Nightlife: Marsupial meets mistletoe

That’s no bird—that’s a marsupial. But it’s doing a fine job of what was thought to be a bird’s task: dispersing mistletoe seeds.

The nocturnal, squirrel-size Dromiciops australis eats seeds of a South American mistletoe and then excretes them onto trees, report Gillermo Amico and Marcelo A. Aizen of the Universidad Nacional del Comahue in Rio Negro in Argentina.