In my childhood days, I had wondered about a nut that remained stuck on the eaves tiles. How had it gone there? Crow had swallowed it and ejected it in its droppings on to the tiles! Is it not digested? It is a hardy nut and hence it is not digested! What is the name of the fruit that contained this nut and was tasty to the crow?
I had then found an insect walking out of a cut mango in my boyhood days. The mango seed was having a hole on it; from that hole black and soft grains had come out and spilled on the mango slices and lay strewn all around too. When the insect was touched with a stick, it folded in its legs and pretended to be dead lying still! After sometime it put out its legs and moved away hurriedly! How and when this insect could have entered inside the mango and how could it survive inside the mango? These were the questions arising in me.. Likewise, I had also wondered how worms could have entered in our body and make their living inside us!
Fruits that are available seasonally are the most desired than those available year round. One of such most desired fruits is the Custard Apple (Sugar Apple, Annona squamosa, 'Seethapazham' in Tamil)!
I had wondered in my younger days that how banana leaves are seen coming out of wayside dunes. In closer view I found out that they grew out of corms that were disposed off from the nearby plantations. This Banana tree (Musa paradisiaca, Sweet banana, Dessert banana, 'Vazhlaippazhlam' in Tamil) yields the fruits that we, the humans, apes, elephants and many other animals relish on. It is not a tree but a herbaceous plant!
I had wondered in my childhood how an elephant could digest the contents of a fruit without breaking its hard shell. My sisters had informed me about this that elephant swallows the entire fruit, and after digestion we could see the whole fruit intact in its dung - but without its contents! It explains well about the great digestive power of the animal but it may be an exaggeration. OK. What is that fruit?
