I'm boring so here are some links

[urbpan]

I have a number of creative posts in the back of my head, but they don't seem to be making their way to my fingertips. I did however spend some time looking at the aggregator Fark, and did some metaaggregating for your convenience:

Firstly I learned the poor saps in Great Britain are deprived of hummingbird moths, one of my favorite lepidopteran families. Fortunately it's Global Warming to the rescue as North African hummingbird moths drift up to Britain in increasing numbers. Naturally, the hottest spot for recent sightings is in London.

Second, some sparty-pants geneticists have investigated just where and when in human history our bodies started tolerating milk from cows. A mutation which allows some of us to eat the stuff without explosive diarrhea, obnoxious flatulence, projectile vomiting, or death, was traced to the middle of Europe about 7500 years ago. Hopefully a domestic animal researcher or two will use this data to help trace the history and use olivestock--a pet subject of mine.

Speaking of pet livestock, another group of researchers have opened up a controversial can of worms by positing an alternate theory of how and when and why dogs were domesticated. They put the date at no more than 16,300 years ago (which jibes with mainstream thinking); the location: China; the purpose: deliciousness. Personally, I think that the Coppinger village dog hypothesis (dogs domesticated themselves when some wolves who happened to be smaller and more docile started hanging around people and eating their garbage) still makes more sense, but this other theory could be dovetailed into it. That makes more sense than the idea of someone trying to round up wolves in a pen to be made into dog foo yung. They better be damn tasty to be worth all the risk.

Comments

[badnoodles.livejournal.com]

My main objection is to the dogs-as-food argument is that it doesn't make sense to keep carnivores as food animals. Unlike a cow or goat that eats stuff humans /can't/, a dog requires meat that could otherwise go into a human mouth. Furthermore, if the original use of dogs was for food, you'd think that the practice of dog-eating would have spread along with the practice of domestication.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

dogs will eat garbage, like pigs. they'll even eat human feces. it is interesting that the eating of them didn't spread, though.

[badnoodles.livejournal.com]

They are less obligate carnivores than say, cats, but they don't grow nearly as well without it. Particularly in a pre- or semi-domesticated state, their diet would be primarily meat&carrion.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

my experience tells me that dogs will eat anything. there are many dogs raised on crappy food that is mostly grains that do just fine. the first ten ingredients in pedigree, for example:
Ground Whole Corn
Meat and Bone Meal
Corn Gluten Meal
Animal Fat (preserved with BHA/BHT)
Wheat Mill Run
Ground Wheat
Natural Poultry Flavor
Wheat Flour
Salt
Potassium Chloride