Re: "Bonn Scientists Simulate Dinosaur Digestion in the Lab"

[Dora Smith <villandra@austin.rr.com>]

OK.   Poop comes out of a bird in three components; a dark solid, which is 
fecal matter, a dried urate, which is the white stuff, and liquid urine. 
Trust me, my bird cage is covered with it.

Is tehre any chance that the high silicate content of the plant matter that 
grinds down teeth, also contributes to grinding down the plant matter in the 
muscular stomach?

Teh parrot family take seeds, break off the hulls with their beaks, swallow 
the seeds inside whole, and then grind it up in their muscular stomach, 
without grit.   They also like to eat various leafy plants and vegetables, 
and fruits and vegetables.

Usually they digest their food pretty completely, though their poop often 
contains lots of traces of whatever plant material they've eaten.   However, 
one of my budgies that recently died of a wasting disease caused by slow 
loss of the ability to digest food, passed whatever seeds it had eaten 
whole.

Yours,
Dora Smith
Austin, TX
tiggernut24@yahoo.com

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Brian Baziak" <baziak@hotmail.com>
To: <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2008 9:57 AM
Subject: RE: "Bonn Scientists Simulate Dinosaur Digestion in the Lab"


> "We assume that the herbivorous dinosaurs must have had a kind of 
> fermenter, similar to the rumen in cows today." They are also using sheep 
> bacteria for their experiments.
>
> Another example of researchers incorrectly treating dinosaurs like cows 
> rather than birds. A good example when thinking about diet that I was 
> told, was that when a cow eats something, is comes out the other end still 
> relatively recognizable, while birds have a much more efficient digestive 
> system and things come out as a white liquid.
>
> Brian
>
> > Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2008 10:45:46 -0500
> > From: mkirkaldy@aol.com
> > Subject: "Bonn Scientists Simulate Dinosaur Digestion in the Lab"
> > To: dinosaur@usc.edu
> >
> > "Bonn Scientists Simulate Dinosaur Digestion in the Lab"
> > 06.02.2008
> > http://www.innovations-report.de/html/berichte/biowissenschaften_chemie/bericht-102776.html
> > "Scientists from the University of Bonn are researching which plants
> > giant dinosaurs could have lived off more than 100 million years ago.
> > They want to find out how the dinosaurs were able to become as large as
> > they did. In actual fact such gigantic animals should not have existed.
> > The results of the research have now been published in the journal
> > 'Proceedings of the Royal Society B'."
> >
> > Mary
> >
> >
> > ________________________________________________________________________
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