What Is A Gummivore?

A Gummivore is an animal that uses a feeding strategy heavily reliant on the sap or gum from trees.  The gummivores of the world are equipped with special teeth that help them to penetrate the bark of certain trees, like gum trees.  Once the bark has been damaged or scraped away the trees will leak a sugary ooze that the gummivores will feed on.  This is method of feeding is called gummivory and is mostly used bye a few groups of primates, primarily being lemurs and marmosets.  Most of these interesting species are highly equipped at accessing the sap, but will also eat insects. For some species eating insects can be as little as 5% percent of the animals diet.

There are a many species of primates that are known to be gummivores, including:

• Pygmy Marmosets
• Hairy- Eared Dwarf Lemurs
• Mouse Lemurs
• Fork- Marked Lemurs
• Bush Babies
• Black-tufted Marmoset