This is scientific Americans 60 second science. I'm Karen Hopkins. This will just take a minute.

Pack rat. The name is synonymous with hoarding and researchers have learned that

pack rats can actually increase the

range of foods they're able to eat because of their collection of gut bacteria.

Pack rats live in the American Southwest where they notch on the native

vegetation. Some of these plants produce protective toxins, for example the

junipers in the Great Basin Desert, or the creosote bushes of the Mojave. But pack rats seem to

eat these noxious shrubs with impunity. The researchers found that pack grass from the Mojave

harbored gut bacteria that can break down creosote. When antibiotics depleted the

packrats gut bacteria, the animal suddenly found creosote nearly indigestable.

Further, the researchers found that

they could take pack rats from the Great Basin, the ones that eat juniper, and give them the ability

to eat creosote. All they needed was a fecal transplant, which supplied the necessary gut bacteria from their Mojave-based neighbors.

The work appears in the journal Ecology Letters.

The findings show the importance of gut bacteria for eating some otherwise dicey foods. They could also allow farmers to

expand the diet of their livestock. Cows with the right gut bacteria could feast

on what was formerly feh. Thanks for the minute.

Scientific Americans 60 Second Science, I'm Karen Hopkins.

I'm Karen Hopkins.