This is Scientific American's 60-second Science. I'm Jason Goldman.The Amazon rain forest is under threat. Fragmentation, fires and climate change are just a few of the hazards.In natural, intact forests, animals that eat fruits help to keep the forest in a constant state of regenerationsince they deposit seeds in their droppings as they travel.Could the same process help restore areas degraded by fire?"There are a lot of tapirs walking around the study area. And they, of course, poop a lot, because they are huge herbivores."Lucas Paolucci from Brazil's Amazon Environmental Research Institute."So our team asked whether they could be walking aroundand eventually helping to reforest this area through their poops and, of course, the seeds that are within it."Tapirs are the largest terrestrial mammals left in the Amazon rain forest.Imagine a 500-pound pig but with a small elephant trunk on its face―that's sort of what a lowland tapir looks like.The species is threatened with extinction, but certain areas still have quite a few tapirs roaming around.Using a combination of camera traps, aerial imagery and field observations,the researchers measured the density and abundance of tapir droppings in three different parts of the rain forest over the course of seven years.
