[Taxacom] Cannibalistic offal (in nature); is such offal awful?

[Robin Leech]

Hi Ken,
Regarding the hippos.  Were the ones being eaten still alive, or were
they dead on the ground?
In Wood Buffalo National Park in northern Alberta, anthrax is spread
from one healthy bison from a dead one when the healthy one comes
over to sniff and lick at the fluids oozing from various places on the
dead one lying on the ground.
There is no eating, but there may be licking and sniffing.  I kinda suspect
that this is what happened with the hippos.
Robin
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kenneth Kinman" <kennethkinman at webtv.net>
To: <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Sent: Friday, August 27, 2010 8:43 PM
Subject: [Taxacom] Cannibalistic offal (in nature); is such offal awful?


> Hi again,
>      I  think that I may have thrown my net for comments too widely
> (perhaps the mention of lion cubs was not a good idea, even though they
> generally are not eaten).  Anyway, my main focus is on adults eating
> other adults of the same species (where disease transmission would be
> the greatest).  Lots of birds (in particular) are cannibalistic, with
> siblings eating siblings, or adults eating the young or eggs of others
> of the same species, but disease transmission is probably low in such
> cases (in nature). The same is probably true in arthropods (where
> females sometimes eat their mates, or even babies eat their mothers).
>        But what I am most interested in is adults eating adults of the
> same species.  Hyaenas and monitor lizards, among others, seem to do so,
> but they have strongly acidic stomachs that would presumably tend to
> protect them from getting infected from such cannibalism.
>      However, today I found a VERY interesting case of hippos in
> western Uganda spreading anthrax, which was implicated, at least in
> part, due to adult hippos eating other adult hippos.  This is rather
> startling since they are mainly vegetarians.  The first wave of such
> hippo deaths occurred in 2004, and another wave occurred recently in the
> summer of 2010.  This is the kind of situation in nature that may be
> most instructive in avoiding disease being spread (by human stupidity)
> among adults of their domesticated animals.
>            ----------Ken
> --------------------------------------------------
> Hi All,
>      Well, it seems the Salmonella contamination in those Iowa chickens
> and their eggs has been traced to their feed.   I wouldn't be surprised
> if that feed included "chicken offal meal", in which various discarded
> body parts of chickens are reprocessed and fed back to other chickens,
> thus forcing them into cannibalism.
>       I recall that BSE (mad-cow disease) may well have been the result
> of feeding cow offal to other cows (and ultimately then to humans,
> especially that deadly outbreak in Britain, and as I recall, perhaps
> even some cannibals in New Guinea who relish human brain).  So, is
> feeding the offal from the dead of the same species a good idea?  Or is
> offal awful (dangerously unnatural) in such cases?
>      Anyway my question is this, are there cases in nature when species
> often eat members of their own kind (cannibalism) without a negative
> effect?   Some arachnids do so (spiders, praying mantises, etc.,
> sometimes eating their mates), but they don't generally live very long
> after doing so anyway, so no big deal), but what about long-lived
> species that eat members of their own kind?  Lions kill cubs when they
> take over a pride, but I don't think that they eat them.  However, do
> scavengers that specialize in eating the dead, such as vultures and
> hyaenas eat dead members of their own kind?
>             ------Ken Kinman
> P.S.  As you might have guessed, I don't think that humans forcing their
> domesticated animals into cannibalism is a good idea.  To me the idea of
> cannibalistic offal is awful (and dangerous).  Such practice seems bad
> for the animals themselves and potentially for anyone who might
> ultimately eat them.  The only benefactors of such practices seem to be
> the owners of large-scale (industrial) farming of animals.
>
>
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