been reduced nearly 30% by abrasion.  Dodos might well have regurgitated the pits or passed them along before subjecting them to such an extended treatment.  Temple took turkeys-- the closest modern analogue to dodos-- and force-fed them Calvaria pits, one at a time.  Seven of seventeen pits were crushed in the turkey's gizzard, but the other ten were regurgitated or passed in feces after considerable abrasion.  Temple planted these seeds and three of them germinated.  He writes: "These may well have been the first Calvaria seeds to germinate in more than 300 years."  Calvaria can probably be saved from the brink of extinction by the propagation of artificially abraded seeds.  For once, an astute observation, combined with imaginative thought and experiment, may lead to preservation rather than destruction."

How cool is that?!?!  On the other hand, 3/17 = 17%.  I don't know about the schools you've attended, but 17% was and is a solid F- (which is considered a failing grade at all of the schools I've attended); maybe these trees need to go through Remedial Calvaria 101, or pick up a copy of Choosing Life: Guidelines to Avoiding Extinction.  Although, if you need to read a book to learn that extinction is bad, I'm thinking you should just go ahead and do the rest of us a favor and become extinct.  Or maybe it was that they only nominated one tree to do the forest's reading, but little did they know that he/she/it was both a pathological liar and really, really convincing and most importantly either dyslexic or a wicked procrastinator: "Yeah, yeah, okay, so y'all [it's a tree from Southern Mauritius] need my book report on the book I was supposed to have been reading this month, okay, I think that was supposed to have been "Germination for Dummies.  You want it now?  <gulp>  First off, I want to say that I had the devil of a time getting my hands on it since the Kindle bookstore doesn't have it scanned in yet.  I really have a moral issue with buying books at the Mauritius Southern Pines bookstore like y'all do, 'cuz last time I did that, I was glancing through and page 42 looked an awful lot like my neighbor Bob.  Bob was the chapter president of our book club.  Heh!  That's kinda funny, now that I think about it.  He did love him some books.  Come to think of it, I haven't seen Bob in a long time, hopefully he's having a Hawaiian vacation somewhere.  Oh, yeah, right, thanks Fred, that would be in Hawaii.  What's that Sally?  Well it would just take him a really, really long time to get there, wouldn't it?  Okay, right, right, book report, well, the deal is... um... um um... that after we all just go ahead and fail to germinate-- together, as a group, no stragglers-- then all of our wildest dreams will come true.  Yes, Sam, I know that I've had issues with germination my whole life, and I'm trying to tell y'all that you should try it sometime!  Not germinating, that is!  It should lead to better things for the members of the Southern Pines community!  Escobar, you might finally actually grow a branch!  Mabel, you may finally win the lotto after all these years.  W., you might finally get elected to some position.  I know you were waiting until Bob gets chopped for lumber, I meant bigger than the book club.  [the crowd gasps: "Bigger than the Southern Pines book club?"]  Think HUGE, W., like, I don't know, president of the United States or something, then you can show the whole world what it's like when a tree really puts on its thinking cap.  That'll be a win for all of us.  Now I have to catch a plane, I leave you in peace!  First one to germinate is a rotten egg!  Well, shoot, now I have to open up the floor for side bets.  Who do you think will be the first to break down and germinate?  That one loner who's too cool for our community meetings and calls himself Rambo?  We all know his real name is Sylvester.  Anyone got $5 on Rambo?"

If anyone actually makes it this far, shoot me a message please, so I'll know I'm not shouting into the void...