Bees do it, educated fleas do it - trees do it, too

They molt. Or shed, depending on your semantic preferences.

There are lots of different smooth-barked eucalyptus species (aka, gum trees) here. They have really pretty, smooth bark (hence the term) most of the time. But a few days ago, when I was walking Ani, I noticed one of the trees in our neighborhood had this big pile of bark at the base, and it didn't seem to be looking so good - bark was peeling off. Then I noticed that the bark was starting to peel off of lots of other trees, too. And it turns out that smooth gums shed their outer layer of bark every year or two because they 'out grow' it - just like insects. And they all do this massive exfoliation of all their bark at roughly the same time, so there are big chunks of bark all over the place. Crazy!