links a flyin'!
Dec. 5th, 2007 05:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
urbpanI keep making mental notes to post links, and my mental notebook is full! Here are some items of interest from the internet, and possibly the real world too.
Courtesy of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
g_weir: "By early October [1870] even bourgeois Paris had turned to horsemeat. ... As hunger tightened its grip, so many a splendid champion of the turf came to a well-spiced end in the casserole. Among them were two trotting horses presented by the Tsar to Louis Napoleon at the time of the Great Exposition, originally valued at 56,000 francs, now bought by a butcher for 800. It was mid-November, however, that supplies of fresh meat were exhausted--and it was then that Parisians invented the exotic menus with which the siege will always be linked. The signs 'Feline and Canine Butchers' made their first appearance. To begin with, dog-loving Parisians objected fiercely to slaughtering domestic pets for human consumption, but soon necessity overcame their fastidiousness. By mid-December [columnist] Henry Labouchere ... was telling his readers, 'I had a slice of spaniel the other day,' adding that it made him 'feel like a cannibal.' A week later he reported that he had encountered a man who was fattening up a large cat which he planned to serve up on Christmas Day, 'surrounded with mice, like sausages.' ...
"And then it was rats. Along with the carrier-pigeon, the rat was to become the most fabled animal of the Siege of Paris, and from December the National Guard spent much of its time engaged in vigorous rat-hunts. ... The elaborate sauces that were necessary to render them edible meant that rats were essentially a rich man's dish--hence the notorious menus of the Jockey Club, which featured such delicacies as salmis de rats and rat pie.
"As the weeks passed, Parisian diets grew even more outlandish as the zoos started to offer up their animals. ... By early January, [a young Englishman named Tommy Bowles] was noting, 'I have now dined off camel, antelope, dog, donkey, mule, and elephant, which I approve in the order in which I have written ... horse is really too disgusting, and it has a peculiar taste never to be forgotten.' His was not the only palate that became more discriminating: there was a significant variation in price between brewery and sewer rats. ... A lamb offered to one British correspondent ironically proved to be a wolf. ...
"Oddly enough, there was never any shortage of wine or other alcohol."From http://delanceyplace.blogspot.com/
Fromanais2: Perhaps dried squirrel is more to your liking?
I discovered this one on my own: Lethal centipede sting! (Includes gory pictures). "Nearly 5,000 centipede bites are reported every year in Turkey." Book your trip now!
In case you missed it in my Soylent Screen review, The apparent origins of the "Futurama" them song!
On this day in 365 Urban Species: Common eider.
Courtesy of
g_weir: "By early October [1870] even bourgeois Paris had turned to horsemeat. ... As hunger tightened its grip, so many a splendid champion of the turf came to a well-spiced end in the casserole. Among them were two trotting horses presented by the Tsar to Louis Napoleon at the time of the Great Exposition, originally valued at 56,000 francs, now bought by a butcher for 800. It was mid-November, however, that supplies of fresh meat were exhausted--and it was then that Parisians invented the exotic menus with which the siege will always be linked. The signs 'Feline and Canine Butchers' made their first appearance. To begin with, dog-loving Parisians objected fiercely to slaughtering domestic pets for human consumption, but soon necessity overcame their fastidiousness. By mid-December [columnist] Henry Labouchere ... was telling his readers, 'I had a slice of spaniel the other day,' adding that it made him 'feel like a cannibal.' A week later he reported that he had encountered a man who was fattening up a large cat which he planned to serve up on Christmas Day, 'surrounded with mice, like sausages.' ..."And then it was rats. Along with the carrier-pigeon, the rat was to become the most fabled animal of the Siege of Paris, and from December the National Guard spent much of its time engaged in vigorous rat-hunts. ... The elaborate sauces that were necessary to render them edible meant that rats were essentially a rich man's dish--hence the notorious menus of the Jockey Club, which featured such delicacies as salmis de rats and rat pie.
"As the weeks passed, Parisian diets grew even more outlandish as the zoos started to offer up their animals. ... By early January, [a young Englishman named Tommy Bowles] was noting, 'I have now dined off camel, antelope, dog, donkey, mule, and elephant, which I approve in the order in which I have written ... horse is really too disgusting, and it has a peculiar taste never to be forgotten.' His was not the only palate that became more discriminating: there was a significant variation in price between brewery and sewer rats. ... A lamb offered to one British correspondent ironically proved to be a wolf. ...
"Oddly enough, there was never any shortage of wine or other alcohol."From http://delanceyplace.blogspot.com/
From
anais2: Perhaps dried squirrel is more to your liking?I discovered this one on my own: Lethal centipede sting! (Includes gory pictures). "Nearly 5,000 centipede bites are reported every year in Turkey." Book your trip now!
In case you missed it in my Soylent Screen review, The apparent origins of the "Futurama" them song!
On this day in 365 Urban Species: Common eider.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-12-05 10:43 pm (UTC)also, skelly checked their spider w/internet spiders and it was, indeed, a house spider.
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Date: 2007-12-06 04:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-06 05:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-06 12:28 pm (UTC)http://cinematictitanic.com/wpmu/blog/2007/10/30/greetings-friends/
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Date: 2007-12-07 02:22 am (UTC)Urban Species News
Date: 2007-12-06 04:36 pm (UTC)Cats live independent - some say selfish - lives, but it seems even Rome's streetwise alley cats are chivalrous when it comes to food.
Many social animals have pecking orders in which the largest males tend to dominate. Roberto Bonanni of the University of Parma in Italy and colleagues found that feral cats in a courtyard in Rome also had a pecking order, determined by displays of aggressive or submissive behaviour. When near the food dish, however, females became dominant – the first time this has been documented in mammals. And although the adults treated kittens as low-ranking, the kittens were allowed to eat first (Animal Behaviour, vol 74, p 1369).
This supports game theory predictions that smaller competitors should become socially dominant when their need is greater, and when the interests of the larger animal would actually be damaged by "winning". Female feral cats are nearly always pregnant or lactating, and need twice as much food as tomcats. Bonanni thinks toms defer to females near the food dish and let kittens eat first to maximise their reproductive investment. "Female cats precisely hit males on the head with a paw, and take over the food dish," he says.
Lions, which are truly social, are different, as males hog every kill. Unlike tomcats, they have to fight off invading males, so it's in the whole pride's interests to keep them in top fighting form.
Re: Urban Species News
Date: 2007-12-07 02:24 am (UTC)