Carrion odor and cattle grazing: Evidence for plant defense by carrion odor

Abstract

Recently, it has been proposed on theoretical grounds that carrion odor from flowers may not only attract pollinators, but also repel mammalian herbivores. Two grazing experiments involving 16 to 26 cattle heads per year, one for eight years (1982-1989) and the other for seven (1994-2000), in a region with no large carnivores that could influence cattle behavior, show that cattle avoid areas where dead cattle have recently been dumped. They grazed much less in these unfenced plots that were used to dump dead cattle each year. In the first experiment, with an area of ca. 20,000 m(2) per head, the average grass biomass at the end of the season was 124.6 gr/m(2) for the regular grazing area, whereas it was 236.5 gr/m(2) for the carcass dumping area. In the second experiment, with a higher stocking level, with ca. 9,000 m(2) per head, the average grass biomass at the end of the season was 61.7 gr/m(2) for the regular grazing area, and 153.7 gr/m(2) for the carcass dumping area. These significant differences existed throughout the 15 y of the experiments. We propose that these results are clear evidence of necrophobia in cattle, a character that might defend them from both pathogenic microbes and predators. This in turn demonstrates that carrion odor, primarily used by plants to attract pollinators, can simultaneously defend plants from herbivory by mammals as proposed.

Keywords: Carcasses; cattle; defense; fear; grazing; herbivory; mimicry; necrophobia.