On Thu, 8 Mar 2007 11:51:, Kathryn Rosenthal wrote:

>Could this possibly be true?  Caused by a lack of minerals....   Could the soil be so depleted? 
>Meat-loving calf eats chickens
>(Reuters)
>Updated: 2007-03-08 13:54 

Nothing especially surprising here.

Many people think that, because vegetarians consume milk that somehow cows are vegetarian. It's 
an odd and illogical train of thought. Cows (like sheep) are ruminants eat grass and chew their cud 
to feed microorganisms.  Their saliva is highly alkaline to help defeat the acididty that would 
otherwise harm the bugs in their rumen and the cud chewing makes it easier for the bugs to do 
their job.
 
What actually gets into the ruminant's abomasum (its true stomach) are the bugs where they are 
digested in the same way as happens in the stomachs of other critters.  Hence, ruminants are 
essentially meat eaters.
 
Rabbits don't have a rumen, and their food goes through their system fairly quickly.  The bugs get 
to work on the faeces which the rabbits then eat, making rabbits a sort of omnivore.
 
There are true vegetarians (horses, rhinos, elephants, kangaroos etc) whose stomach kills all the 
bugs up front and leaves a few specialist bugs in the later stages of digestion to mop up what they 
can. If one of these non-ruminants starts eating meat that would be amazing. 

Keith