Fruits That Use Animals to Disperse Their Seeds

Fleshy Fruits

• Animals are often rewarded for spreading seeds as they go about their daily food forages. Fleshy fruits are especially appealing for many species as they eagerly consume the sweet center of such fruit as apple, fig and persimmon. Passing through the animal's digestive system is an important component of the seed's germination process. What is not consumed and expelled is discarded to take root where the seeds land, according to Steve Baskauf, Ph.D.

Nuts

• Squirrels are well-known seed spreaders as they vigorously transport their cache of nuts from one location to another. These intense foragers stash their nuts in so many different places that they invariably forget where they have left some, which enables the outer shell to break down over time and the seeds to take root, says Baskauf.

Hooked Fruits

• Mother Nature has concocted a perfect ruse for those fruits that are either unattractive in taste or color or that are not part of an animal's dietary needs. Hooked species are designed to catch onto fur or stick to body parts that must either be shaken or scraped off by the carrier. Some of these hooks can become troublesome for the animals when they become embedded in their skin or between their toes.

Attraction

• While all animal species play a role in dispersal, the type and appeal of a given fruit determines which animals spread which seeds. According to The Seed Site, foxes are partial to raspberries, while blackbirds prefer strawberries. Grass seed is a favorite of mice, and elephants eat just about anything. Ants play an important role by bringing small seeds underground to their nests, which speeds up germination by starting the process below the surface of the ground. Even an otherwise environmentally harmful habit allows humans to take part in seed spreading when a core or pit is tossed into the brush.