Northern Emerald-Toucanet: Fruit Forest Gardener

_{This YouTube video was produced by the American Bird Conservancy.}

Similar to other toucans, Northern Emerald-Toucanets (Aulacorhynchus prasinus) eat mostly fruit, capitalizing on the wide diversity of fruit-bearing trees in the humid forests of their home in Central America. These birds mostly swallow their food whole, including some larger-seeded fruits, which they repeatedly regurgitate and swallow until the flesh is consumed. Whether by regurgitation or defecation, these birds spread the seeds of their food trees throughout the forest. Many tropical trees have evolved to bear fruit specifically for this purpose, taking advantage of birds’ wings to spread their seeds far and wide. In fact, the process of moving through the digestive tract of an animal actually helps the seeds of many of these trees to germinate. In effect, these toucanets, along with a cohort of other fruit-eating birds and mammals, are gardeners of their own food forests.

Also known as: Tucanete Esmeralda (Spanish); Tucancillo Verde (Spanish)

Learn more at https://abcbirds.org/birds/northern-emerald-toucanet/