Digesting plant matter takes a lot of processing to break down the fiber. Large animals like cows have multiple stomachs to do this. Small animals like rabbits don’t have the room for multiple stomachs. They pass the food through their digestive system twice to do this. Hence the eating some of their own feces. Humans don’t digest a lot of the fiber; it just passes through undigested.
So coprophagy should be encouraged?
… I think I might pass on that. Although, to be fair, I do eat rabbit. Just not their poo-filled guts.
I think the undigested fibre in humans is an aid to the digestive system, allowing maximal nutrient absorbtion and a slightly slower path through the digestive system.
(I am not a gastroenterologist, just an enthusiastic rabbit chef)
If you eat too much rabbit you may get trouble due to protein toxicity. Their meat is too lean if you only eat that.
Another case of restricted diet that does not work. Not with humans. It does for the Iberian Lynx though!
Similar with Warthogs. Due to their low fat ratio, I cook them with bacon.
I cut the streaky (high fat) bacon into sharp triangles (the bacon is frozen) and stab the joint all round with a boning knife, and then insert the bacon triangles.
It doesn’t affect the flavor too much, but it does make the very lean meat much more tender after cooking.
I guess this is quite niche to Southern Africa, though.
(I think I posted this before, in a very different thread)
Also, rabbit is exceptionally hard to find here. I can locate Wildebeest or Kudu more easily.
When I do, a Rabbit and Guinness Pie is my choice.
ETA, maybe I should stop posting my eating proclivities in this forum… And definitely not in this thread.
Apologies.
I’ve eaten domestic rabbit, and it was unpleasantly fatty. I think that must be an issue with hungry wild rabbits, not with “rabbits”.
For 13 years I worked as a zoo keeper. One of the many things I learned was that animals who are said to only eat one kind of plant, actually eat other stuff as well. Koalas eat mostly eucalyptus and pandas eat mostly bamboo, but both also eat other stuff. They prefer their specific favorites, but they also eat other leaves, roots, shoots and even bugs.
Don’t lynx eat the whole rabbit, from brain to entrails? Humans tend to be pickier eaters.
Yes, you are right: entrails should make a difference. Like self-sidedishing and seasoning from within. I don’t know about the pickier eaters, though. I remember Down by Law fondly and the rabbit scene was a highlight. It depends on how hungry you are, I suppose. Or the film script.
It has been suggested that one of the drivers for Dog domestication was that humans had to throw out excess lean meat to get enough fat, liver, and marrow.
I got another one!
Pangolins are also a bit fussy:
Pangolins are insectivorous. Most of their diet consists of various species of ants and termites and may be supplemented by other insects, especially larvae. They are somewhat particular and tend to consume only one or two species of insects, even when many species are available.
Which leads me to look for particular feeding habits by looking at the feeding instruments. So next are colibris.
I wonder whether whales count. Apart from the occasional Jonah the Mysteceti only eat krill.
For some animals, yeah they really are that restricted. It’s not always (entirely) about their bodies either, it can be about availability of resources, and of course the ever present competition of nature.
You mentioned pandas, so let’s talk pandas:
This study goes over some looking into genetics, ancestry, essentially: Pandas, why do they do that? Who raised them to do that? Did your great grandma teach you that bamboo recipe NERD?
The answer is yeah kinda.
There’s not a lot of fossil evidence as to why they are like that, or who exactly makes up the full lineage of pandas, but we have found a few fossils that show some older bears weren’t strictly carnivorous. It’s a bit lower in there, on pg 12, you’ll see a short paragraph about Kretzoiarctos beatrix which seems to be an ancestor from the Miocene according to the Wikipedia page on those guys.
We know that dietary diversification had to be happening for a pretty long time for the pandas we have today, and these miocene bears alongside a few other links seem to put a decent timeline on that.
But why? Right? Why do that?
Well, they’re big buff guys who needed to take on a bunch of food to get nice and fat for bear things and such, being a big guy was advantageous for their ancestors I would assume. Pandas don’t eat to hibernate, and even if they did it would be the worst meal prep in history since they most certainly wouldn’t get what they need from their current diet plans, but size and energy are still advantageous. To maintain big sizes and big energy you need abundant food, which leads to dietary diversification in certain groups over time.
Now the thing to state really obviously, evolution isn’t exactly an intelligent process, it’s just the set of conditions that lead to thing happening. Evolution doesn’t realize bamboo isn’t the best source of nutrients, it realizes 1: Food scarce 2: Other bears want my food 3: I need more food that other bears don’t want, and I need lots of it!!!
Bam, pandas happened.
Bamboo might not be nutritious, but it is abundant, fast growing, and at the time that they must have started evolving their traits to eat it (dental changes, the “thumb” wrist bone, faster digestion, etc) it must have been missing the niche pandas fill now. Bamboo wanted to have someone who eats a lot of it, moving it around, shaking it down, being a panda. Pandas wanted food, a lot of it, and fast. They made a little pact and now pandas are pandas, and they still eat meat and fruit sometimes because if their diet was a genuine 100% bamboo they’d be pretty kaput.
Pandas are changing a lot too, of course, we all know about talks surrounding the preservation of pandas. For a little more insight on distribution, and exactly where is being affected by changes in Panda populations, there’s this 2025 study on population distribution and other changes.
For a look into Pandas and their diet in a more in depth way, here’s this article on what they get from their diet, and following that is an article that goes over a more overarching view of their diet including things other than bamboo. They don’t usually eat other things, but i’ve seen numbers ranging from “it’s 95% bamboo diet” to “99% bamboo diet" so overall, the point is they eat bamboo way more than anything else, and that’s the preference based on a need for food.
The German Butcher (Gardens Continental) on Kloof Street…
They also eat invertebrates - more for the other nutrients like lipids and aminos, not the calories.
Baleen whales eat plankton, not just krill. Krill just happens to be by far the biggest component of it for particular species. But they can and will eat all the plankton they filter, AFAIK.
The German Butcher is indeed very good, and I have bought all sorts of things from them, but I (on rare occasions) buy rabbit form Kalmoesfontein, a farm in the Mamre area.
You might know them better for their wines, “Secateur”, both red and white (the white is better IMHO)
The farm itself is worth a visit, the farmer is a congenial madman, his wife is a bit more serious and runs the business aspect, she is lovely. They run occasional events, too, so I have been in a very drunken wine-pressing event - the traditional way, by foot, and an outdoor movie… dinners etc. The accommodation is very limited, but only slightly below Babylonstoren level (I have been fortunate to stay at both, twice each)
Anyway, my hard sell PR is going off topic, but I do recommend it.
Plus the there is a really fine example of the tradional South African “dodgy roadside bar” just up the road in Mamre.