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

Fri Aug 27 23:13:22 CDT 2010

A note on Asian practices. The toilet at pond's edge was once standard practice among Singapore's rural Chinese (who have now disappeared, I believe). The pond, however, grew water hyacinth for pig food, not fish. In longhouses in Sarawak, toilet involved squatting on the edge of the verandah, above a swarm of revolting pigs. And beware of being caught short outside by day; to squat in the shrubbery you needed a large club to beat off the marauding, impatient pigs. And in North Borneo dogs were the cleaners. I once saw a girl holding her baby brother out above the open jaws of a horrible dog. But that was long ago: you may all congratulate me on my 88th b'day, last Tuesday. 

Donald H. Colless
CSIRO Div of Ecosystem Sciences
GPO Box 1700
Canberra 2601
don.colless at csiro.au
tuz li munz est miens envirun
________________________________________
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Steve Manning [sdmanning at asub.edu]
Sent: 28 August 2010 02:56
To: Kenneth Kinman; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Correction [Cannibalistic offal (in nature); is  such offal awful?]

I seem to remember, vaguely, reading about a situation when some dogs
ate some dead dog carcasses, but only as a last resort when it was
clear what they were eating was dead and they were somehow otherwise
deprived (don't remember any other details at all).

On a lighter note, I remember when I was a boy scout and we went on a
camping trip where we camped overnight and cooked over campfires in a
farmer's field.  There was some leftover cooked canned beef in the
kettle and I remember remarking to one of my fellow campers that we
had better eat all those leftovers to prevent the cows (nearby!) from
making cannibals of themselves.

Of course we may all be cannibals to some extent (our intestines do
slough off pretty extensively) if we don't mind "skipping a
generation".  I can remember using a low spot at the edge of a
village which was designated as the village toilet (no indoor
plumbing). A pig followed me to the location and very quickly
consumed the latest deposit.  Those pigs obviously knew a good food
source when they saw it, and were being raised for human consumption
(by grazing around the village)!

I've also read that it is routine in at least one Asian country for
the toilet facilities to be at a pond's edge to facilitate disposal,
and it is expected the local fish will use that for food and (some
of) the fish are then consumed as an important part of the human diet.

Steve

At 09:39 PM 8/26/2010, Kenneth Kinman wrote:
>Just a minor correction,
>        I should have said "arthropods" (not arachnids) when referring to
>both spiders and praying mantises.
>
>**************************************************
>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 ueating 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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