Baboon Tangerine: Animals Lead To Discovery Of New Fruit Variety

JOHANNESBURG — When it comes to grabbing fruit off trees, baboons don't monkey around. Now their speed at gobbling up quickly ripening fruit has led to a discovery of what is believed to be a new type of tangerine.

South African farmer Alwyn van der Merwe said workers noticed several years ago that one of his tangerine trees was already stripped of fruit when the other trees were ready for picking. The same thing happened the next year, and the next. A farmworker finally solved the mystery when he saw baboons picking the tree clean. This one tree was making ripe tangerines three to four weeks ahead of all the others.

Van der Merwe said tests showed the fruit is sweeter and ripens faster. He produced more of the trees using grafts. His ALG Estates, a family citrus business north of Cape Town, will soon be exporting the tangerines, van der Merwe said.

"There is a big market in the U.S.," he noted. "Especially when you're earlier."

Getting to market before other suppliers means higher prices can be charged.

Justin Chadwick, head of South Africa's Citrus Growers Association, said experts are constantly trying to develop varieties in laboratories that ripen either earlier or later than normal.

Van der Merwe believes his tree naturally mutated, something that Chadwick said does occur and that farmers should keep an eye out for. Van der Merwe may be bagging extra profits but recognizes he had help.

"The baboons were right," the farmer said.

Van der Merwe said he might give the baboons credit when he names his new variety.

At the very least, he said, he'll leave them a crate of the tangerines next harvest.

Comments

[aligatorhardt]

06:41 PM on 01/15/2011

And who says monkey business doesn't pay?

[bcmom]

03:33 PM on 01/15/2011

Animals are wayyyyyyyy smarter than we are.

[djekizian]

03:47 PM on 01/15/2011

The adapt-or-die principle operating in the natural world hones intelligence.

[chiropter]

05:36 PM on 01/15/2011

cmon all they did was trial and error, of course they probably remembered it once they found it, but humans would have found it too if they were extensively taste testing each tree.
but I'm sure you're joking

[Master-T]

12:03 PM on 01/15/2011

The farmer should name the new variety "Tangeroons".

Also to the people who say there's nothing natural about agriculture: Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. LOL at you.

Read again: sweeter fruit, ripening faster. All created by nature. No Monsanto. No GMO. Not even forced breeding. Nature and nature alone created this new variety.

[chiropter]

05:34 PM on 01/15/2011

Whatever. Random mutation created this fruit. Breeding at its basis is simply accelerated selection (or selection where previously there was none) over the range of mutations that naturally arise. Obviously you don't know how nature works. Or, breeders speed it up by adding a mutagen (a standard breeding technique, which makes me nervous), or much better, by using targeted genetic methods to introduce new genes/regulatory regions/etc. And who said there was nothing natural about agriculture?

[nomadrdw]

01:35 PM on 01/18/2011

and maybe you should go back to school as well. your so called "targeted genetic methods" are less than perfected. in this process hundreds if not thousands of genes are transplanted without any idea of what they do in the original plant or any concept of what will happen with these genes in the new plants when the interact with the ones already there.
i also have to question where on earth breeders of new plant varieties use "mutagens" on the plants?

[New Yorker]

11:11 AM on 01/15/2011

Here in the U.S, we have a lot of Tangerine Loving Baboons. They tend to vote Republican, and listen to Rush Limbaugh, we've heard them called "Dittoheads", which is kinder than Baboons.

[djekizian]

03:51 PM on 01/15/2011

Oh, come on, baboons have far more gravitas than dittoheads.

[Anne Mccormick]

02:57 AM on 01/16/2011

why are you insulting baboons. unlike Republicans, baboons are generally inoffensive creatures who only want to be left alone to their own devices.

[rue]

09:48 AM on 01/15/2011

The real news here is that it took at least three years for humans to learn what baboons knew.

[chiropter]

05:34 PM on 01/15/2011

Well, to be fair the baboons found out by trial and error. The humans just never looked.
Every orchard should have their own free taste testers...

[Joseph Watters]

10:41 PM on 01/15/2011

Actually, I think it was more conscious than trial and error. They could udoubtedly see and smell the ripening fruit (the fruit changes color and scent when ripening for this purpose - to entice animals to eat it and thus transport the seeds in their alimentary system to some other location), and because they were intimately familiar with the food sources in their locale, unlike what were probably migrant farm workers picking the fruit, who only showed up at the "right" time for the tangerine crop.

[jcarterla]

02:11 AM on 01/15/2011

Baboons. More useful to society than Sarah Palin, and smarter too!

[chiropter]

12:18 AM on 01/15/2011

guy is extremely lucky- takes a lot of random mutations before one has an impact you want, like sweetness and fruiting date. this is why we need genetic engineering. Besides, how does he know some other random mutation hasn't also knocked down vitamin C content or whatever?

Of course the biggest benefits to crop genomics won't come until we can routinely sequence & analyze genomes of various cultivars cheaply, and understand what contributes to what. this is very problematic even for humans, and the genetic component of disease vulnerability, intelligence, and other traits are still hard to pin down and/or doesn't seem to explain a lot of the variance. Although you have the advantage of controlled experiments and short generation times with plants

[StephenJK]

02:23 AM on 01/15/2011

The Tao Te Ching says you cannot improve upon nature....I say that is correct...

[chiropter]

02:58 AM on 01/15/2011

what does "the tao te ching" have to do with anything and why should anyone care what it has to say? that is one of the most bald-faced silliest statements i've ever heard. you could pick an infinite number of arguments against it. I suppose antibiotics are bad because nature didn't evolve humans to produce them? whaat??
So I guess you don't believe in evolution? Selection operates on random mutations. It "improves" organisms by picking the better mutations to spread. Crop breeding is a form of natural selection. GM just allows more targeted, effective crop selection, as well as combining traits that would never exist in nature. In nature, random genetic drift is often a strong force and overwhelms selection, such that mildly deleterious mutations become fixed in a population. Clearly, if selection were perfectly efficient, or if there were a designer involved, that wouldn't happen- but as is, it's something that could be improved on. Another example is in biotechnology where natural enzymes necessary to conduct molecular biology are subjected to laboratory evolution to improve their application in molecular biology uses, with very large gains in specificity, reaction rate, and other parameters. how can you make such a silly statement that nature can't be improved on.

[chiropter]

03:07 AM on 01/15/2011

also, evolution towards a particular goal only goes as far as the selective force can take it, and as far as natural negative epistasis interactions (tradeoffs) will take it. a simple example- an apple was only as sweet as was necessary to get animals to eat it and spread the seeds without spending too much energy to make it extremely sweet.

obviously, the whole history of crop domestication has been to take what nature had and improve on it for human purposes- make things bigger, easier to harvest (grains that don't shatter on the stalk), sweeter, less bitter, and on and on.

[MrGman]

12:29 PM on 01/15/2011

LOL I have never eaten anything because of the vitamin C I eat it because it taste good.

[Blodo]

02:28 PM on 01/15/2011

Except for vitamin C tablets. The orange flavored ones are quite tasty.

[chiropter]

05:35 PM on 01/15/2011

Not sure you understood my comment.

[Edy Williams]

10:14 PM on 01/14/2011

Our world Baboons,& hey,lets protect our LION Kings! Yipes, just saw the outstanding "Last of the Lions" incredible filming in Africa,narrated by Jeremy Irons! There are only 20,000 left now so thy dont have much chance unless given a reserve of land. The crocodile eat their cubs, while they try to find their food. We should have a world that still has Lions living in Africa! Their magnificent..National Geographic is passing up Disney as excellent producers! It will play actoss America in Feb. Hope you all get a chance to see this heartwarming gorgues artwork!

[SeeDaddy]

07:58 PM on 01/14/2011

"Van der Merwe believes his tree naturally mutated..." Ah, evolution at work.

[chiropter]

02:11 PM on 01/18/2011

yep

[Issaquah79]

07:43 PM on 01/14/2011

Our family found a new variety of cherry in our orchards. Pretty cool. Named it after our family.

[anastomosis]

03:54 AM on 01/15/2011

From your avatar's name it sounds like you lost it later.

[Issaquah79]

11:36 PM on 01/17/2011

huh?

[Chauncey Love]

07:41 PM on 01/14/2011

See what happens when you don't shoot animals on sight?

[mheister]

10:15 PM on 01/14/2011

Yeah. You have less fun. :)

[Mik McAllister]

02:49 AM on 01/15/2011

Unfortunately, the profit margin on fun has dropped, so there is not enough money in it.

Therefore, we are canceling it.

Sincerely,
Wall Street

[Blodo]

02:29 PM on 01/15/2011

I have some bad news about your cat.

[moose and squirrel]

06:15 PM on 01/14/2011

baboons!

[clearthinker16]

06:10 PM on 01/14/2011

the front page headlines led me to believe that maybe the found that the baboons were related to tea baggers

[jerryk 6963]

08:14 PM on 01/14/2011

baboons are much smarter than baggers

[Blodo]

02:30 PM on 01/15/2011

Generally in better physical shape too. Not one of them has to use a medi-chair.

[MysticInd]

02:40 PM on 01/14/2011

Van der Merwe believes his tree naturally mutated, something that Chadwick said does occur and "that farmers should keep an eye out for. Van der Merwe may be bagging extra profits but recognizes he had help.

"The baboons were right," the farmer said."
Nothing like it!

[GeoToronto]

02:38 PM on 01/14/2011

If you just ate the baboon, you'd get the best of both worlds.

[HowthCastle]

03:03 PM on 01/14/2011

They're tough and gamey.

[idelwind]

04:23 PM on 01/14/2011

Like Bald Eagle. Sorry couldn't resist

[Blodo]

02:31 PM on 01/15/2011

Orange marinated baboon....mmmmmmm.