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com.j. That's Y-A-K-U-L-T.C-O-J-P. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacolt.

This is Scientific American 60-second science. I'm Cynthia Graber. Got a minute?

Plants thrive all over the planet, despite the fact that many animals love to snack on them.

Various hypotheses account for all those plants. One is that predators kill enough plant-eating animals to give vegetation a chance.

Another is that plants develop physical and chemical means to defend themselves.

Now researchers have teased out some of these factors in an East African savannah. The Impala,

an African antelope, eats grasses and trees, and is itself eaten by wild dogs and leopards.

Impala often munch on a tree called the acacia. Some acacia have thorns and some don't.

The researchers found that the Impala, perhaps not surprisingly, prefer thorn-free acacia. Some acacia have thorns and some don't. The researchers found that the

Impala, perhaps not surprisingly, prefer thorn-free acacia. Also, the animals avoid woody areas

where predators are more likely to hide. And as a result, the thorn-free vulnerable acacia are

more plentiful in woody areas with plenty of predators. But the thorny acacia are more numerous

on the open savannah where they

need to defend themselves. The study is in the journal Science. The researchers say their findings

show that both plant defenses and carnivorous predators help plants thrive. They also say that when

humans influence, in part by eliminating large predators, we disrupt long-standing complex systems

and that we should really try to better

understand such systems and our effects on them.

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