Questions: Why do dogs eat poop?

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Every dog I’ve ever owned has liked to eat poop.

Even the current one, Ted, the Cavalier master of indifference, loves nothing more than going outside and chowing down on some cat or possum poop.

Saryn Chorney of People Pets writes, it’s a topic that has long perplexed animal researchers and veterinarians. And if you Google the topic, you’re likely to get more than a dozen different explanations ranging from canine anxiety to illness to simply boredom.

(Boredom explains many of life’s ills, human or dog or cat.)

However, a new study led by veterinarian Benjamin Hart, director of the Center for Animal Behavior at the University of California at Davis, has managed to link the off-putting behavior to “greedy eating” (dogs that quickly ravish their food bowls, according to owners) as well as an instinct connected to canines’ ancestral wolf pack days.

Hart and his team surveyed over 3,000 dog owners. Of these subjects, 16 percent ate other dogs’ feces “frequently” (their owners had witnessed a crappy chow down session at least six times), and of those pups, 80 percent preferred fresh feces less than two days old. Who doesn’t?

Interestingly, the research suggested that the tendency towards coprophagia (the scientific term for poop-eating) was evident no matter a dog’s age, breed, diet, house-training status or compulsive behavior tendency. This finding has unleashed a new theory: Modern day dogs have inherited both their aversion to pooping where they live as well as their likelihood to eat fresh poop from their ancient wolf ancestors.

Back in those wild days, wolves may’ve eaten the fresh feces of sick, lame or old members who accidentally let a load loose as a way to clean up inside and around their den. Since it takes about two days for parasites and other pathogens to develop, eating fresh poop is not usually dangerous, and in fact, eating poop that was festering in their living quarters was actually a helpful way to avoid intestinal parasites such as larvae and worms.

That said, some great minds in the canine scientific community think there may be a bit more to it. For instance, Professor James Serpell of the University of Pennsylvania and editor of the recent book The Domestic Dog: Its Evolution, Behavior and Interactions with People, told the Washington Post he finds the wolf theory “plausible,” but he’s also intrigued by the “greedy eaters” survey findings. He referenced a study of free-roaming wild dogs in developing countries that scavenge for food and, as a result, fill up on a sizable amount of human feces. This seems to indicate that poop could be viewed, errr digested, as a second-hand food source.

Today, dogs (and cats) “are fed diets that are relatively rich in fats and protein, not all of which may be completely digested, making their feces potentially attractive as a second hand food source,” Serpell told the Washington Post.

So, there you have it. Poop-eating is probably a normal, evolutionary dog trait.

I buy the greedy eaters theory: Ted the wonder dog was the runt of the litter, raised outside, and 2 years later, still eats by retrieving a piece of kibble and taking it to the couch or bed to chow down.

But that’s an anecdotal observation, not science.

Questions: Why do your eardrums move when your eyes move?

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I figured I was just getting old.

My hearing has been getting worse, bad enough that I finally went to the doctor on Tuesday.

She, along with a nurse, managed to extract two quarter-sized pieces of what looked like fungal felt, one from each ear. She prescribed some antibiotics to see if the swelling would go down.

My hearing and balance improved immediately.

Which prompted a question that Ed Yong of The Atlantic has ventured to answer: Why do eardrums move when your eyeballs move?

As your eyes flitted right, both eardrums bulged to the left, one inward and one outward. They then bounced back and forth a few times, before coming to a halt. When you looked left, they bulged to the right, and oscillated again.

These wobbles happen every time you move your eyes, whether or not there’s external noise. The bigger the movement, the bigger the wobble. But no one knows why they happen. And until Jennifer Groh, from Duke University, discovered them, no one even knew that they happened at all.

Groh has long been interested in how the brain connects information from our eyes and ears. In a loud party, for example, we automatically read the lips of our conversational partners to interpret any unintelligible sounds. For that to work, the brain has to align visual and auditory information in space, so it knows that those sounds are coming from those lips. And that’s easier said than done, because our ears are obviously fixed on our heads but our eyes are constantly moving. They flit all over the space in front of us, roughly three times a second. Every such movement changes the spatial relationships between what we see and what we hear. So how does the brain unite those streams of information? And where?

“Historically, people have thought that information enters the ear and the eye separately, and that eventually it’s combined,” says Nina Kraus from Northwestern University. But Groh’s experiment, she says, suggests that this act of combination happens much earlier. The eardrum, after all, is responsible for converting vibrations in the air around us into vibrations in the liquid within our heads. It’s where hearing effectively begins. And if it wobbles as our eyes shift, then this suggests that vision might affect hearing “at the earliest possible point,” says Kraus.

Kurtis Gruters and David Murphy, two members of Groh’s team, detected the wobbling eardrums in the simplest possible way. They stuck microphones in the ears of several volunteers, and asked them to look at different targets. As their eyes moved, so did their eardrums. Like actual tiny drums, these vibrating membranes created small sounds, which the microphones could detect. That’s how the team showed that the eardrum oscillations match the direction and strength of the eyes’ movements.

They also found that the eardrums start to wobble about 10 milliseconds before the eyes. This suggest that the ears aren’t reacting to what’s happening in the eyes. Instead, Groh says, “the brain is saying: I am about to move the eyes; ears, get ready.”

Barbara Shinn-Cunningham, from Boston University, also studies the neuroscience of hearing, and she is more circumspect. “It is a very interesting and previously unknown phenomenon, which may turn out to be incredibly important,” she says, “But so far, there is no evidence it is. We just don’t yet know why it happens or what it means.”

Salmon sushi: 5.6′ tapeworm excreted by California man

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Raw can be risky.

Including raw fish used to make sushi, especially if it is not frozen at sea.

Following up my chat with daughter Sorenne while strolling around Noumea, New Caledonia last week, a Fresno man with a daily sushi habit had a 5.5-foot tapeworm lodged in his intestines. He pulled it out himself, wrapped it around a cardboard toilet paper tube and carried the creature into Fresno’s Community Regional Medical Center.

Michelle Robertson, a San Francisco Gate staff writer, reports that Kenny Banh was the lucky doc on shift at the time. He recounted his experience on a recent episode of the podcast “This Won’t Hurt A Bit.”

Banh said the patient complained of “bloody diarrhea” and expressed a desire to get treated for tapeworms.

“I get asked this a lot,” the doctor said. “Truthfully, a lot of times I don’t think they have it.”

This man had it, which he proved to Banh by opening a plastic grocery bag and pulling out the worm-wrapped toilet paper tube.

Banh then asked some questions, starting with: “That came out of your bottom?”

“Yes.”

According to the doctor’s retelling, the patient was using the restroom when he noticed what looked like a piece of intestine hanging out of his body.

 “He grabs it, and he pulls on it, and it keeps coming out,” Banh recounted. He then picks the thing up, “looks at it, and what does it do? It starts moving.”

That’s when the man realized he had a tapeworm stuck in his insides. He headed to the emergency room shortly thereafter, where Banh treated him with an anthelmintic, a single-treatment deworming medication used on humans and dogs alike.

Banh also took it upon himself to measure the specimen on the floor of the hospital. It stretched a whopping 5 feet, 6 inches — “my height,” noted the doctor.

Tapeworms can be contracted in a variety of ways, but Banh said his patient hadn’t traveled out of the country or engaged in any out-of-the-ordinary behavior. The man also professed his love of sushi, specifically raw salmon sashimi, which he confessed to eating daily.

Fresno is located an ample 150 miles from coastline and is not exactly famed for its sushi. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned last February that the rise in popularity of raw fish consumption has likely spurred

The story has attracted attention all over the world, as these things tend to do, says Peter Olson, a tapeworm expert and a researcher at the Natural History Museum’s life sciences department, who was quoted as telling The Guardian, “because they’re gross”. The worm, he says, was “almost certainly something called the broad fish tapeworm … salmon is one of the main ways you would pick it up, if you don’t cook the meat.” The life of the broad fish tapeworm involves more than one host. “A typical life cycle might include a bear that feeds on salmon, then defecates back into the river. The larvae would be passed into the environment and, in the case of an aquatic life cycle like this, it would be eaten by something like a copepod, a little crustacean. When that copepod is eaten by a fish, it would transform into a larval tapeworm and that’s what is being transmitted to a human in this case. That would go to the intestine and grow into this giant worm.”

(On one of our first dates, over 12 years ago – same age as barfblog.com — Amy tried to serve me grilled salmon. I whipped out my trusty tip-sensitive digital thermometer and noted a 98F reading, and said, no way. Cook it.)

The tapeworm is a monstrous and impressive creation. It has a segmented body, with male and female reproductive organs in each segment, so it is capable of self-fertilisation. It does not have a head as such – its “head” is only useful for holding on to its host’s gut, rather than for “eating” (it absorbs nutrients through its skin). In many cases, you would not know you were infected. You might spot bits of tapeworm segment in your stool – small, pale, rice-like bits – or experience stomach pain or vomiting.

Food safety: Keep the ego in check

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The gap between food safety attitudes and behaviour is well acknowledged. Bridging this gap is critical in controlling foodborne illnesses.

Understanding the basis for behavioural outliers in food safety practices can be vital for persuading and transforming future unfavourable food safety behaviour(s). However, there appears to be limited insights available on this subject. This study investigates the extent to which Khebab vendors relate with the food safety attitude-behaviour gap hypothesis and whether this gap is stratified by education and training exposure. Employing interviews and non-participant observation, data was collected from 50 vendors in the Cape Coast Metropolis in Ghana.

The results indicate a significant gap between food safety attitude and behaviour, irrespective of educational status and training. It was also found that home-based food safety socialisation, customer dissatisfaction and associated consequences and egoistic tendencies accounted for outliers.

There is information in the tails: Outliers in the food safety attitude-behaviour gap

Food Control, 29 December 2017

Susana Moreaux, Charles Adongo, Ishmael Mensah, Francis Amuquandoh

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodcont.2017.12.024

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956713517306035

Again, 11 sick: Blame the consumer Hong Kong edition

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The Centre for Health Protection (CHP) of the Department of Health is today (January 19) investigating an outbreak of food poisoning affecting 11 persons, and reminded the public to maintain personal, food and environmental hygiene to prevent food-borne diseases.

The patients, comprising one man and 10 women aged 63 to 76, developed abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea and fever about 12 to 26 hours after having lunch at a restaurant at Lau Fau Shan in Yuen Long on January 7.

Five of them sought medical attention, of whom one required hospitalisation but was discharged upon treatment. The stool specimen of that patient tested positive for Vibrio parahaemolyticus. All affected persons are now in stable condition.

Restaurant inspection disclosure: Should apply to supermarkers, cafeterias, anywhere food is served

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John Cropley of the Daily Gazette writes that state regulators have rolled out a new letter-based grading system for food safety at hundreds of stores across New York state.

Supermarkets and other food retailers must prominently display the rating given to them by the state Department of Agriculture and Markets after inspections by the department’s Division of Food Safety and Inspection. The ratings, and their meanings, are:

A — No critical deficiencies found, store is in substantial compliance with rules. 

B — Critical deficiencies (those creating a risk of foodborne illness) were found but were corrected at time of inspection. 

C — Critical deficiencies were found but were not or could not be corrected. 

The new rule took effect Jan 1. The department requires that the notice of inspection be posted in plain sight near each public entrance to a store; retailer face a $600 fine if they fail to comply. 

Customers can also request their own copies of the inspection notice.

The department said the grades will help customers better understand the sanitary conditions in stores and provide store owners with an educational opportunity.

Agriculture and Markets made the change after meeting with stakeholders, including the Food Industry Alliance of New York State, which has 800 corporate members ranging from supermarkets and convenience stores to wholesalers and cooperatives.

Three major Capital Region food retailers: Price Chopper/Market 32, Hannaford and Stewart’s Shops, all support the new requirements.

Mona Golub, spokeswoman for Price Chopper and Market 32 parent Golub Corp., said it’s a small expansion of existing rules. Supermarkets already were inspected and already were posting the cover page of the inspection reports — behind the customer service counter, in Golub’s case.

The only change is the letter rating, she said, and Golub Corp. endorses it because it will increase customers’ understanding of sanitary conditions in stores.

“We fully support ratings and designations that inform customers of our high food-safety standards,” Golub said.

Carnival cruises: Couple’s honeymoon ruined by poop shower

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My parents are taking a well-earned respite from the cold of Canada and embarked on a cruise from Florida the other day.

Hopefully it’s better than the one described below.

A couple from Missouri says their honeymoon cruise was ruined by sewage spewing from a shower drain, leaving them to celebrate amid the smell of “poop” inside their cabin.

Christine Parker and John Shoemaker, of St. Louis, detailed their foul experience in November aboard the Carnival Triumph in an interview with the Miami Herald, claiming unsanitary conditions on the 14-deck, 893-foot mega-ship turned what should have been a celebration into a potential health scare.

“We didn’t have a good honeymoon,” Parker told the newspaper. “People expect you to come back so excited and we have been fighting with the Carnival staff and smelling poop in our room. We were exhausted and angry.”

To make matters even worse, Parker claimed crew members aboard the ship acted as if black sewage reeking of fecal matter was no big deal.

For her troubles, Parker said Carnival offered her a $300 credit to be used on the ship and 15 percent off her next cruise with the company — which she doesn’t intend to book anytime soon.

The ship, which arrived back in south Florida on Nov. 11, was later given a failing grade by inspectors from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Vessel Sanitation Program.

Two other Carnival Cruise Line ships — the Breeze and the Vista, the company’s newest vessel — failed similar inspections in December, bringing the company’s tally to three failed inspections within two months, according to the Herald.

A Miami-based maritime attorney told the newspaper that failed inspections on cruise ships typically occur roughly two or three times per year, making the rash of poor grades a rarity.

Chabeli Herrera of the Miami Herald reports that aboard the Carnival Vista, Carnival Cruise Line’s newest ship, crew members hid trolleys of potentially hazardous food, equipment and dirty dishware from sanitation inspectors.

Fruit flies were found by the buffet and in a Parmesan cheese container. Crew failed to appropriately document illnesses on board.

On the Carnival Breeze, another of the Doral-based line’s newest vessels, machinery was found to be corroded or not functioning properly. About 25 garbage bins overflowing with waste were found by inspectors near an area where food was handled.

These violations and dozens of others landed both ships failing grades from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Vessel Sanitation Program, which routinely inspects cruise ships in an effort to control the spread of gastrointestinal illnesses. Ships must score 86 points or higher, out of 100, to pass.

But December’s reports follow another Carnival failure reported in November aboard the Carnival Triumph, bringing Carnival’s tally to three failed inspections in the past two months.

Sexy: Lots of erectile dysfunction in Canadians as Health Canada warns of poppers and sex aides

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Health Canada is advising Canadians about unauthorized health products that may pose serious health risks. The table below is updated when Health Canada finds unauthorized health products that are promoted for sexual enhancement, weight loss, as a workout aid, or as “poppers,” and that are labelled to contain or have been tested and found to contain dangerous ingredients.

Unauthorized health products have not been approved by Health Canada, which means that they have not been assessed for safety, effectiveness and quality. Unauthorized health products can pose many health dangers, including:

“Poppers” is a slang term for products that contain alkyl nitrites. Despite being labelled for various uses such as leather cleaners, room odourizers or liquid incense, these products are inhaled or ingested by consumers for recreational purposes. Alkyl nitrites, such as amyl nitrite, butyl nitrite and isobutyl nitrite, are prescription drugs and should be used only under the supervision of a health care professional. Products containing alkyl nitrites may pose serious risks, including death, depending on the amount used, how frequently they are used and how long they are used for, as well as the person’s health and the other medications they may be taking. Since it is difficult to control how much is inhaled, people can accidentally overdose. Swallowing these products can lead to serious medical complications and may be fatal. People with certain medical conditions (including recent head trauma, bleeding into the head, glaucoma, or heart disease) and those taking certain medications (particularly drugs used to treat erectile dysfunction, and other drugs such as high blood pressure medications, certain migraine drugs, and high doses of aspirin) or illicit drugs are at particular risk.

Sildenafil is a prescription drug used to treat erectile dysfunction and should be used only under the supervision of a health care professional. It should not be used by individuals taking any kind of nitrate drug (e.g. nitroglycerine) as it can cause potentially life-threatening low blood pressure. Individuals with heart problems are at increased risk of cardiovascular side effects such as heart attack, stroke, chest pain, high blood pressure and abnormal heartbeat. Other possible side effects include headache, facial flushing, indigestion, dizziness, abnormal vision, and hearing loss.

Tadalafil is a prescription drug used to treat erectile dysfunction and should be used only under the supervision of a health care professional. It should not be used by individuals taking any kind of nitrate drug (e.g. nitroglycerine) as it can cause potentially life-threatening low blood pressure. Individuals with heart problems are at increased risk of cardiovascular side effects such as heart attack, stroke, chest pain, high blood pressure and abnormal heartbeat. Other possible side effects include headache, facial flushing, indigestion, dizziness, abnormal vision, and hearing loss.

Thyroid is a prescription drug ingredient commonly used to treat decreased or absent thyroid function, called hypothyroidism. Products containing thyroid hormone should be used with caution in patients also using medication to treat diabetes and blood clotting. There is also a risk to patients with cardiac conditions such as angina pectoris, high blood pressure and in the elderly as they have a greater likelihood of heart conditions.

Vardenafil is a prescription drug used to treat erectile dysfunction and should be used only under the supervision of a health care professional. It should not be used by individuals taking any kind of nitrate drug (e.g. nitroglycerine) as it can cause potentially life-threatening low blood pressure. Individuals with heart problems are at increased risk of cardiovascular side effects such as heart attack, stroke, chest pain, high blood pressure and abnormal heartbeat. Other possible side effects include headache, facial flushing, indigestion, dizziness, abnormal vision, and hearing loss.

Yohimbine is a prescription drug and should be used only under the supervision of a health care professional. Yohimbine is derived from yohimbe, a bark extract. The use of yohimbine or yohimbe may result in serious adverse reactions, particularly in people with high blood pressure, or heart, kidney or liver disease. Side effects include increased blood pressure and heart rate, anxiety, dizziness, tremors, headache, nausea and sleep disorders. It should not be used by children, or pregnant or nursing women.

Zopiclone is a prescription drug used to treat insomnia. Side effects associated with zopiclone include unpleasant taste, drowsiness, dizziness, memory loss and hallucinations.

Science, or poetry in motion: Modern pig inspection

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) today announced its continued effort to modernize inspection systems through science-based approaches to food safety. USDA is proposing to amend the federal meat inspection regulations to establish a new voluntary inspection system for market hog slaughter establishments called the New Swine Slaughter Inspection System (NSIS), while also requiring additional pathogen sampling for all swine slaughter establishments.

The proposed rule also allows innovation and flexibility to establishments that are slaughtering market hogs. Market hogs are uniform, healthy, young animals that can be slaughtered and processed in this modernized system more efficiently and effectively with enhanced process control.

For market hog establishments that opt into NSIS, the proposed rule would increase the number of offline USDA inspection tasks, while continuing 100% FSIS carcass-by-carcass inspection. These offline inspection tasks place inspectors in areas of the production process where they can perform critical tasks that have direct impact on food safety.

There will be a 60-day period for comment once the rule is published in the Federal Register.

To view the proposed rule and information on how to comment on the rule, visit the FSIS website at fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/topics/regulations/federal-register/proposed-rules.

 

‘Something will always be somebody’s last meal’ Does it have to be today?

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My favorite food safety fairytale is along the lines of, we’ve always produced food this way and no one has ever gotten sick.

Because bugs don’t change, food don’t change, people don’t change.

Raw oysters, the renowned aphrodhsiac, is especially prone to fairytale hyperbole.

Delayna Earley of the Island Packet in South Carolina, writes, who doesn’t love a good oyster roast?

“I’ve been doing this all my life and we’ve never had a case of anyone dying from eating an oyster,” Larry Toomer, owner of the Bluffton Oyster Co., said. “We know where our oysters came from because we harvest them, refrigerate them ourselves and then cook them shortly after.”

Toomer says that there is always a risk when consuming any raw food, but the oysters that are harvested off the coast of the Low country typically don’t have bacteria due cleansing nature of the tidal waters they grow in.

“Something will always be somebody’s last meal,” Toomer says. “If you’re immune system is not up to snuff you shouldn’t eat anything raw, whether that is an oyster, or burger or any other type of meat, but something is going to set you off if you’re already sick. But other than that, we shouldn’t worry too much.”