this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
45 points (89.5% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35764 readers
491 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

As far as I am aware, grazing animals like cows or sheep poop in the same meadows where they eat grass, but presumably don't have any problems eating the grass and pooping in the same space. But if humans would eat vegetables that they had pooped on, my understanding is that we would get sick.

Why? Am I incorrect that grazing animals poop where they eat? Are their stomachs more resistant to whatever makes it dangerous?

Thank you!

top 11 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] kersploosh@sh.itjust.works 72 points 8 months ago (2 children)

They can and do get sick. Here's an example of bovine parasites whose life cycle goes from cow to grass and back again:

https://livestock.extension.wisc.edu/articles/managing-worms-on-summer-pastures/

[–] Dagwood222@lemm.ee 45 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I was taught that this is why herd animals keep moving.

[–] actionjbone@sh.itjust.works 67 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yes, this exactly.

They finish off one field, do their business, then they... moooove on.

(Sorry.)

[–] Late2TheParty@lemmy.world 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

No need to apologize for today's most perfect joke!

[–] Dagwood222@lemm.ee 11 points 8 months ago

You call that a perfect joke??

BAA!

Exactly, same goes for carnivores eating raw meat. Well, besides vultures I guess.

[–] lagomorphlecture@lemm.ee 20 points 8 months ago (1 children)

My rabbits eat poop hay but not pee hay. They actually have special poops that they have to eat called cecotropes so I'm guessing their gut microbiome is more beneficial than ours. Also because they are hind gut fermenters, the bacteria necessary for the fermentation are probably different than the ones in our gut.

[–] takeheart@lemmy.world 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Yeah, rabbits as a species are not only tolerant to eating their own poop pellets but also gain calory extraction benefits from it. Usually mammals don't completely break down food they eat, ie there is still energy to be gained from it. Microorganisms have the necessary biochemical pathways to do it but for mammals it's not efficient.

Basically any animal has only a few ways to into crease its energy budget. First it can simply eat more or more rapidly. Second it can find ways to make use of resources that are less contested (think of a giraffe reaching for the top of a tree or a koala being able to digest eucalyptus leaves). Third it can simply be more efficient: that's the slow metabolism of a sloth, but also a rabbit eating it's own feces alongside fresh food. It's basically an evolutionary strategy to extract more energy from the environment.

[–] BirdEnjoyer@kbin.social 13 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Well, its kinda like how dogs can be treated with a lot of cancer drugs people can't- its largely a matter of longevity and personhood. Just load 'em up with stuff that'll cause all kinds of crazy side effects in a decade or so, if they're at least six, even in longer lived breeds. (assuming its a bad form of cancer in the first place)

Sheep don't have to worry about the things people have to worry about when they aren't going to have to use the same body for the better part of a century.
So yes, they do get sick, but its not regarded as the same level of devastation because its an animal, you can use harsher treatments, and you're not looking at the same level of magnitude of suffering or life lost.

We also work a lot harder to keep a lot more physically frail individuals alive whom would otherwise just be dead if they were sheep. For example, I had a doting mother who got me medical attention for my frequent dehydration as a child, and I am now able to advocate for myself when I have those episodes.
A sheep who couldn't tolerate something foul on some grass would have likely died as a lamb and have just been a sad statistic before they even developed enough to graze.

If we had much shorter lifespans, we'd honestly be some pretty rugged creatures. Our stomachs are only .5 less acidic than some carrion birds. More acidic than most carnivores.
No worries about preserving teeth or joints, eat what you want, its literally Yolo!

Our brains, vision, bipedalism and weird vomiting thing are pretty damn sensitive though.
A lot of animals don't have such a vomit issue. Rats literally can't vomit, iirc.

[–] LesserAbe@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

Reminds me of Harlan Ellison's short story, "I have no mouth, and I must puke"

[–] db2@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

Shorter gi tracts, different gut biomes.