As far as I could tell, this wasn't about getting stimulated by the release/ingestion of chemicals but rather involved zoopharmacognosy, given the "smoke" was produced by expelling a cloud of ash.
I.e. it wasn't trying to get high for the sake of getting high but rather trying to counteract the effects of pathogens.
Right on. From watching my pets, I know that when they're healthy, happy, and bored - they will start doing lots of random shit "for the hell of it." Same applies to humans, and often to apex predators. Perhaps we're too deep in our bubbles of overwork and self-actualization to remember the entire concept of free time and doing random shit just because.
Very interesting. I think it's unlikely that we are the only species that ingests materials/chemicals that make us feel good, aside from providing any nutritional value.
Animal drunkenness is a well documented phenomena. Many species of monkeys and apes will "recreationally drink," given the opportunity. Interestingly enough, the rate of "alcoholism" among many simians is inline with that of humans.
Jaguars in the Amazon rainforest are known to consume leaves of the Caapi vine to get high, because it seems to improves their ability to hunt effectively.
The Caapi vine is also the main ingredient in the psychedelic Ayahuasca brew drunk by the Amazonian shamans.
I think some are too eager to project human vice and behavior onto an animal. It makes for a good story and we’re willing to delude ourselves, even professional observers. The article even used the word “puffing” and “smoking”—there was neither. It was clearly blowing the dust out before ingesting the bituminous material. If it had been liquid it was blowing away we’d read that it was having a swig and a swill of spirits. All it needs is a smoking jacket. The authors are the ones smoking something.
Yeah, I agree with this interpretation. They held back and put it in quotes the first time they wrote it. But the second time they simply referred to it as "blowing out a gust of smoke."
Dust clouds are usually an off-color from the decay of organic matter or crushed rock. Since this is in a forest setting I would discount that it is crushed rock. If the item was on fire I would think the elephant would spit it out. My guess is mushroom spores or a chemical reaction with something growing there. No matter what the elephant sure thought it was tasty.
It's likely it's using the ash or charcoal to self-treat a stomach problem, animals are known to ingest non food substances to clear problems, charcoal, chalk, dogs eat grass when suffering from gastric problems.
Wouldn't the elephants say the same when watching a human smoking? Besides, swallowing charcoal and inhaling charcoal are completely different, I don't know how much good the latter would do for the stomach.
"Smoking I find the most ridiculous of all the varieties of human behavior and practically the only one that is entirely against nature. Can you imagine a cow or any animal taking a mouthful of smoldering straw then breathing in the smoke and blowing it out through its nostrils?" - Ian Flemming, Goldfinger.
I guess I find his statement ridiculous, because it seems quite natural for some to enjoy smoking, and others to not. It is therefore definitely not "entirely against nature". It's merely that what happens in reality didn't correlate with his beliefs.
Smoking tobacco was a routine cultural thing in the Americas before the Europeans came along.
Footage of an Asian elephant “smoking” in a forest in southern India has baffled wildlife experts, who say the behaviour has never before been observed.
I wonder how many experts would be baffled simply by following around and video taping one single human, finding behaviour "never before observed".
I don't see much value in trying to use logical speculation to generalize such behaviors to an entire species.
Anybody who has observed animals and pets will have noticed how each and every animal has its own personality, likes, dislikes and peculiarities. Just like people, who, despite our airs, are just another species.
Some of my pets eat people food which my other pets don't even look at. Some of them play with balls, while others don't. On YouTube, I follow a cool guy who has a pure vegetarian pet cat getting along with many normal cats.
This particular elephant might have been simply curious about the smoke or might have been playing with it for the heck of it.
They are individual peculiarities and I don't think any conclusion can be drawn about the entire species from them.
It seems plausible that those nutrients might be found in certain plants, and could be identified and concentrated. I wouldn't risk it with my cats, but plenty of people do feed their cats veggie kibble and I haven't heard of them dying of malnutrition in droves.
IIRC the nutrient that makes cats obligate carnivores is taurine. Although it can be found in seaweed, or synthesised in a lab, cats and water makes me think this is unlikely in nature. (That said, human edible != cat edible, don’t just feed seaweed to your cat without asking an expert).
I'm not sure actually. In many videos, he offers it things like fish and chicken and wet cat food but that cat doesn't touch them. It does eat some dry kibbles - maybe that's enough? Now that I think about it, calling it "pure vegetarian" was my mistake because it does eat those kibbles which probably contain non-vegetarian nutrients.
And it's not just that cats have to eat meat to get nutrients they need. Their systems aren't able to process significant amounts of carbohydrates at all. A cat consuming more than a couple grams of carbs per day will develop kidney disease extremely quickly.
That seems too low a threshold - lots of cheap cat food (esp. chow/kibble) has much higher levels of carbs, and while I am sure they aren't great for cats, there also doesn't seem to be an epidemic of feline kidney failure...
Actually, there is. It's among the most common causes of death for domestic cats ([1] says the second most common). It's been what killed most of the cats I've ever known (notable exceptions being two that got hit by cars and the one who, no kidding, died of mercury poisoning after being fed nothing but canned tuna her entire life).
I've been told that the cats of a great-grandparent were only fed pastas...
I've always wondered how they could survive on that! But I suspect that since those cats lived mostly outside, they probably ate many other things, including small animals they caught in gardens, sheds, etc.
Can confirm, in rural southern Europe cats were (and still are were I live ATM) fed scraps and leftovers (if any); if they don't like that the fields outside are an excellent training ground for their primal instincts
We had a cat that didn't eat cat food from May until October, we didn't assume it was a breatharian during that time.
When our cat disappeared (we assume a fox or wolf got her) after almost a decade of this, the farmers to either side of us started having mice and rat problems again :-)
How does a vegan get B12? Synthesis. Synthesized taurine is already added to some pet food.
A cursory search shows that small levels of taurine is available from vegan sources. Goat and buffalo milk appear to be the best vegetarian source, but, if ~75mg/day for a cat is correct, neither seem close to significant enough.
I have a natural b12 deficiency and can’t eat a vegetarian diet right now because of it. At the same time lactose intolerance runs in the family (though I don’t have much of a problem wth it). My doctor ordered me to eat more red meat. The difference in my overall well-being has been exponential over the past two years because of it.
Like the other commenter said— it was a blood test. The result was actually low hemoglobin. Low hemo unfortunately runs in the family as well– my mother has a severe case of anemia and suffers a range of issues related to that. Thankfully, I'm nowhere near that case.
Not questioning this, but curious if you can explain more. Why can't you just do one or many of:
Taking a B12 supplement, eating fortified food (american breakfast cereals often have B12, especially the "healthier" options (plain cheerios, corn flakes, nut grapes, ...), nutritional yeast, ....), eating eggs?
You mentioned lactose intolerance, but since you aren't really bothered by it, I assume cheese and possibly yogurt are absolutely no problem.
I guess my question is why can't you. What is it about a natural b12 deficiency that makes it so the normal vegan or vegetarian options aren't sufficient?
I should have added that it's more complex than a simple low-B12. My blood work results have regularly shown low hemoglobin. It causes a lot of issues like inability to catch my breath, fatigue, and weakness as well as a foggy mind. The diagnosis was an Iron/B12 deficiency which is, IIRC, correlated. I don't have a ton of detail, myself. I had no leanings toward become a vegetarian so I didn't question his orders there. (edit: it's not completely related, but I'll note that my younger brother is vegetarian as his wife is vegan and he's as large as I am—maybe larger—and does just fine without poultry, red meat, or fish. Luck of the draw, it seems).
I'm certainly not saying there are no routes to surviving well as a vegetarian maintaining some form of anemia or other B12/Iron deficiency, but I'm assuming his direction was that due to its proven concentration.
I actually increased my diet of eggs, spinach, I'd long taken a cyanocobalamin orally daily before switching to a higher dose of methylcobalamin sublingual dose, and started eating yogurt.
I try and avoid an excess of cheese and grains because I simply don't need that much in the way of fats and carbohydrates in my current regimen.
Nutrition is complex, and I think it's generally accepted that acquiring nutrients through digestion is more reliable than supplementation. (so that I'm not saying this completely out of my ass, [0] [1])
I prefer Brewer's Yeast in a particular liquid form ;)
But I actually had to look up nutritional yeast as I hadn't heard of it here (Canada). It actually sounds like a promising supplement to my own diet. It seems like the only catch is that it doesn't produce B12 naturally, and I'll have to be sure to pick up the fortified version (unless they all are?)
I made the automatic assumption the poster meant a cat that was well domiciled and enjoyed human contact. Come cats that are pets exist in a more co-living agreement, where you just agree to live alongside them and you keep your lives separate. Very much a cat person myself.
I think you can "generalize" in the way that members of the species are in principle capable of such things, not that they'll necessarily do it.
Also I think the idea of animals having "personalities" is itself still contested, so additional observations that support it may help.
I think it's like the incident with the crow Betty. It didn't show that all new-caledonian crows were super smart, but it showed that they are in principle capable of deliberate, creative problem-solving and are able to employ it if circumstances align just right.
If you read comments you'll notice the cat is one of a group of non vegetarians, and is offered alternatives which it refused. On top of that the cat might also catch mice, lizards or birds while the owner is away.
There is no deliberate malnourishment. Repeating the comment I wrote above...
Given the context of his life and the views he expresses about animals in his vlogs, I strongly disagree.
> The man takes in rescue dogs, cats, monkeys and (in the past) even a handicapped illtreated tiger. He has some 40-50 pets in his home. There's even a video where he rescues a rat from being eaten by one of his cats, and releases it outside.
> He has offered that cat multiple varieties of cat food and meat in many videos. He himself has expressed concern that it's not eating the proteins it needs. If an animal refuses to eat food that is otherwise good quality and relished by all its friends, how can it be animal abuse?
Given the context of his life and the views he expresses about animals in his vlogs, I strongly disagree.
> The man takes in rescue dogs, cats, monkeys and (in the past) even a handicapped illtreated tiger. He has some 40-50 pets in his home. There's even a video where he rescues a rat from being eaten by one of his cats, and releases it outside.
> He has offered that cat multiple varieties of cat food and meat in many videos. He himself has expressed concern that it's not eating the proteins it needs. If an animal refuses to eat food that is otherwise good quality and relished by all its friends, how can it be animal abuse?
Maybe gather some context before making accusations?
The cat in question seems to choose a vegetarian diet despite the caretaker giving it non-vegetarian food, and is likely hunting for meat when the caretaker isn't watching.
Yes I read that above. Cats require a diet consisting almost entirely of animal protein and their livers cannot process the toxins in plant foods. This is still abusive behavior. Sorry if it feels bad to realize you have supported this, but you should stop... the science is clear.
Do you have a link to a study that supports your assertion? I find it difficult to believe that plant foods are universally toxic to cats. In fact that sounds like it can't possibly be true or scientifically verified.
Again, maybe gather context before making accusations?
The assertion is that a cat which chooses vegetarian cat food is probably fine because it's getting the necessary nutrients from hunting while the caretaker isn't watching. Could you quote anything from the Wikipedia page which refutes this assertion?
Wikipedia says that cats have more difficulty digesting plant foods than meat. But that's still a pretty broad generalization and I'm not convinced that there's enough research to make a categorical claim like that, though I'm sure it's true of some plants (I also see some articles saying it's true for some meats.)
It depends on what you mean by toxic, but most healthy animal foods contain basically zero antinutrients or toxins. (There may be a small amount environmental toxins.) Thus animals whose diets consist almost exclusively of prey do not evolve livers that are good at filtering out toxins.
While I don't mean to imply that all plants are going to be like poisons to cats at any dose, almost all plants do contain antinutrients, which can be potentially toxic at some dose to an obligate carnivore.
Most of the toxin load in omnivorous diets, including the typical human diet, comes from stuff plants produce naturally. This makes a lot of evolutionary sense; chemical defenses are the only ones plants have and there is usually a subtle mix of nutrients and antinutrients even in popular domesticated foods. Apple seeds contains cyanide. Wheat contains lectins and phytates that block mineral absorption. In India's largest chickpea producing region they have to put a price floor on chickpeas, otherwise poor people will eat enough of them to die. I am not exaggerating when I say that basically all plant foods contain antinutrients, and like anything it's the doses that makes the poison.
(Another subtlety is there are few pure antinutrients. I mentioned phytates, which can cause mineral deficiencies in humans at high enough doses. But phytates may also be protective against cancer. This doesn't change the basic argument I'm making about whether cats are designed to filter out all the chemical warfare that plants unleash, in significant doses.)
This is basic stuff, although contrary to many people's uninformed opinion. Feeding a bunch of plants to a predator is dangerous in the short term and abusive over the long term. I'm sorry I don't have any specific links for cats and liver toxicity specifically, but in general you can look to "The Killer Salad", which is a chapter in one of Michael Pollan's books, or to the writings of Paul Jaminet if you want to verify what I am saying bout the majority of toxins in mixed diets coming from plant foods.
If you google for example foods and plants that are considered safe for dogs to eat -- and then compare to cats -- you'll find the list of stuff that's safe for dogs is dramatically longer. Same thing for essential oils, many of them can be very damaging to cats in small doses. It's because of what I have explained above.. predator animals are not evolved to filter out stuff the way others are... they are designed to eat animals who have livers evolved to do the filtering for them. There are plants described as "safe" for cats to eat and you will occasionally see a cat eat small doses of random plants. They are talking about occasional consumption. But making any plant the staple of a cat's diet is cruel. Imposing ideology onto nature requires ignoring a lot of evidence.
The burden of proof should be on those who advocate feeding an animal something far different to its evolved diet. Still, there is lots of evidence that cats do poorly the more their diet gets away from not just animal foods but raw animal foods... I cited a well known study that's quite old above, but I'm absolutely sure you can find more evidence on this, if you care to.
Thanks for your concern, but I feel quite okay with everything I've said on this topic.
If you think force-feeding meat to an animal that doesn't want it is less abusive than letting them get meat by hunting if they want to, you're welcome to that very strange opinion.
I'm sorry, but describing the diet that scientists literally describe as "obligate" for cats as somehow being forced on them requires mental gymnastics I can't quite comprehend.
It's been stated elsewhere that the cat is provided with meat and does not eat it. The difference between that and making the cat eat it is quite reasonably described as "forced".
That said, it seems to be noted elsewhere the cat eats presumably-non-vegetarian kibble.
Agreed. That's what is keeping it alive most likely. Those who are unfamiliar with obligate carnivore status of cats should do a search for "feline hepatic lipidosis" which is a horror story. Also search for lists of plants that are fatal to cats.
Our kids have a corgi that eats corn cobs (leftovers when we have corn on the cob.) I guess he sees the horses eating them and is convinced they must be good. Perhaps it is an acquired taste.
He once got into serious trouble by eating some medicated grain intended for the horses.
He still eats regular dog food too.
I think the elephant is just picking up something dusty. Maybe there's salt in it.
According to this video [0], it is not something of carbon that the elephant puffs, but a "puffball mushroom". I was very eager to believe in his words when I watched that yesterday. It was because that the day before, I had watched another video [1] of from that channel featuring something really similar that he calls "earth star fungi" this time, at 1:35.
Leaving his words aside, it also is much more believable to me that an elephant eats a puffing mushroom than charcoal.
Based on the amount of dust when the human hand pinches the puffball, the elephant would require a /huge/ puffball mushroom to produce that much dust (ash).
My dog will pick out bits of charcole from our burning fireplace. She appears to love the taste and we have to actively keep her away when the fire is low.
Have you ever seen a bat blowing up smoke? You'll find videos on YouTube from people giving bats a smoke, but I once saw a bat smoking for real, he intentionally looked for the cigarette to have another puff, it was hilarious!
I think everyone is in agreement about what "vegetarian" means apart from you.
Vegetarians don't eat the flesh of animals, and it's always been like that. Eggs and milk are animal products, not the flesh of animals - so vegetarians can still eat them. Vegans don't eat animal products at all, which rules out eggs and milk. Pescatarians eat fish, but they aren't vegetarians.
So if N is the number of distinct foods you can eat, N(pescatarians) > N(vegetarians) > N(vegans).
Is there anything in particular about this that you find difficult to understand? I can model it as an ontology for you, perhaps?
I like how you offer to construct an ontology in a thread where I admitted I'm being tiresome.
I'm pretty okay going with the assumption I started with though, that if someone says they are vegetarian it doesn't mean anything. Maybe it means they eat chicken if that's all there is. Maybe not. Maybe they eat dairy. Maybe not.
As said above, I don't think anyone is confused except for you.
Don't get me wrong, I think vegans and vegetarians can sometimes be annoyingly hypocritical and arbitrary, I think I see what you're trying to get at, but as for what constitutes a typical vegetarian diet I don't see why it's so hard to see the difference between milk and meat.
I'm one of those people. Most people know what a vegetarian is. A few know what a pescatarian is. Hardly anybody understands what an ovo-lacto vegetarian is.
It's just way easier for me to say I'm vegetarian "but I eat fish sometimes". People get that.
I get you. It's really variable what someone's person AL definition of vegetarian is, which often defies what the intuitive definition is. E.g. meeting a self proclaimed vegetarian that eats fish. Yes, we'd call that a pescatarian (or just an omnivore) but they stick to "vegetarian". I think that the inconsistencies come from that vegetarian means some types of animal products, and the types become unclear.
And speaking personally, vegetarianism is morally inconsistent, too. Just leave the whole animal alone!
Typically, "vegetarian" means eating no meat, though animal products that do not harm the animal, such as milk or honey, are allowed. You're thinking of "vegan", which forbids the use of any animal products.
But in the context of a "vegetarian cat", animal milk is not vegetarian.
You could also be a (plant only) vegetarian and not a vegan if you, say, didn't eat any animal product but loved leather boots. So there is something to be said for the word meaning what it sounds like.
So there is something to be said for the word meaning what it sounds like.
Ideally yes, but English doesn't work that way. I dont know about other languages, but I suspect any natural language will eventually develop these types of inconsistencies.
"smoking" = blowing dry dirt from its mouth. I'm surprised guardian would use such a click-bate title. I was hoping to see actual fire and smoke. They are intelligent creatures. Probably just playing around.
117 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 183 ms ] threadI.e. it wasn't trying to get high for the sake of getting high but rather trying to counteract the effects of pathogens.
(skip to 0:55) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIDJ-sTuoO8
The Caapi vine is also the main ingredient in the psychedelic Ayahuasca brew drunk by the Amazonian shamans.
Reminds me of dolphin air rings[1].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT-fctr32pE
It's dust and ash, not smoke.
I guess I find his statement ridiculous, because it seems quite natural for some to enjoy smoking, and others to not. It is therefore definitely not "entirely against nature". It's merely that what happens in reality didn't correlate with his beliefs.
Smoking tobacco was a routine cultural thing in the Americas before the Europeans came along.
I wonder how many experts would be baffled simply by following around and video taping one single human, finding behaviour "never before observed".
Anybody who has observed animals and pets will have noticed how each and every animal has its own personality, likes, dislikes and peculiarities. Just like people, who, despite our airs, are just another species.
Some of my pets eat people food which my other pets don't even look at. Some of them play with balls, while others don't. On YouTube, I follow a cool guy who has a pure vegetarian pet cat getting along with many normal cats.
This particular elephant might have been simply curious about the smoke or might have been playing with it for the heck of it.
They are individual peculiarities and I don't think any conclusion can be drawn about the entire species from them.
How does the cat obtain whatever missing nutrients cause most cats to be obligate carnivores?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/28849526/
> That said, human edible != cat edible, don’t just feed seaweed to your cat without asking an expert
Or energy drinks.
(Also: not all energy drinks are vegetarian, so wouldn’t always solve the diet puzzle even if you confirmed it as safe).
They are finicky creatures.
[1] http://skeptvet.com/Blog/2015/03/longevity-causes-of-death-i...
I've always wondered how they could survive on that! But I suspect that since those cats lived mostly outside, they probably ate many other things, including small animals they caught in gardens, sheds, etc.
We had a cat that didn't eat cat food from May until October, we didn't assume it was a breatharian during that time.
When our cat disappeared (we assume a fox or wolf got her) after almost a decade of this, the farmers to either side of us started having mice and rat problems again :-)
I ask because I've always heard that cats are obligate carnivores and cannot live off a vegan/vegetarian diet[1].
[1] https://pets.webmd.com/features/vegetarian-diet-dogs-cats
A cursory search shows that small levels of taurine is available from vegan sources. Goat and buffalo milk appear to be the best vegetarian source, but, if ~75mg/day for a cat is correct, neither seem close to significant enough.
As an aside; I ate a vegan diet for 2-3 years and my B12 was fine. That’s not to say it would’ve been fine 2-3 years later, though.
Taking a B12 supplement, eating fortified food (american breakfast cereals often have B12, especially the "healthier" options (plain cheerios, corn flakes, nut grapes, ...), nutritional yeast, ....), eating eggs?
You mentioned lactose intolerance, but since you aren't really bothered by it, I assume cheese and possibly yogurt are absolutely no problem.
I guess my question is why can't you. What is it about a natural b12 deficiency that makes it so the normal vegan or vegetarian options aren't sufficient?
I'm certainly not saying there are no routes to surviving well as a vegetarian maintaining some form of anemia or other B12/Iron deficiency, but I'm assuming his direction was that due to its proven concentration.
I actually increased my diet of eggs, spinach, I'd long taken a cyanocobalamin orally daily before switching to a higher dose of methylcobalamin sublingual dose, and started eating yogurt.
I try and avoid an excess of cheese and grains because I simply don't need that much in the way of fats and carbohydrates in my current regimen.
Nutrition is complex, and I think it's generally accepted that acquiring nutrients through digestion is more reliable than supplementation. (so that I'm not saying this completely out of my ass, [0] [1])
[0] https://www.nature.com/news/nutrition-vitamins-on-trial-1.15...
[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-v...
But I actually had to look up nutritional yeast as I hadn't heard of it here (Canada). It actually sounds like a promising supplement to my own diet. It seems like the only catch is that it doesn't produce B12 naturally, and I'll have to be sure to pick up the fortified version (unless they all are?)
And the other type being a stray cat?
Confused about the term. Not a cat person myself.
There's nothing wrong with "pet X", you're just used to dogs and cats being pets by default.
Also I think the idea of animals having "personalities" is itself still contested, so additional observations that support it may help.
I think it's like the incident with the crow Betty. It didn't show that all new-caledonian crows were super smart, but it showed that they are in principle capable of deliberate, creative problem-solving and are able to employ it if circumstances align just right.
Aka animal abuse
Given the context of his life and the views he expresses about animals in his vlogs, I strongly disagree.
> The man takes in rescue dogs, cats, monkeys and (in the past) even a handicapped illtreated tiger. He has some 40-50 pets in his home. There's even a video where he rescues a rat from being eaten by one of his cats, and releases it outside.
> He has offered that cat multiple varieties of cat food and meat in many videos. He himself has expressed concern that it's not eating the proteins it needs. If an animal refuses to eat food that is otherwise good quality and relished by all its friends, how can it be animal abuse?
> The man takes in rescue dogs, cats, monkeys and (in the past) even a handicapped illtreated tiger. He has some 40-50 pets in his home. There's even a video where he rescues a rat from being eaten by one of his cats, and releases it outside.
> He has offered that cat multiple varieties of cat food and meat in many videos. He himself has expressed concern that it's not eating the proteins it needs. If an animal refuses to eat food that is otherwise good quality and relished by all its friends, how can it be animal abuse?
https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/nutrition-greats/...
The cat in question seems to choose a vegetarian diet despite the caretaker giving it non-vegetarian food, and is likely hunting for meat when the caretaker isn't watching.
The assertion is that a cat which chooses vegetarian cat food is probably fine because it's getting the necessary nutrients from hunting while the caretaker isn't watching. Could you quote anything from the Wikipedia page which refutes this assertion?
Linked for your convenience: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat#Nutrition
I'm guessing you don't actually intend to propose force-feeding meat to a cat that doesn't want it, but in context that's what you're arguing for.
While I don't mean to imply that all plants are going to be like poisons to cats at any dose, almost all plants do contain antinutrients, which can be potentially toxic at some dose to an obligate carnivore.
Most of the toxin load in omnivorous diets, including the typical human diet, comes from stuff plants produce naturally. This makes a lot of evolutionary sense; chemical defenses are the only ones plants have and there is usually a subtle mix of nutrients and antinutrients even in popular domesticated foods. Apple seeds contains cyanide. Wheat contains lectins and phytates that block mineral absorption. In India's largest chickpea producing region they have to put a price floor on chickpeas, otherwise poor people will eat enough of them to die. I am not exaggerating when I say that basically all plant foods contain antinutrients, and like anything it's the doses that makes the poison.
(Another subtlety is there are few pure antinutrients. I mentioned phytates, which can cause mineral deficiencies in humans at high enough doses. But phytates may also be protective against cancer. This doesn't change the basic argument I'm making about whether cats are designed to filter out all the chemical warfare that plants unleash, in significant doses.)
This is basic stuff, although contrary to many people's uninformed opinion. Feeding a bunch of plants to a predator is dangerous in the short term and abusive over the long term. I'm sorry I don't have any specific links for cats and liver toxicity specifically, but in general you can look to "The Killer Salad", which is a chapter in one of Michael Pollan's books, or to the writings of Paul Jaminet if you want to verify what I am saying bout the majority of toxins in mixed diets coming from plant foods.
Here are a couple of cat specific links that only mention the liver/toxin issue in passing, they look at the issue more broadly: https://animalwellnessmagazine.com/cats-cant-vegetarian/ http://messybeast.com/veggiecat.htm
If you google for example foods and plants that are considered safe for dogs to eat -- and then compare to cats -- you'll find the list of stuff that's safe for dogs is dramatically longer. Same thing for essential oils, many of them can be very damaging to cats in small doses. It's because of what I have explained above.. predator animals are not evolved to filter out stuff the way others are... they are designed to eat animals who have livers evolved to do the filtering for them. There are plants described as "safe" for cats to eat and you will occasionally see a cat eat small doses of random plants. They are talking about occasional consumption. But making any plant the staple of a cat's diet is cruel. Imposing ideology onto nature requires ignoring a lot of evidence.
The burden of proof should be on those who advocate feeding an animal something far different to its evolved diet. Still, there is lots of evidence that cats do poorly the more their diet gets away from not just animal foods but raw animal foods... I cited a well known study that's quite old above, but I'm absolutely sure you can find more evidence on this, if you care to.
If you think force-feeding meat to an animal that doesn't want it is less abusive than letting them get meat by hunting if they want to, you're welcome to that very strange opinion.
That said, it seems to be noted elsewhere the cat eats presumably-non-vegetarian kibble.
He once got into serious trouble by eating some medicated grain intended for the horses.
He still eats regular dog food too.
I think the elephant is just picking up something dusty. Maybe there's salt in it.
Leaving his words aside, it also is much more believable to me that an elephant eats a puffing mushroom than charcoal.
[0] https://youtu.be/V0Lzym6XjoQ
[1] https://youtu.be/nyrIKtFZx3s?t=95
We like to say that “she likes her bbq chips”
https://www.rawstory.com/2016/05/doctors-used-to-literally-b...
"I'm a vegetarian, pass the salmon."
Vegetarians don't eat the flesh of animals, and it's always been like that. Eggs and milk are animal products, not the flesh of animals - so vegetarians can still eat them. Vegans don't eat animal products at all, which rules out eggs and milk. Pescatarians eat fish, but they aren't vegetarians.
So if N is the number of distinct foods you can eat, N(pescatarians) > N(vegetarians) > N(vegans).
Is there anything in particular about this that you find difficult to understand? I can model it as an ontology for you, perhaps?
I'm pretty okay going with the assumption I started with though, that if someone says they are vegetarian it doesn't mean anything. Maybe it means they eat chicken if that's all there is. Maybe not. Maybe they eat dairy. Maybe not.
It's not so simple.
"60% Of Vegans Would Try Lab-Grown Meat, Says Survey"
https://www.plantbasednews.org/post/survey-says-over-half-of...
It seems that vegetarians (or even vegans) object to the way meat is produced. Not to the idea of eating flesh as such.
Don't get me wrong, I think vegans and vegetarians can sometimes be annoyingly hypocritical and arbitrary, I think I see what you're trying to get at, but as for what constitutes a typical vegetarian diet I don't see why it's so hard to see the difference between milk and meat.
It's just way easier for me to say I'm vegetarian "but I eat fish sometimes". People get that.
And speaking personally, vegetarianism is morally inconsistent, too. Just leave the whole animal alone!
But in the context of a "vegetarian cat", animal milk is not vegetarian.
You could also be a (plant only) vegetarian and not a vegan if you, say, didn't eat any animal product but loved leather boots. So there is something to be said for the word meaning what it sounds like.
Ideally yes, but English doesn't work that way. I dont know about other languages, but I suspect any natural language will eventually develop these types of inconsistencies.