From: "Steve Harris" <sbharris@ix.RETICULATEDOBJECTcom.com>
Newsgroups: sci.med.nutrition
Subject: Re: Be wary of nutritional dogma.
Message-ID: <zN%y9.2210$Aq5.235724@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net>
Date: Sat, 09 Nov 2002 04:02:39 GMT

<3dcbb9c6$0$13599$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au> "Andrew Dunbar"
<blank@blank.com> wrote:

> It is actually fairly easy to determine what a healthy
>lifestyle is for humans or any other species. The science is called ethology
>and is the study of animals in their natural environment.

ROFL!  Animals in their natural environment don't live long. Their survival
curves are generally inverse-exponential, and they don't even live long
enough to exhibit many signs of old age. That's true of both preditor and
prey.

If you want to see animals live twice as long as in the wild, you visit them
in a zoo, which is the place where aging in animals was first noted. For
example here in So. California you can see a 19 year old cougar in the zoo
who looks great, but you rarely find any over 10 years old in the wild. Lab
mice routinely live 3 years and even 4 years in the lab when fed special
optimal diets, whereas in the wild, mice are nearly as annual as daisies.

There's a big difference in appearance, too. I've seen coyotes in the wild,
and a more miserable-looking skinny moth-eaten critter you never saw.
Coyotes in the zoo look like sleek little German Shepherds; handsome animals
you'd hardly recognize.

--
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