Gonna need scientists to whip up some more of those herbivorous crocodyliforms so I can have one as a pet
Another fun reptile fact!
Tortoises are mostly herbivorous. However, many species of tortoises will not stop munching on leaves where snails are sitting. They are happy to eat snails for the protein. And also to demonstrate the snails that turtles are significantly faster!
(Also I wish I had one particular video at hand, of Galapagos tortoises eating pumpkins)
Afaik most herbivorous will eat meat given the opportunity.
That’s either a really big banana or a really small alligator…
Interesting! But how do we know the crocs eat the fruit specifically as mineral or fiber supplement and not just for general sustenance, for the fun of death rolling a pumpkin, or “by accident”?
The sentence “it’s not by accident either” indicates clearly observable behaviour. I.e.: A croc needs potassium, then eats a banana. But how did the scientists observe this?
And how do the crocs know which fruit to eat? I guess for them to eat anything with the intention of being provided with minerals or fiber they need to know their fruits?
I have so many questions. I know bears know a lot about plants and some apes are known to use specific plants (as medicine even), but this is indicative of higher intelligence so I’d be curious to hear if anyone knows about how this works in primitive reptile brains.
And how do the crocs know which fruit to eat?
Instinct i guess? The digestive tract is a chem lab that analyzes nutrient contents. You’ve eaten it once, you get a craving once you require something of it.
So they go around eating plants they don’t know to see if they like them and get a craving for them later? Doesn’t seem very crocodile-like
Well, at least human children do that.
There was a human study in the 1920s by Clara Davis where they followed a group of children in self led eating habits. They offered a range of healthy foods each day and let the kids choose what they ate - generally kids fed themselves a healthy diet with appropriate portions as long as the food offered was healthy. They would even eat fish oil voluntarily and maintained good vitamin D and omega 3 levels.
Now the author never had the opportunity to try it with processed foods or junk foods, so this may not hold true when items specifically formulated to keep you eating come into play. However, it’s entirely possible that the crocodile in the image has some instinct that drives it to eat a healthy diet. Or you’re correct, maybe it is playing and using the pumpkin as a toy, but it is unusual that it would consume it then
I’ve specifically tried to get in touch with my body’s feedback over the past few years, and i’m 100% convinced that the ability to sense what nutrients you get from food and then want that food when you need those nutrients, is a fundamental thing to any animal that can actively seek out specific foods.
My recommendations to get in touch with this ability is to limit snacking and try to get as hungry as possible before eating (so you have a chance to calibrate yourself, feel the difference between eating things out of habit vs actually craving them) and to try as many foods as possible even if you think you don’t like them, in as many different ways of preparation as possible.
There are so many things i thought i didn’t like until i tried them in a specific way, and there are many things i thought i liked but i’ve realized it was a very surface-level enjoyment. These days when i follow my cravings i’m filled with a borderline spiritual feeling of well-being, the food really feels like it’s good for me (and that includes desserts/sweets, because i’m very specific about which ones i like and how much of them i eat).
Yes, I’m totally with you there! For all the recommendations I’ve seen about snacking throughout the day, I have not found that it works well for me to be able to listen to my body’s hunger cues. Similarly, longer gaps between meals seem to promote better self-cleansing of the small intestine, improved nutritional absorption, and better hormonal regulation.
I find there is a big psychological component to food enjoyment as well. If you decide you don’t like a food in advance, you will go in hating it. Make the grimace that a 4 year old makes eating kale and bite into anything - the muscle activation sets off a cascade of emotional reactions that could make you hate your favorite food. I have enjoyed learning to cook and trying different ways to prepare foods that can be more difficult to love - now I enjoy the Brussels sprouts that I hated so much as a child.
My ground rule that helped me most with weight loss was to avoid single serve packaging and any foods that are shelf-stable that should not be without many added preservatives. If I’m craving sweets, I will make my own granola bars or banana bread - and likely with a fraction of the sugar of a pre-packaged alternative. But when I’m only choosing less processed foods, my body seems to know what to eat when the added-sugar noise is mostly eliminated.
With humans it’s the same (cravings), you need potassium & maybe crave a banana milkshake. If you explore your craving further, eg ask yourself if you would like to drink milk or eat a banana, it might get more clear what you need (it also helps exclude carbs bcs usually we don’t need them, but the self-preservation & long winters of the past usually means most humans don’t have much limit on carbs, bcs why not more of them, just to be safer). It’s a trained skill to some extent, especially in the modern era.
We associate nutrients with food tastes we get from our meals (which are usually a mixture of things & might even be wrong/false with ultra-processed foods).
I have no idea how this works in ancient crocks. Is it a learned (try all the foods when growing up?), observed (yo, why Silly Goose the neighbouring crock eating a jack-o’-lantern?), or “instinct” (ie only crocks that occasionally ate pumpkins survived)?
… especially given that even the current “true crocodiles” predate squash/pumpkins by 40+ million years :D.Yes I guess cravings are part of the “reptilian brain” (brain stem) in humans as well.
Funny to think crocs could crave banana’s. “Finally, gotta have some potassium after all these meats”.
There is no “reptile brain”. This is 1960s bad science.
the term is nonsense, but the brain stem obviously exists and handles low-level functions that directly keep us alive.
Is that a giant banana
Very small croc.
Fuck dude. I have worse eating habits than an overgrown lizard.
Funny thing about crocodilians, they look a bit lizardy, but theyre closer to birds than they are to lizards
They also taste like chicken, apparently.
Afaik it’s more comparable to turkey, because of their lifestyle and whatnot.
I think ostrich is another close comparison
Yeah, in think I remember them not being lizards but something close, right?
The other part of my comment is still true though.
I think “overgrown lizard” is perfectly acceptable. You’re referring to their form, not ancestry ;)
Ahh, so for the same reason my cat eats grass.
Hehe, the cat we had when I grew up was completely and utterly obsessed with home made apple pie, she knew that she wasn’t supposed to get up on tables, and even fish or meat was something she could resist, but not home made apple pie.
Cats fucking adore butter. They don’t care for sugar or wheat, but they’ll go buck wild for butter. Sounds like you made proper pie!
She also loved olive oil, she would prefer ir over fish and eggs
You have a typo in your post. i think you ment “purrrr-fer”.
Mt cat’s nickname is “Butter Boy”. His only other vice is roasted chicken.
My brothers cat was a feen for persimmon, the sister cat didn’t care for it at all
I think you mean “fiend.”
“Feen” is slang that means to want something obsessively or to have a strong desire for it.
fiend An evil spirit; a demon.
I guess both would be correct
Oh, what a good rabbit hole!
I use fiend in exactly the same way: “I’m fiending for a cigarette,” etc.
My big fat ginger loves cornbread and has once destroyed a cornmeal bag.
Okay, what about your cat?
How else do you think their species survived almost as long as sharks?
Wait! Do sharks eat pumpkins?
I think they’re obligate carnivores, at least I don’t know of any (There are a lot of things I don’t know, though.)
obligate <whatever> doesn’t mean you can’t eat other things, it just means that’s the vast majority of the diet. Cats are obligate carnivores but very much enjoy eating some grass now and then, and when catching things in the wild i assume they’ll end up eating the stomach contents of their prey (which will be plant matter).
And of course there’s those infamous clips of herbivores casually eating meat, because food is food. (they just won’t eat a lot of it, because that would make them sick). It’s like how we can eat a couple strands of grass, but if we try to make it a regular part of our diet we’ll get constipation.
