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| BATS,
FIG TREES, MAYAN CODICES and CALCIUM |
Fig Trees have had starring roles in some of the world’s great religious, historic and mythical dramas.
Adam and Eve fashioned their first clothes from leaves of a Fig Tree growing in the Garden of Eden.
In the New Testament Book of Matthew, a Fig Tree that did not bear fruit is the subject of one of Jesus's powerful teaching parables.
In another parable to instruct His disciples, Jesus cursed a fruitless Fig Tree which then withered and died. That was the last miracle Jesus performed before His death on the cross.
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An image of Buddha beneath
a sacred Fig Tree |
An Indian prince meditated for six years on the meaning of life in the shade of a Fig Tree.
When the prince arose and went forth into the world, he became known as Buddha. His meditations became the principles of Buddhism, one of the world’s great religions.
Romulus, the founder of the Eternal City of Rome, and his twin brother, Remus, sons of Mars, the Roman god of war, were nursed by a wild she-wolf under a Fig Tree.
Cleopatra, the legendary and romantic Queen of Egypt, died by allowing herself to be bitten by a poisonous asp which was delivered to her in a basket of ripe figs.
The fig is mentioned many
times in the Bible. The Fig Tree and its fruit feature in myths, legends and
folktales of the countries where figs first grew, which are thought to be
in Western Asia and the Mediterranean.(1)
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DO BATS POLLINATE FIG TREE FLOWERS OR PLANT FIG TREE
SEEDS?
Fig Trees don’t have any flowers that we or bats can see, but each ripe fig can have over 1500 seeds.(1)
Many different kinds of fruit-eating bats LOVE fresh figs. The bats digest their meal of figs quickly, the seeds pass through the bats' digestive tracts and are expelled in feces or droppings as the bats fly or roost. In a single night a single bat could plant thousands and thousands of Fig Tree seeds over acres of countryside.
A fig eater and fig tree planter
Great stripe-faced bat
(Vampyrodes caraccioli)
The Yellow Epauletted Bat and the Hammer-headed Fruit Bat are just two of many bat fig lovers. The Yellow Epauletted Bat lives in Mexico, Argentina, southern Lesser Antilles and Jamaica. The big Hammer-headed Fruit Bat lives in Africa, from Gambia on the west coast across to Ethiopia on the east coast, and south in the west of Africa from Gambia to Angolia and Zambia.
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Hammer-headed
Fruit Bat Hypsignathus monstrosus |
YOU SAID THAT FIG TREES DON’T HAVE ANY FLOWERS THAT WE CAN SEE.
That’s correct. Fig
Tree flowers are inside of a small vase-shaped baby fig fruit.(2)
THE FIG FLOWERS ARE INSIDE A BABY FIG? HOW CAN THE FLOWERS BE POLLINATED?
The thousands of internal
fig flowers are pollinated by a tiny female wasp that is a bit bigger than
a gnat or midge. The wasp enters a small hole in the end of the baby fig.
She carries pollen on her body from the male fig flowers that blossomed inside
the same fig where she developed from an egg.
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Female
pollinating fig wasp enlarged 30 times. The actual fig wasp is only 2 millimetres long, a little bit smaller than these 2 dashes -- |
The female fig wasp is not intent on pollinating fig flowers. She is intent on laying her eggs inside fig flowers. She does both tasks. She pollinates the flowers by accident when she is purposefully laying her eggs in female flowers. By doing that she is ensuring that there will be a new generation of fig wasps.
THIS IS A VERY STRANGE FRUIT TALE. WHERE IS THE MALE FIG WASP? I KNOW THERE HAS TO BE ONE.
The male fig wasp is back in the female wasp’s home fig. He has no wings and does not leave the fig where he developed inside of a fig flower. He dies after he mates with the female fig wasp.
WHAT HAPPENS TO THE FEMALE FIG WASP?
She might enter another baby fig to pollinate and lay eggs, or she may die in the first fig she enters.
I THOUGHT
VEGETARIANS COULD EAT ALL KINDS OF FRUIT. IF THERE ARE DEAD WASP BODIES INSIDE
A RIPE FIG, IT SOUNDS AS THOUGH FIGS ARE NOT FOR VEGETARIANS.
I know it sounds that way. The dead fig wasp bodies are digested by a substance in the fig named ficin, an enzyme that digests protein, like the papain in papayas. But a concerned fig-loving vegetarian might want to eat parthenogenic figs. Those are figs that develop on a particular kind of Fig Tree. That Fig Tree can set fruit with no pollination at all.
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There
may be as many as 1000 different kinds of Fig Trees in the world.(1) Their fruits are of many sizes, colours and shapes. |
YOU SAID FRUIT BATS LOVE FIGS. DO YOU MEAN THEY LIKE FIGS MORE THAN OTHER KINDS OF FRUITS?
That seems to be true of fruit-eating bats and of many birds and monkeys as well. Even if other delicious wild fruits are ripe at the same time, figs will still be the first choice of bats, birds and monkeys.
WHY THAT IS TRUE?
It may be because figs are
a good source of calcium. Bats, birds and monkeys have special needs for calcium.
Birds need calcium so they can form strong egg shells. Mother bats and mother
monkeys need extra calcium when they are producing milk to feed their babies.
IS THE WOOD OF THE FIG TREE USEFUL?
An ancient use of the Fig
Tree’s inner bark was to make a form of paper. About 1500 years ago
the Mayans in ancient Mexico inscribed codices on Fig Tree bark-paper. The
coloured drawings were a link with God and contained information on farming,
the stars, history and prophecies of the future. The codices were sacred and
very important to the Mayan people.(3)
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The Mayan Codices were painted on Fig Tree
bark-paper. A single codex could be 22 feet long. |
European missionaries destroyed many of the Mayan codices. The missionaries did not understand the word pictures and believed they were works of the Devil.
The Mayan people hid some of their precious codices in caves and in the ground, but the codices rotted away. Only three known codices survive and they turned up in three European cities; Madrid, Paris and Dresden. These invaluable records of Mayan history inscribed on Fig Tree bark-paper are still being interpreted by language experts.
One unique use for the wood of fig tree is to build suspension bridges. The limber aerial roots of Ficus petiolaris or lava fig which grows in Mexico, are used for this purpose.(4)
Historically, Egyptian mummy cases were made from the wood of Ficus sycomorus, the sycomore or mulberry fig, which grows in north Africa.
Some species of fig trees yield wood that can be used for:
