Posted by:
HappyHillbilly
at Mon Oct 22 19:28:18 2007 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by HappyHillbilly ]
Hi Sara!
> > > does the eating of the fecal matter have anything to do with germs, or is it just easier for the babies to digest...
I haven't read the paper yet that Tom mentioned so I'm not saying that it says such-n-such, but based on the Newsweek article and what I know, the eating of feces wouldn't be "in place of" eating regular prey but as a digestive system microbial enhancer that allows them to get more calories from the prey that they eat.
Here's an excerpt from the Newsweek article, found on: Page 3
Microbes play an important role in digestion, especially of polysaccharides, starch molecules found in foods such as potatoes or rice that may be hundreds or thousands of atoms long. The stomach and intestines secrete 99 different enzymes for breaking these down into usable 6-carbon sugars, but the humble gut-dwelling Bacterioides theta produces almost 250, substantially increasing the energy we can extract from a given meal.
Of course, "energy" is another way of saying "calories." Jeffrey Gordon of the University of Washington raised a colony of mice in sterile conditions, with no gut microbes at all, and although they ate 30 percent more food than normal mice they had less than half the body fat. When they were later inoculated with normal bacteria, they quickly gained back up to normal weight. "We are finding that the nutritional value of food is pretty individualized," Gordon says. "And a big part of what determines it is our microbial composition."
Another excerpt found on: Page 4
And there's one more thing that microbes can do, perhaps the most remarkable of all. Mycobacterium vaccae, a soil microbe found in East Africa that has powerful effects on the immune system, was tested at the University of Bristol as a cancer therapy. The results were equivocal, but researchers made the startling observation that patients receiving it felt better regardless of whether their cancer was actually improving. Neuroscientist Chris Lowry injected mice with it, and found, to his amazement, that it activated the serotonin receptors in the prefrontal cortex—in other words, it worked like an antidepressant, only without the side effects of insomnia and anxiety....
...there is at least the tantalizing, if disconcerting, suggestion that microbes may be able to manipulate our happiness. Could the hygiene hypothesis help explain the rise in, of all things, depression?
I realize the Newsweek article is a bit lengthy and has a fair amount of irrelative information, but I strongly urge everyone to read it as there are a lot of points that correlate to animal husbandry. Not to mention the fact that someone may find something within the article that may help to improve their very own life. The depression theory I quoted above is very intriguing to me because I happen to know several people affected by it and have pondered on why it's such an issue these days when it wasn't 30 years ago.
Take care!
HH
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Due to political correctness run amuck,
this ol' hillbilly is now referred to as an:
Appalachian American
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Acceleration of beneficial microbes - HappyHillbilly, Mon Oct 22 19:28:18 2007
