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by sph 1144 days ago
The carnivore doesn't sound so idiotic viewed under that lens. The thing about mammals is that they have liver and kidneys, which are remarkably good at filtering toxins. Certainly much better than a plant.

I wonder if the reason many feel better eating only meat is that they avoid pesticides that wreck havoc on their body. I know I do feel like a million bucks after just 10 days, even though it's extremely boring.
1 comments
dredmorbius 1142 days ago
On the flip side is bioaccumulation, in which contaminants and toxins are concentrated in organic material, particularly animals, and most especially for predators-of-predators.

The reasons for high mercury levels in tuna, shark, and swordfish is that each of these is both a predator and often eats other predatory species. There are numerous other examples of both species and contaminants, including even natural and even vital substances, e.g., vitamin A toxicity in carnivorous livers.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioaccumulation>

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sph 1141 days ago
That's a good point, though we (humans) tend to eat only herbivores and not many carnivores/predators, probably because of that reason. I can't think of any actually, apart from fish.
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dredmorbius 1140 days ago
The reason has far more to do with metabolic efficiency of conversion of biomass into food than with bioaccumulation --- you'll see roughly a 10-fold drop in food production at each trophic level. There are exceptions amongst hunter and trapper cultures, though even there herbivores are generally more abundant than carnivores, and are less treacherous to hunt. You will find ominvores occasionally included in diets: bear, racoon, and members of the rodent family on occasion.

Fish (amongst other sea life) are an exception specifically because humans aren't concerned with that efficiency, and carnivorous fish tend to grow larger which poses efficiency benefits when line- or net-fishing.

Another class is birds, notably fish-eating species, which may be 2nd- or 3rd-order carnivores (carnivores of carnivores, or carnivores of carnivore-eating carnivores).

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