Snowshoe hares found to routinely feast on their own dead
nationalpost.com
Snowshoe hares found to routinely feast on their own dead
1–10 of 69 posts
Re: Snowshoe hares found to routinely feast on their own dead
#2Only the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch can stop them!
Re: Snowshoe hares found to routinely feast on their own dead
#3[deleted]
Re: Snowshoe hares found to routinely feast on their own dead
#4My understanding is that damn near anything (at least among mammals) will eat meat if they can get it in bite-sized bits. Ruminants may not have the teeth to tear chunks off a carcass, but they'll crunch up baby birds given the opportunity.
Someone else has already done all the hard work of converting plant matter into the stuff that meat is made of, so it's high-density protein with very little metabolic cost. Even an herbivore would be foolish to pass that up.
Re: Snowshoe hares found to routinely feast on their own dead
#5On the one hand, this doesn't mean that it would be beneficial for a herbivore to eat meat all the time - clearly, they evolved a mostly herbivorous diet that meat provides a protean supplement to.
On the other hand, it does show that a voluntarily purely vegetarian diet is an artificial human creation. Yet, humans impose all sorts of artificial strictures on themselves and live to tell the tale.
Re: Snowshoe hares found to routinely feast on their own dead
#6If it's alive kill it!
If it's dead, cook it!
If it's cooked, eat it!
(unless you are a rabbit: several steps become optional)
Re: Snowshoe hares found to routinely feast on their own dead
#7Oh, it's just a harmless little bunny, I told you....
Re: Snowshoe hares found to routinely feast on their own dead
#8Yum, heme iron, atherosclerosis, and cancer.
Re: Snowshoe hares found to routinely feast on their own dead
#9so Monty Python was right after all ...
Re: Snowshoe hares found to routinely feast on their own dead
#10On the one hand, this doesn't mean that it would be beneficial for a herbivore to eat meat all the time - clearly, they evolved a mostly herbivorous diet that meat provides a protean supplement to. On the other hand, it does show that a voluntarily purely vegetarian diet is an artificial human creation. Yet, humans impose all sorts of artificial strictures on themselves and live to tell the tale.
It's not just hares; deer and horses (for example) also eat meat if they can get it. They usually go for injured birds or squirrels that can't run away from them (naturally a horse isn't a good bird predator).