23/11/2024
Persimmons are delicious (as long as you get them when they’re actually ripe— otherwise they just make you go 🥴) and also very important to our ecosystem. American persimmons are an important food source for racc**ns, deer, opossums, and even foxes and coyotes!
But American persimmons would probably have become extinct if not for the helping hand provided by racc**ns. Persimmons naturally have a very low germination rate unless eaten by very specific animals and undergoing the chemical changes that happen in those animals’ digestive systems. Some evidence suggests that they once depended on mammoths to eat and distribute their seeds.
After mammoths became extinct, racc**ns became the only animals capable of helping persimmon seeds germinate at the rates needed to sustain their continued existence in the United States. It just goes to show that even some of the most under-appreciated animals are part of the web of life, with every piece dependent on the others.
