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From Carnivore to Herbivore
smooth wombat wrote in to mention an a recent discovery in the field of evolutionary biology. From the article: "A surprising discovery in Utah has paleontologists scratching their heads and asking: Why would a carnivore evolve a herbivorous diet? The species, christened Falcarius utahensis, belongs to a dinosaur group called the therizinosauroids. These are mostly thought to have been plant eaters. But the recently discovered fossil, the most primitive therizinosauroid found so far, seems to have survived on a mixed diet of meat and vegtables...The switch to vegetarianism is surprising, says Paul Barrett, who studies dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum in London. The therizinosauroids belong to a larger group of dinosaurs known as theropods, and many of these are known to have been excellent at catching a meaty meal. "
Correct me if I'm wrong, but pandas eat mostly bamboo, but they evolved from carnivores and are still enticed by the smell of meat.
So how is this anything new?
Humans, incidentally, have been natural herbivores for hundreds of thousands of years -- one can live longer and healthier as a vegetarian than as a carnivore strictly speaking. But we are considered omnivores because our bodies can tolerate meat as well as plant matter. It is not surprising to see a similar evolution taking place in other species as well; what is surprising is our relative level of resistance to this fact.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Plants often use predation by another species to facilitate their reproduction, e.g. bird excrement spreads seeds. So perhaps focussing on the dinos has it backwards ... the plants have a positive incentive to encourage the saurians to try a little salad with their mammalburger.
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
This was hard to track down. Listening to the original description on discovery.ca (TV) I couldn't help but think about Stampy from the Simpsons (1F15).
What occurs to me is that the incorporation of vegetation into dinosaur diets was probably just an accidental byproduct of aquatic grazing. If fish or other small prey regularly hid within shoreline plants, then it would seem more energy efficient for dinosaurs to grab a mouthful of the plantlife that was hiding the prey too. Natural selection would have probably favored such aquatic grazers by selecting teeth and digestive systems that were most suited for grabbing a mouthful of seaweed or kelp or whathaveyou that contained animals. There might have been some unforseen benefits of eating plants too, such as additional nutritional supplements, so natural selection pressures were reinforced to a greater degree.
out through the in door
Now I am not an authority on this, but vitamin B12 is only found in amounts sufficient for our dietary needs in animal products like meat, fish, eggs, and dairy and is essential for proper nervous system function. If you're one of the "strict" vegetarians out there you must supplement your all vegetable diet with B12 or run the risk of developing nerve damage or neurological disease (among other complications). You cannot meet all of your dietary requirements from an all-vegetable diet unless you take supplements.
While I would agree that a vegetarian diet is certainly healthier than what most people eat, the fact is a balanced diet from all the food groups including animal products is not only wise but absolutely necessary for a healthy human body. If my memory of biology class is correct just about every herbivore has to eat an enormous amount of plant material to sustain themselves, with specialized digestive sytems. Why do you think a cow has four stomachs?
I watched my sister fade away on a stict vegan diet and even with supplements it wasn't enough. She re-introduced a weekly serving of meat and noticed a huge improvement in her mood and energy level. Her experience taught me that a balanced diet is more important than focusing on any one particular food group and my diet is the better for it.
I know you were being facetious, but of course, for a human, to eat other living things is moral, because to refrain from eating other living things means death.
Lions and tigers and bears certainly don't worry themselves over "morals" before eating an antelope. They are what they are, and they eat what evolution made them to eat. Just. Like. Us.
Rabbits have a simple digestive structure. Their trick is to eat food twice - they are quite fond of their own poop. Something like 50% of their poop ends up re-eaten, depending on their actual nutritional needs. The same goes for rats.
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
This is why humans have to cook their food, we simply cannot survive on a truly natural vegetarian diet - then I don't exist? 10 years on uncooked vegetables (my university days trained me to eat only once a day also.)
You can't handle the truth.
What percentage of your caloric intake came from those vegetables? Very few.
Sit down and eat a pound of carrots, one of the few vegetables with a relatively high sugar content you CAN eat raw. You will not feel very good and you will have consumed hardly enough to live on.
If you think about it carefully, you weren't eating a vegetarian diet like a cow. You likely used olive oil, and did consume a larger quantity of cooked grains(like bread) than you care to admit. Especially since you claim to eat once a day, I tend to thik that is the case. Even three avocados at that meal will hardly provide the minimum caloric intake an adult male requires to survive.
By natural, I am referring to a diet that doesn't require technology, either the knowledge of fire, a cooking implement, or an olive press.
Now, it is possible that you are a small person and physically inactive. If that is the case, you could conceiveably get by with 1200 calories a day. That is also unnatural as that level of inactivity is only possible due to technology making physical work largely unnecessary.
I don't read or respond to AC posts