Zoologists have found that bats overcome toxins in their diet with a love for mineral water and clay.
Bats combat the 'bad' bits of vegetables and fruits by drinking mineral-rich water
We don’t eat secondary plant compounds, like the green parts of potatoes and tomatoes, because they may have harmful effects on the body. However, tropical fruit-eating bats ingest large amounts of secondary plant compound in fruit and this can lead to serious problems, particularly for pregnant or lactating bat mothers who can experience damaged embryos or juveniles.
Researchers from Berlin Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW), Boston University and Cornell University have found that bats counter this problem by drinking large amounts of mineral-rich water and clay to detoxify the damaging compounds they ingest through the fruit.
These so called ‘mineral licks’ are visited by many species including tapirs and birds who drink from them to meet their daily mineral requirements. The local African people also make use of the mineral-rich water and clay and consume it during pregnancy and lactation - sharing the solution with the bats.
Studying the bats of the Amazonian rainforest in Ecuador revealed that the female bats could compensate for the toxins in the fruit by visiting the mineral licks frequently during pregnancy and lactation - bat mothers have particularly high mineral needs as juveniles cannot be weaned until they are almost adult size.
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