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BATS,
THE CHICLE TREE, CHEWING GUM and SWEET SAPODILLAS |
I DO NOT BELIEVE THERE CAN BE ANY CONNECTION BETWEEN BATS AND CHEWING GUM.
You can believe there is
a connection between bats and chewing gum. You can also believe there is a
connection between bats, the wooden lintels and beams of ancient Mayan temples
in Mexico and between bats and the famous Mexican president and general, Antonio
Lopez de Santa Anna.(1)
THIS WILL HAVE TO BE A VERY GOOD EXPLANATION.
All right, here goes. The
Chicle Tree grew first in Mexico and Central America. The Mayan and Aztec
people who lived there thousands of years ago discovered that when you cut
the bark of the tree with a machete in zigzag lines, a white liquid oozed
out. When you carefully boiled that liquid in a big cauldron over a wood fire,
a thick mass developed. When you pulled that mass out of the pot and kneaded
it, you could form it into a block.(2) When you cut the blocks into pieces
and put a small bit of the large block in your mouth, you could chew it. Chewing
gum!
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Seba's
Short-tailed Bat Carollia perspicillata |
In order for all that to
happen the Chicle Tree flowers have to bloom, be pollinated and produce fruit
with fertile seeds that are planted in the ground.
Enter the bats, several different
kinds. Some bats, including Seba's Short-tailed Bat and the Yellow Epauletted
Bat not only drink nectar from the flowers and pollinate them; they also carry
off the delicious sapodilla fruit and drop the seeds.(3)
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Yellow
Epauletted Bat Sturnira lilium |
WHO IS GENERAL SANTA ANNA?
In 1836 General Santa Anna led his Mexican troops against the legendary North
American frontiersman, Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and 178 other men in the Battle
of the Alamo in what is now the state of Texas, U.S.A. The General won that
battle, but he lost the next one and he also lost his job as President of
Mexico.
While in exile from his country
he took a trip to the United States. In his pocket he had some pieces of chicle
to chew. He met a man named Thomas Adams and shared his chicle with him. Thomas
Adams thought he could make false teeth from chicle. That was a failure. But
when he mixed some flavouring into the chicle, rolled it into chewing-size
balls and put it up for sale, that was a BIG success. The production of chicle
and the manufacture of chewing gum became major industries.(2)
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Ancient
Mayan temple in the company of Chicle Trees |
MAYAN TEMPLES AND BATS?
The Chicle Tree has strong wood. It is used today for railway cross ties, flooring, carts, archer’s bows and furniture. The Mayans built fabulous temples in Mexico and they used the wood for lintels over the doors and as supporting beams in their temples hundreds of years ago. That structural Chicle Tree wood is still sound. (1)
SO WHEN I CHEW GUM NOW, I’M
CHEWING BAT GUM!
Probably not, unless you are spending quite a bit of money and buying a “natural”
chewing gum. The bat chewing gum boom lasted until the 1940’s. Then
the discovery was made that we could all chew a petroleum chewing gum and
not know the difference. It is cheaper and requires a lot less human work.
The chicle has to be hand harvested from individual trees. So the market for
chicle in the world collapsed.(5)
Fortunately the Chicle Tree is still highly valued for its fruit. Some of the trees can bear hundreds of fruits in a year. When the juicy fruit is ripe, it tastes like a pear. It can be picked and shipped before it is ripe, so it is a good traveller and can reach the fruit markets of the world.
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Sapodilla
Fruit |
The chicle industry may have a revival. Some people think chewing on petroleum products may not be healthy. Some people think that we may not be able to count on having easy access to petroleum forever, for things much more important than chewing gum. Some people want to return to natural products instead of using synthetics.(5)
There is a growing market
now for chewing gum made from the bat-pollinated and bat-planted Chicle Trees.
These companies protect the livelihoods of thousands of chiclero farms and
protect the forests where the Chicle Trees grow.(6)
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Sapodilla
Fruit |
ARE THERE CHICLE TREE JOBS FOR PEOPLE?
Yes. The Chicle gum is collected
from wild trees in the forest. A worker, called a chiclero may climb as high
as 50 feet in a Chicle Tree to start making the zigzag cuts the releases the
rubbery chicle or latex from the tree. The chicle runs down the tree and collects
in containers.(2)
The Chicle Tree often grows near bat-pollinated and bat-planted allspice
trees, so the chicleros may collect allspice berries as well as
chicle latex in the forest to make their living.(4)
There are jobs in the promising natural chewing gum business(6) and there are also jobs collecting and marketing the delicious Sapodilla fruit.
SPECIAL NOTE: To read more about the history and processing of raw chicle, visit http://www.mexicolore.co.uk. On the home page, click on Aztecs, on the Aztec page click on Aztec Artefacts, and Strictly Tzictle on the next screen. Take time to explore more of this website, a treasurehouse of information on Mexico and the Aztecs.
References: (1) Morton, Julia. 1987. Fruits of Warm Climates; Sapodilla,
pages 393-398;http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton |
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THE PLANT The Chicle Tree Order: Ebenales |
THE BATS* Jamaican Fruit Bat (Artibeus jamaicensis) New York Botanical Gardens Bat/Plant Databases http://www.nybg.org/botany/tlobova/mori/batsplants/database/dbase_main.htm |
| Text and illlustrations by Mary Louise Alley-Crosby | Updated 9 March 2006 |
This is a nonprofit, educational website.