How can animals eat spoiled rotting bacteria infested meat (or anything really) yet I’ll get really sick doing the same?
In: Biology
They get really sick too. If you fed your dog rotting meat, they’d likely throw up and not feel well, just like you would. Animals can’t just eat anything; we just don’t see all the cases where they die because they ate rotting meat.
A lot of animals don’t eat rotten meat (that’s why many animals play dead as a defence strategy, because predators often won’t eat animals that are already dead).
The animals that do (scavengers) have evolved things like extra strong stomach acid to deal with rotten meat.
Ask a Komodo dragon? Just don’t stand too close when you do.
Dogs can eat a greater variety than we can because their gut biome has different bacteria and their stomach acid is much more acidic than ours. That’s why they can eat bones, for example. But they’d still get sick from putrid meat.
Most animals will get sick if they do the same. They might be able to stomach meat we’d consider expired a bit longer than we can, but if it would make a person violently ill it would probably make most mammals sick. Animals tend to know better than to eat something showing signs of decay.
1. Not all animals can eat rotted food without having some level of GI upset from bacteria or parasites.
2. The ones that can are specialized for that since it fits their lifestyle, such as a specific gut biome and/or stomach acid level.
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