An appetite for danger
QUESTION Watching TV nature programmes, I often see scavenging animals tackle a rotting carcass with delight. As we humans watch our sell-by dates so avidly, how can animals survive food poisoning? animals often get sick and die from food poisoning, which is why their lives in the wild are often shorter than in captivity.
There are often recalls for dog foods contaminated with salmonella or aflatoxin, produced by mould on corn.
another example is leptospirosis, which can infect wildlife, rodents, livestock, dogs and people. it infects the kidneys and is spread through water contaminated by animal urine. infected dogs get liver and kidney failure. if not fatal, it can leave an animal debilitated, making it easy prey.
some scavengers do have increased tolerance to dangerous bacteria. Wolves and foxes have been known to ignore diseased reindeer carcasses in favour of ones killed by other predators.
spotted hyenas prefer fresh meat, minimising contact with microbes. Other scavengers, such as carrion and burying beetles and vultures, seek out putrid remains because they are easier to detect, dig into and defend.
To combat any micro-organisms, the beetles smear carcasses with antimicrobial slime before feeding.
Vultures destroy most pathogens with a stomach acid pH of 1 to 2 — ten times more acidic than that of humans and strong enough to corrode steel. They also use this as a defence, regurgitating and spitting acid at a threat.
some tenacious pathogens, including the ones that cause botulism and tetanus, can make it through the acids and thrive in the intestines beyond. it’s assumed vultures have built up immunity through exposure, something akin to vaccination.
socialising is thought to strengthen immune systems. Hyenas and lions pass small doses of germs around as they groom, eat and compete with each other, helping to build up group-wide immunity.
Alison Wrey, Manchester. QUESTION In the Eighties I had a Spectrum computer and a modem was available to connect to other Spectrums via a phone line. Did anyone ever use one and what could you actually do with it? a mOdem (modulator-demodulator) is a network hardware device that modulates one or more carrier wave signals to encode digital information for transmission and demodulate signals to decode transmitted information.
it translates information between the Strong stomach: Vultures eat carrion digital data of a computer and the analogue signal of a phone line.
The VTX5000 was a V23 manual connect modem designed for the spectrum 16 and 48K. Costing £40, it was a large black box designed to sit under the spectrum to which it was connected via a ribbon and to a phone socket via a standard lead.
it enabled users to connect to Prestel (sometimes known as Pretzel) a forerunner of the internet run by the Post Office.
in the seventies, the Post Office was responsible for Britain’s telephone network and sam Fedida, an inventive Post Office research engineer, envisaged an interactive information system that was viewable through the family TV, connected through the phone lines to a distant computer databank.
Visually, Prestel was similar to Teletext but it was an interactive system relying on the phone network, while passive Teletext, transmitted through the TV signal, was far more limited in scope.
launched in 1979 with 100,000 pages of information, it rose to half a million.
With a Prestel TV or spectrum computer connected via a VTX 5000, a user could call up news, weather, share prices, train timetables, information from major retailers and gardening advice.
The network consisted of information Providers (iPs) who created their own pages and allowed the public to look at them. iPs on Prestel ranged from British airways to the stock market.
The most popular iP for spectrum users was called micronet, owned by BT. Working from your spectrum microbase, you could access a range of telesoftware from major software houses, games with cash prizes, game tips, reviews, helplines, news, reviews, tips and chatlines.
The spectrum User To User Group (sUTUG) was a list of spectrum users on micronet and their mailbox numbers, so you could send messages to them, like an internet and e-mail system in Teletext form, albeit running at a snail’s pace.
Prestel and micronet never caught on and Prestel peaked at 90,000 users.
They are things of the past but, like the spectrum, the VTX5000 was a fascinating piece of home hardware, a forerunner of the internet age.
edward t. Coles, Portishead.
QUESTION
Are there any song titles worse than The Statler Brothers’ You Can’t Have Your Kate And Edith Too? FUrTHer to the earlier answer, other statler Brothers song titles include: The Official Historian On shirley Jean Berrell, Whatever Happened To randolph scott? and let’s Get started if We’re Gonna Break my Heart. They also had an album called Pardners in rhyme.
adge Cutler and The Wurzles had He Be The Champion dung spreader. little Jimmy dickens sang may The Bird Of Paradise Fly Up Your nose and Traffic sang roamin’ Thro’ The Gloamin With 40,000 Headmen.
in the sixties, Keith richards created an orchestral album with one track entitled Oh i do love To Be Upon The B side.
Fall Out Boy sang i slept With someone in Fall Out Boy and all i Got Was This stupid song Written about me, and Blue Oyster Cult told the story of The siege and investiture Of Baron Von Frankenstein’s Castle at Weisseria.
Okay i Believe You, But my Tommy Gun don’t and Good To Know That if i ever need attention all i Have To do is die were songs by Brand new.
There is You Know What They do To Guys like Us in Prison by my Chemical romance and What Godzilla said To God When His name Wasn’t Found in The Book Of life by american music Club.
George Formby came up with the perplexing i’m The Husband Of The Wife Of mr Wu.
Fairport Convention had sir B. mcKenzie’s daughter’s lament For The 77th mounted lancers retreat From The straits Of loch Knombe, in The Year Of Our lord 1727, On The Occasion Of The announcement Of Her marriage To The laird Of Kinkleakie, which is an instrumental.
i’ve written a few, too: six million Bionic angels is a spoof on seventies TV. i also wrote On Fridays We meet To eat, But not To eat meat in honour of my weekly engagements with my daughter anna in a teashop in Henley and i Went To Chicago For a laugh and Came Back in stitches.
Danny D’Arcy, Reading, Berks.
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