Mammals: In mammals, it’s mostly squirrels that eat sap (bats and porcupines have also been observed feeding on sap). While hemlock is one of the most frequently tapped trees by sapsuckers, I’ve never been able to extract any sap from it. Other birds (like hummingbirds) will steal sap from sapsucker tap holes and have to defend these. Of the bunch, sapsuckers are easily the most reliant on sap (there holes are always in horizontal rows, as in the photo above). – source) that create holes to feed on sap. Most of these insects have long probosces (like the sucking mouthpart of a mosquito) and go after younger tissues or trees with thin bark (like beech scales, the vector for Beech Bark Disease).īirds: It’s primarily woodpeckers (downy, hairy, acorn, etc. Insects: phloem sap feeding is restricted in the insect world to just the Hemipterans (an order that includes true bugs, aphids, planthoppers, cicadas, scales, shield bugs, etc – source.) and xylem sap feeding isn’t all that much more widespread ( source). However, it’s surprisingly rare for animals to actively create holes on a tree in order to directly consume either xylem sap (sugars, minerals, hormones that flow from the roots to the leaves) or phloem sap (sugars, minerals, hormones as well, but usually different ones that flow from where the sugars are produced to where they’re stored and/or consumed). Animals are similar cued into the spring sap flow, and a variety of animals will consume the sap from damaged trees.
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