On 12 May 00, at 5:12, Amadeus Schmidt wrote:

> Opposed to this, i feel that meats are more of an emergency food for
> deserted areas and well suited only for specialists (predators).
> Food on the planet comes only from plants. Animals eating plants have
> the best and richest resources. Predators have a much more inefficient
> nutrition base.

Now this confuses me.  I'm not terribly experienced with animals,
but my small experience says:

Cows eat constantly.  Horses eat almost constantly.

Dogs and cats eat once a day.  Well, cats prefer to nibble several
times a day, but they don't spend most of their waking hours eating
and digesting what they eat.

Lions and tigers eat every few days (from what I've seen on nature
programs on TV)

Cows and horses have copious amounts of fecal waste.  Dogs and
cats have proportionately, very *small* amounts of fecal waste.  As
do humans when they eat a lot of meat (I'm comparing myself now
to my vegetarian years.)

Cows regurgitate and re-digest what they eat with several
stomachs.  Dogs and cats digest only once.

The 2 birds I raised many many years ago (parrot and cockatiel)
ate many many many times a day, and eliminated more that I
would have though possible for such tiny beings.  Although both
would eat some meat when it was given.

My very very very small experience with rabbits... they also eat
very frequently and eliminate large amounts frequently.

Seems to me that vegetarian animals, particularly ruminants, have
extremely *inefficient* energy sources.. especially if they have to
digest it several times and *still* eliminate are a large portion of it.

I wonder who would survive longer (and healthier) in times of
famine:  cows/horses/rabbits/birds?  or dogs/cat/humans?