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Ever had to send someone a card?
Envelope gum tastes horrible, doesn't it? But there's one creature that's absolutely mad for it! In fact it needs it, in order to be able to reproduce.
But which creature is it?
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It's the marmoset - like these ones at Jersey Zoo. The gum they eat is called arabic gum. It's used for many things, including the sticky bits on envelopes!
In the Brazilian rainforests where the marmosets live, they eat the gum straight from the tree.
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But at Jersey Zoo - where these marmosets live - there are no gum trees.
So where does the gum come from?
Well, it's bought in and prepared specially. As it comes, the gum is too big and too hard. So, the keepers get cooking.
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They simply melt a quantity of the gum with recently-boiled water.
It's stirred and left to dissolve for 24 hours, when it becomes a runny gum like this.
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It tastes horrible to humans, but as you can see here, the marmosets absoultely love the stuff.
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