Vegetarian Dinosaurs Also Sometimes Ate Seafood

[Vegans BTFO No.9458105]

https://qz.com/1084199/dinosaurs-who-were-vegetarian-probably-cheated-with-shellfish/

http://archive.is/P291O

Karen Chin, a paleontologist at the University of Colorado, told NPR that her research team not long ago came across some fossilized dinosaur poop, called coprolites, in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah. She was fairly certain that the stool samples came from hadrosaurs, because they looked similar to other specimen she had studied, and could be dated to about 75 million years ago, when these vegetarian dinosaurs, with a bill like a modern bird, walked the planet.

Except in this case, as the researchers reported on Sept. 21 in Scientific Reports, the stool samples contained material that make up crab and mollusk shells.

That was is highly unexpected for these duck-billed dinos that had dull teeth meant for chewing on plants. The scientists say they have evidence that the shell fragments were big enough to suggest that the hadrosaurs were intentionally chomping down on seafood, rather than accidentally eating some stray shell bits with their prehistoric salads.

[Anonymous No.9458160]

>>9458105
So they were just pesco-vegetarian. I don't even consider that vegetarian.

[Anonymous No.9458171]

>>9458105
Considering even extant obligate herbivores like deer and cows eat meat to address nutritional deficiencies, these findings aren't surprising at all. Still, this only demonstrates the habits of one individual of one particular herbivorous species, so I'd caution against making wild generalisations.

[Anonymous No.9459664]

There's literally only a single species so stupid to be 100% vegan: humans.

[Anonymous No.9459670]

>>9458105
there is no such thing as a vegetarian or vegan in nature, there are merely herbivores, omnivores and carnivores

[Anonymous No.9459737]

>>9459664
there's tons of 100% vegan species, the fuck are you one, retard?

[Anonymous No.9460114]

>>9459737
[citation needed]

[Anonymous No.9460160]

>>9458105
>>>>>>/an/

>>9460114
Cows
Rabbits
Sheep

[Anonymous No.9460185]

>>9460160
>vegan
A conscious choice not to consume animal or animal-derived products
>herbivore
Anatomically and physiologically adapted to eating plant material

The three animals you listed are all herbivores. They're not the same thing as vegan. Instead, find an example of an animal that is carnivorous/omnivorous yet consumes only plant material and does well

[Anonymous No.9460190]

>>9460185
Oh, I getcha. I agree

[chop No.9460197]

>>9460160
They will eat meat if it's there, mate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXhElaGCZVU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQOQdBLHrLk

[Anonymous No.9460199]

>>9460185
The only thing I can think of that fulfill your criteria are pandas, but they aren't doing well and would be extinct if they weren't the perfect fuzzy mascot for bleeding hearts to throw their money at so animals that deserve to live have a better chance to.

[Anonymous No.9460941]

>>9460199
THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THE GIANT PANDA.

Wall o' text of details:

In most animal species, the female is only receptive for a few days a year. This is the NORM, not the exception, and it is humans that are by far the weird ones. In most species, there is a defined breeding season, females usually cycle only once, maybe twice, before becoming pregnant, do not cycle year round, are only receptive when ovulating and typically become pregnant on the day of ovulation. For example: elephants are receptive a grand total of 4 days a year (4 ovulatory days x 4 cycles per year), the birds I did my PhD on for exactly 2 days (and there are millions of those birds and they breed perfectly well), grizzly bears usually 1-2 day, black bears and sun bears too. In the wild this is not a problem because the female can easily find, and attract, males on that 1 day: she typically knows where the nearest males are and simply goes and seeks then out, or, the male has been monitoring her urine, knows when she's entering estrus and comes trotting on over on that 1 day, easy peasy. It's only in captivity, with artificial social environments where males must be deliberately moved around by keepers, that it becomes a problem.

[Anonymous No.9460945]

>>9460941
Pandas did not "evolve to die". They didn't evolve to breed in captivity in little concrete boxes, is all. All the "problems" people hear about with panda breeding are problems of the captive environment and true of thousands of other wild species as well; it's just that pandas get media attention when cubs die and other species don't. Sun bears won't breed in captivity, sloth bears won't breed in captivity, leafy sea dragons won't breed in captivity, Hawaiian honeycreepers won't breed in captivity, on and on. Lots and lots of wild animals won't breed in captivity. It's particularly an issue for tropical species since they do not have rigid breeding seasons and instead tend to evaluate local conditions carefully - presence of right diet, right social partner, right denning conditions, lack of human disturbance, etc - before initiating breeding.

Pandas breed just fine in the wild. Wild female pandas produce healthy, living cubs like clockwork every two years for their entire reproductive careers (typically over a decade).

[Anonymous No.9460951]

>>9460945
Pandas also do just fine on their diet of bamboo, since that question always comes up too. They have evolved many specializations for bamboo eating, including changes in their taste receptors, development of symbiosis with lignin-digesting gut bacteria (this is a new discovery), and an ingenious anatomical adaptation (a "thumb" made from a wrist bone) that is such a good example of evolutionary novelty that Stephen Jay Gould titled an entire book about it, The Panda's Thumb. They represent a branch of the ursid family that is in the middle of evolving some incredible adaptations (similar to the maned wolf, a canid that's also gone mostly herbivorous, rather like the panda). Far from being an evolutionary dead end, they are an incredible example of evolutionary innovation. Who knows what they might have evolved into if we hadn't ruined their home and destroyed what for millions of years had been a very reliable and abundant food source.

Yes, they have poor digestive efficiency (this always comes up too) and that is just fine because they evolved as "bulk feeders", as it's known: animals whose dietary strategy involves ingestion of mass quantities of food rather than slowly digesting smaller quantities. Other bulk feeders include equids, rabbits, elephants, baleen whales and more, and it is just fine as a dietary strategy - provided humans haven't ruined your food source, of course.

Population wise, pandas did just fine on their own too (this question also always comes up) before humans started destroying their habitat. The historical range of pandas was massive and included a gigantic swath of Asia covering thousands of miles. Genetic analyses indicate the panda population was once very large, only collapsed very recently and collapsed in 2 waves whose timing exactly corresponds to habitat destruction: the first when agriculture became widespread in China and the second corresponding to the recent deforestation of the last mountain bamboo refuges.

[Anonymous No.9460954]

>>9460951
The panda is in trouble entirely because of humans. Honestly I think people like to repeat the "evolutionary dead end" myth to make themselves feel better: "Oh, they're pretty much supposed to go extinct, so it's not our fault." They're not "supposed" to go extinct, they were never a "dead end," and it is ENTIRELY our fault. Habitat destruction is by far their primary problem. Just like many other species in the same predicament - Borneo elephants, Amur leopard, Malayan sun bears and literally hundreds of other species that I could name - just because a species doesn't breed well in zoos doesn't mean they "evolved to die"; rather, it simply means they didn't evolve to breed in tiny concrete boxes. Zoos are extremely stressful environments with tiny exhibit space, unnatural diets, unnatural social environments, poor denning conditions and a tremendous amount of human disturbance and noise.

tl;dr - It's normal among mammals for females to only be receptive a few days per years; there is nothing wrong with the panda from an evolutionary or reproductive perspective, and it's entirely our fault that they're dying out.

[Anonymous No.9460956]

>>9458105
Most "herbivore" animals are still opportunistic and will nab and eat a protein package when it comes along. They just don't make it their life style. So, who knows? We certainly won't know for sure.

[Anonymous No.9461026]

>>9460160
Cows eat other cows though, isn't that how mad cow became a problem?