Research Proves It: Cats and Carbs Don’t Mix!

Cats are obligate carnivores, meaning they have nutritional requirements that can only be met with a diet based on animal tissue. The macronutrient profile for cats is high in protein and fat, consistent with a meat-based diet.

According to study authors:

The carbohydrate ceiling explains many of the intake patterns seen in both dry and wet diet experiments and suggests that cats may only be able to process ingested carbohydrate up to a certain level.The feline body is specifically designed for a low-carb diet. Indicators your kitty isn’t equipped by nature to process a lot of carbohydrates include:

• No taste receptors for sweet flavors
• Low rates of glucose uptake in the intestine
• No salivary amylase to break down starches
• Reduced capacity of pancreatic amylase and intestinal disaccharidases

In other words, cats don’t produce the enzymes required to digest carbohydrates. The only carbs felines eat in the wild are pre-digested and are found in the stomachs of prey animals.

If your kitty’s body is incapable of digesting a heavy carbohydrate load and she’s eating a cat food with high carb content, she could potentially develop digestive disease and other serious conditions, like diabetes and pancreatitis, related to eating a diet unfit for her species. And certainly, too many carbohydrates aren’t the only problem with most processed pet foods.

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Do not feed cats food with grains, or high in carbs. And avoid dry; cats are desert animals who get most of their moisture from what they eat. If they drink, they are dehydrated.

Researchers from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greebelt, Md., report evidence that ready-made DNA parts could have crashed to the surface on objects like meteorites, and then assembled under Earth’s early conditions to create the first DNA.

The discovery was made using samples from 12 carbon-rich meteorites, nine of them from Antarctica. The team extracted small fragments of the meteorite and ran them through a process to determine their structure. What they found was adenine and guanine. These are two of the nucleobases needed to make the rungs of DNA’s spiral ladder (in addition to thymine and cytosine, which were not present in the sample).

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The Department of Chemistry at Duke University discusses some of the past experiments, like the Miller-Urey experiment, that have been done regarding producing amino acids from simple compoungs:

In 1953, Stanley L. Miller and Harold C. Urey, working at the University of Chicago, conducted an experiment which would change the approach of scientific investigation into the origin of life.

Miller took molecules which were believed to represent the major components of the early Earth’s atmosphere and put them into a closed system.

The gases they used were methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3), hydrogen (H2), and water (H2O). Next, he ran a continuous electric current through the system, to simulate lightning storms believed to be common on the early earth. Analysis of the experiment was done by chromotography. At the end of one week, Miller observed that as much as 10-15% of the carbon was now in the form of organic compounds. Two percent of the carbon had formed some of the amino acids which are used to make proteins. Perhaps most importantly, Miller’s experiment showed that organic compounds such as amino acids, which are essential to cellular life, could be made easily under the conditions that scientists believed to be present on the early earth. This enormous finding inspired a multitude of further experiments.

In 1961, Juan Oro found that amino acids could be made from hydrogen cyanide (HCN) and ammonia in an aqueous solution. He also found that his experiment produced an amazing amount of the nucleotide base, adenine. Adenine is of tremendous biological significance as an organic compound because it is one of the four bases in RNA and DNA. It is also a component of adenosine triphosphate, or ATP, which is a major energy releasing molecule in cells. Experiments conducted later showed that the other RNA and DNA bases could be obtained through simulated prebiotic chemistry with a reducing atmosphere.
…
There has been a recent wave of skepticism concerning Miller’s experiment because it is now believed that the early earth’s atmosphere did not contain predominantly reductant molecules. Another objection is that this experiment required a tremendous amount of energy. While it is believed lightning storms were extremely common on the primitive Earth, they were not continuous as the Miller/Urey experiment portrayed. Thus it has been argued that while amino acids and other organic compounds may have been formed, they would not have been formed in the amounts which this experiment produced.

Many of the compounds made in the Miller/Urey experiment are known to exist in outer space. On September 28, 1969, a meteorite fell over Murchison, Australia. While only 100 kilograms were recovered, analysis of the meteorite has shown that it is rich with amino acids. Over 90 amino acids have been identified by researchers to date. Nineteen of these amino acids are found on Earth. The early Earth is believed to be similar to many of the asteroids and comets still roaming the galaxy. If amino acids are able to survive in outer space under extreme conditions, then this might suggest that amino acids were present when the Earth was formed. More importantly, the Murchison meteorite has demonstrated that the Earth may have acquired some of its amino acids and other organic compounds by planetary infall.

Recent Events

15/08/11 SECOND HATCH: The second eaglet (S2) hatched on Monday 15th August at 1:45pm local time Australia (we are UTC+10 hours) after pipping at 9:45am.

14/08/11 FIRST HATCH: Pop the Champagne! The first eaglet (S1) hatched on Sunday 14th August at 8:55am local time Australia after pipping at 3:00pm on the 13th.

07/07/11 SECOND EGG: The second egg was laid on Thursday 7th July at 6:00pm local time Australia. Mum is staying very close to the eggs. The temperature was down to about 4C (39F) this morning.

04/07/11 FIRST EGG: Start the fireworks!!! At approximately 5:40pm on Monday 4th July the first egg was laid. The female had been sat in the nest since 5:15pm. She stood up a few times where we could see that, initially, the nest was empty. She then stood up at 5:40pm and there it was! Keep a close eye on what happens during the night as nobody has ever observed WBSEs on the nest at night before!
Some Basic Information On The Sea-Eagles & Sea-EagleCAM

Sea-EagleCAM has set up a high definition video camera monitoring the local White-bellied Sea-Eagles’ nest, 15 metres (50 feet) above the ground, in a eucalyptus tree within a protected nature reserve of Sydney Olympic Park, Australia (see Channel 7 News Story from August 2010). The video is fed back to the Birds Australia Discovery Centre at Olympic Park via an optical fibre cable giving a high definition video display to visitors as well as the video stream to Ustream.

You can hear what it sounds like by watching the ABC GMA report on YouTube.  The video was, I think, originally on National Geographic.

Thinking of and treating stallions that way annoys the heck out of me. As does it when people say to me that my stallion, in being so good, is just different. Nonsense. As the Dog Whisperer (Cesar Milan) points out with dogs — it’s the owner.  All stallions are like mine. People need to quit jacking with them!! People ruin the horse.

Mr. Hempfling’s video When the Horse Seeks Us is good to watch. He has written a few books, one of which is Dancing With Horses. His video Just a Dance — Body Language in Horsemanship is also really good, as is his beautiful You Seek To Be Great?.

It scared me, watching the video, though. And annoyed me that the people did not protect the cat!! They should have scared away the alligators with sticks, rocks, a gun or something! Or scared away the cats with rocks or sticks! And what the heck are the people doing so close to the alligators, anyway!!

HT: Jimi E via John T

I don’t know what the latest news is, but, in 2008, Linda Faber wrote a story, “KITTY CORNER: Update on an unlikely friendship” (The Sun Chronicle (34 South Main St., Attleboro, MA),
Monday, July 21, 2008 2:38 AM EDT), talking about the animals. Linda wrote:

In August 1999, Wallace and Ann Collito’s home in North Attleboro was buzzing with activity. It was the place to be! The streets were full of curious neighbors, camera crews and photographers.

So, what was all the hoopla about, you ask? People were there to witness the unthinkable, something that defied all the laws of nature: A kitten and a crow engaged in a most unusual nurturing relationship. It’s a known fact that cats & birds are arch enemies.

I first witnessed the unlikely twosome on YouTube about six months ago and simply could not believe what I was seeing. You can see for yourself by going to YouTube.com and typing in “crow & kitten are friends.” Obviously others were amazed by what they saw as the video has had 4,634,309 visitors to date and has a five star rating. More pictures can be seen at www.earthlings.org/kin/kinship.html. The story made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but left me wondering whatever became of the kitten and the crow. It was now nine years later and I just had to find out.

©Copyright 2010

Read the rest! Nice story, good article.

You can see Cassie and Moses also in a video clip on the National Geographic‘s Unlikely Animal Friends.

Update (7-28-11; 5:25 PM)!! Being *very* interested in Cassie’s fate and hoping all was well, I emailed Linda Faber, and — thank goodness, even though the email address I found might have been years out of date — got a response! Linda said I could publish her letter. She said:

Hi Michael,

You’ll be happy to know that Cassie returned home on 8/14/08 unscathed. She was gone for 3 1/2 months.  Mr. Collito spotted her, put food out on his side deck, she came right up to the door, ate it and walked in the house like she had never left.

They spend their winters in Florida visiting Mr. Collito’s son and return to N. Attleboro in the spring.  They are both doing well.

Last summer, Mr. Collito built a screened in porch for Cassie and she loves it.  She can now feel like she’s outside without ever getting lost again.

You can rest easy knowing that the story had a happy ending.

Linda Faber
Kitty Corner/The Sun Chronicle

What a relief to hear that, after losing Cassie for a while, Mr. Wallace Collito and Cassie were reunited!! Thank goodness! But poor Moses!!   And I hope it did not hurt Cassie too much, losing Moses!!

I was going to wait until tomorrow to put up this post, but, at Linda’s request, I put it up today. She wanted it today, and, since I owe her big time for telling me about Cassie’s fate — done!

The White-bellied Sea-Eagle (Haliaeetus leucogaster) is the second largest bird of prey in Australia with a wing span of 1.8-2.2 metres (6-7 feet). It measures 75-85cm (30-33 inches) in length and can weigh up to 4.2kg (9 pounds), the female being larger and heavier than the male. Sea-eagles are found around the coast and along the major rivers of mainland Australia and Tasmania, New Guinea, South East Asia and as far west as the coast of India.

Our eagles started to build a new nest in May after the tree in which they had their old nest for several years fell down in February (see Channel 7 News Story from February 2011). They usually lay two eggs at the end of June or early July and incubate them for forty days before hatching in early August. The young remain on the nest for approximately three months until they are ready to fly at the beginning of November. They then spend most of their time away from the nest but, if the adults are still bringing in food, they may occasionally be seen at the nest up until January the following year. The young birds may take up to six years to reach maturity, gradually losing their brown juvenile plumage and gaining the characteristic grey and white plumage of the adults. Sea-eagles may live for up to 30 years. Their diet is mainly fish but also includes birds, reptiles, mammals and carrion. Our eagles take fish from the nearby Parramatta River and surrounding wetlands of Olympic Park but when the eaglets are approximately 1-2 months old, a large part of their diet is made up of Silver Gulls caught from a small breeding colony on the wrecks in Homebush Bay.

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