Why is it that bears, birds and other animals can eat fish without getting the bone stuck in their throat, but when humans do it and the bone gets stuck, it becomes an emergency ?
In: Biology
The physical qualities of cooked bone vs uncooked bone could have much to do with it.
When bones are cooked, they get hard and brittle, while uncooked bones have some flexibility to them. Cooked bones are therefore more likely to break into sharp pieces, while uncooked bones are less likely and therefore less piercing.
This is why uncooked bones are okay for animals, like dogs, while cooked bones may be extremely dangerous.
Bears do choke on the bones. They typically don’t eat the fish meat because of this. They only eat the brains eggs and skin, and leave the rest for the soil to break down. Easier to catch another fish than to try to eat the bones.
Bears don’t typically go through the trouble of eating an entire fish, and neither do birds, really.
For them, hunting and actually obtaining prey takes a lot of energy and time. For bears specifically, they’ll typically eat the fleshy outsides and heads of fish where there is a good amount of meat and calories and where bones aren’t an issue or aren’t dense enough to matter. They’ll leave a good portion of the torso where all the little spiny bones are behind because it’s just too much hassle and not enough reward. Other critters, like birds might come in later and pick around the bones since they have more precision with beaks. Other birds can simply swallow small enough fish whole, thereby nullifying the potential for choking on bones entirely.
Is it possible that cooking makes the bones harder and more brittle, therefore more dangerous, just like chicken bones?
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I read a ways into this thread, and no one has commented on the most obvious answer:
We generally cook our fish that has bones in it. When we cook bones they become less rubbery and pliable, and instead become hard, sharp, and dangerous. Bears, birds and other animals are not cooking their fish, so the bones are still quite flexible, malleable, and easily swallowed.
I fed my dogs raw chickens- bones and all- for years, but any cooked chicken, the bones had to be removed because the bones could splinter and cause GI damage.
A bit off topic but camels can eat spiky cactus just fine. There’s a bunch of videos of them just going to town on a bucket of dry, hard, spiky cactus.
Might extend to other animals too and how they have thicker flesh.
Because we speak!
Our throats are particularly sensitive to choking because of how they’ve had to adapt to speech.
And, maybe it’s just me, but I feel like animals have, like, tougher throats or something. They seem to be able to eat whatever the fuck they want and we choke on our own spit (or *I* choke on my own spit).
Bears actually [don’t usually bother to eat the whole salmon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0dabXAy7uA), normally eating the fat rich skin, eggs, and brain and discarding the rest since during spawning season it would take less effort to catch another salmon than trying to eat the flesh around the bones.
You wouldn’t eat apple cores if there were more apples on the tree.
Not really. Lot of island cities/countries teach kids or culturally just swall big lumps of rice or bread to dislodge the bone. It happens a lot more than you think and is not deadly. If it were Americans would’ve banned whole fishes like they banned kinder surprises.
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