astro
June 27, 2008, 4:27am
1
I dated a woman who knew a lot about biology. I’d ask her a food and she’d tell me what vitamins, minerals, etc. it had.
“Mushrooms?” I asked.
If that’s true—and if it’s true for animals—I wonder if there would be much reason for them to bother with them. Pigs are known to love truffles, which are fungi. Who knows? Maybe they aid in digestion or something.
yabob
June 27, 2008, 5:06am
3
Actually, most sources claim that mushrooms are a good source of protein, potassium and B vitamins.
And squirrels will eat mushrooms. In fact, they can apparently eats amanitas:
According to Dr. John Rippon, an IMA member and world expert on fungal diseases, squirrels have an interesting adaptation that allows them to eat mushrooms containing deadly amanita-toxins without being affected. There are three important chemicals in the amanitas. Two will knock you right off, but are destroyed in cooking. The third one is the interesting one: it consists of the second amanitin, bound tightly to a glycoprotein molecule. When we digest the mushroom, the enzymes in our gut break the bond between the toxin and the glycoprotein, leaving the toxin free to enter our bloodstream, while the glycoprotein is excreted (a glycoprotein is a mucus molecule, in case you don’t know). What the squirrels have done is line their gut with a toxin-compatible glycoprotein, so that as soon as it gets split from its original glycoprotein molecule, it gets rebound to the squirrel glycoprotein, and excreted along with it. Obviously, the squirrels don’t cook their food to destroy the first two molecules, but presumably those get bound in exactly the same way. Thus, squirrels and a few other animals (guinea pigs also, I believe) can eat mushrooms that are highly toxic to other animals with no ill effects.
From here:
http://www.ilmyco.gen.chicago.il.us/Terms/squir27.html
Thanks for fighting my ignorance. I guess the ex-girlfriend didn’t know as much as I thought.