Are there any species of animal or insect that are able to harvest food from an environment that they’ve purposely manipulated to yield maximum food? For example (and this is hypothetical), if a monkey arranged rocks in such away that they would grow moss that they could eat it, or an animal spreading cow dung so that it grew mushrooms it could eat or something. Just curious if any animals have behaviors or practices that resemble human’s ability to farm.
Leafcutter ants. They mash up the bits of leaves they cut from nearby trees to make a nutrient paste for growing a particular type of fungus (which varies according to the ant species) upon which they subsist. They even “weed” their garden, removing unwanted fungus varieties and other stuff like molds and pests.
Ants farm aphids - protecting them from harm and then eating their honeydew.
That’ll teach me to summarize. Ya bastid. grumblegrumble
So, anyone OTHER than ants?
(This is suddenly making “ant farms” make a whole new sort of sense!)
The Pika is an alpine rodent that “puts up hay” for the winter. During the summer they will stack small piles of green grass to dry in the sun, then store them underground for winter consumption.
Some squirrels harvest various nuts. Although I’m not sure they can find all of them if they bury them.
I think, despite the title, that the OP is looking more for animals that do something to increase their yield, not just “harvest”. Basically, anything that eats anything else can be said to “harvest”, but not everything “farms”.
At least, I don’t think squirrels intentionally plant more trees to ensure nuts for their great-great-great grandsquirrels, though of course their lost nuts may grow into trees accidentally.
I agree. Lots of creatures harvest, store, and even process, food, but I think the OP meant also doing something to cutivate the plants that provide the food. I’m no expert, but I can’t think of any that cultivate by design.
Unbeleivable. Thanks for the link, that was exactly what I was looking for. Ahhhh
I feel really bad for the squirrel that lives in my front yard because I busted a nut in its hole.
Sorry . . . . when opportunity knock . . .
You could argue that in the process of gathering acorns and nuts, squirrels will inevitably drop some, and some of those will sprout into trees that themselves bear. It’s a stretch to call that farming, and it’s not comparable to what the leafcutter ants do, but it’s clearly a mutually beneficial relationship.
How about beavers and their dams?
While I know what you are trying to learn, I think it could be argued that “purposely” is a problematic term.
The Agouti, a rainforest rodent, caches large seeds in holes it digs in the forest floor. They return later to dig them up and eat them, but inevitably forget or miss some. This is critical for the regeneration for some rainforest trees. However, since the beneficiaries of this tree-planting program will be the original Agouti’s 20x-great-grandchildren, it would be a strech to consider it cultivation.
A goodly number of the nuts they plant they never find and thus take root and grow to provided more nuts in the future. Not a planned result, but one that does benefit the squirrel in the long run.
As my previous post indicated, it doesn’t benefit the individual squirrel, whose life span is far shorter than the time to maturity of most nut-bearing trees, but rather the squirrel’s remote descendents.