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Klein bunny
Improve rabbit digestion - see Leech Ouroboros | |
Rabbits currently eat their own faeces in order to give
themselves a chance to digest everything in their food,
unlike ruminants, which regurgitate it and chew it up or
odd-toed ungulates, which seem just to have really long
digestive tracts or something.
However, a rabbit could be spared
this chore by taking
the
rectum and feeding it into the buccal cavity, which would
also make its alimentary canal a non-orientable surface
and, with appropriate connections in the enteric nervous
system, set up a permanent ring of peristalsis. The
rabbit
should probably be provided with a colostomy which a
human could use to empty it on a regular basis.
Now you may say this is icky, but rabbits are perfectly
comfortable with eating their own droppings, and this
could lead to a more efficient rabbit, which to be honest
probably wouldn't bother the rabbit in the slightest. The
main problem is how to protect it from intestinal
obstruction without creating a maintenance problem or
hygiene. It would also mean there were fewer
droppings.
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"Earl, I heard a bang. Did you remember to empty
the rabbit?" |
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"The rabbit has a charming face,
His private life is a disgrace,
I really cannot tell to you
The awful things that rabbits do ..." |
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//It would also mean there were fewer droppings.// If they currently eat their own, then how so? Or are you counting on the instinct persevering and them taking to eating the droppings of others? |
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// eating the droppings of others? // |
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"Choking on one's own vomit ? Well, who would want to choke on someone else's ?" |
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Because they wouldn't miss any when they were
eating them, and they would be
manually removed by humans in their own poop
bag like with dogs, [mitxela]. What i meant was,
in
the area they inhabit, hutch or freerange, fewer
droppings would end up lying about, because
they'd
be cleared up, and it might even be cleaner.
However, as [MB] pointed out, it would be quite
important to empty them regularly although i think
they'd stop eating before that happened and just
die
of paralytic ileus or start vomiting poo. |
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A friend of mine claims that he was once
hospitalized after an operation, because his
intestinal peristalsis had started running the wrong
way. I have no idea if that is possible, but it's a
thought to contemplate. |
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// it's a thought to contemplate // |
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No, it's not. Really. It isn't. |
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//could lead to a more efficient rabbit// [+] |
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Be a bit more technically difficult, but could the
rabbits also digest heterologous feces? If the
bunnies were truly non-orientable they could be
used in wastewater
treatment plants as a sort of infinite septic tank
into which
any amount of sewage could be dumped
without overflow. (Warning: NOT to be used in
the same Universe as a Buchanan 4-D teapot
extruder.) |
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It depends how much nutrition is extracted by the rabbit on each pass through the digestive system. Theoretically, it should be possible to feed the output of one rabbit into the input of the next. |
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The first rabbit would of course require double the amount of food, and the second rabbit would spend its entire life eating the droppings of the first rabbit. But then, they're rabbits - who cares ? |
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// NOT to be used in the same Universe as a Buchanan 4-D teapot extruder. // |
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Ooops ... maybe we should have read the instruction booklet before using it. |
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Right. Each successive rabbit would need a
longer gut, to extract nutrition from lower-grade
input. So a chain of rabbits of increasing size. Like
a triple expansion steam engine. |
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"Oh.... Um, l - look, if we built this large wooden badger--" |
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Just to clarify, rabbits only eat a special kind of 'first pass' faeces, which is soft and green (and they already approximate an auroborus configuration to do so). They do not eat the brown pellets that we usually see. |
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Also, they only eat their own feces, often getting it, as it
were, 'straight from the tap'. |
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// a chain of rabbits of increasing size // |
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That can be arranged rather easily. |
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There would presumably still be some nutritional value in the
second lot of poo but it would probably only benefit the likes of
detritivores or plants. I would like to think of a way to get the
rabbit to sort its faeces inside its gastrointestinal tract. |
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[MB], so far as i know that would only be possible in the colon,
where peristalsis is bidirectional. Vomiting involves reverse
peristalsis i think, but not in the usual sustained, laid-back
manner. Intestinal obstruction can lead to feculent vomiting due
to extreme backup into the duodenum but is rare. |
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The mention of giant rabbits leaves me with no choice but to
mention Dougal Dixon's 'After Man', with his vision of "rabbucks"
replacing ungulates in the next few million years, pursued by
giant predator rats. |
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Why does this remind me of the human centipede?
Pardon me, but I need to go wash my brain now. |
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Don't go that far; in your case, a quick rinse in warm water will
be more than adequate … |
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It has similarities but also differences because our own
physiology does not involve the consumption of stools whereas
theirs does. Nevertheless, i could see my way clear to various
lagomorphic topologies, for instance the spider bunny would be
relatively OK. |
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Much as I love the title, [-] unless you've managed to find a way that the last rabbit in the chain poops out diamonds. |
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OK: i hereby define a diamond as a high-purity crystal of carbon
or the secondary excrement of a rabbit, and tie the value
together - id est, the value of a diamond is the mean value of
the two substances concerned. There's a minor technical
difference between the two but that can be left to experts to
consider and we needn't worry our pretty little heads about it. |
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...can't argue with that... bone withdrawn. |
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Having personally raised and eaten over 100 dee-licious,
nuu-tritious rabbits, I think I can safely say
I've seen everything that comes out of a bunny, and none
of it in any way possesses gem-like qualities. Cottage
cheese-like, yes, but not not gem-like. |
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// "Earl, I heard a bang. Did you remember to empty the
rabbit?" // |
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Incinerate the turds and put them under sufficient pressure, and
you'd have a diamond, methinks. |
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"human caterpillar" - ick; making it out of bunnies does not improve the image. |
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Though I'm curious: are rabbits semi-ruminant?, ie: it takes two passes to digest a certain grade, or maybe an amount, of grass/whatever. |
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They are not ruminant, semi- or otherwise, but you are
correct that they require enough water and fodder on a
regular basis; otherwise gastric stasis sets in, which is
irreversable and, well, awful. There's only one thing you
can do about it. |
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The stuff rabbits 'produce' isn't rumin, which takes
specialized digestive organs to produce. It's just poop
they're not done with yet. Rabbits are coprophagic, but
there's also another word for it that I can't remember right
now. |
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Caecotrophy, caecophagy or pseudorumination according to a
certain notable online encyclopaedia. Also practiced by
caviomorph rodents it seems. |
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I just see them as small and therefore not having the luxury of
being able to digest carbohydrates in any other way. I imagine
they have cellulose-digesting gut flora which make sugars
available to them and maybe other nutrients they can't get at
the first time, and need to use enzymes and transport proteins
further up in their gastrointestinal tracts to absorb them. When
the giant ones evolve, presumably they'll use a different system. |
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Thank you. I knew there was a differemt word for it, but
I'm just too damn lazy to look these things up myself, see? |
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// When the giant ones evolve // |
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I had a New Zealand / Californian buck named King Ham
that weighed 29 lbs and was the most enthusiastic shit
eater in my flock (he was equally enthusiastic about
generally everything he did, however). I've also noticed
that bucks engage in this behavior more frequently, or are
less bashful about it than the does. |
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Interesting. Presumably it was to support his unusually large
body. In that case, maybe they'll go on doing exactly what they
do now. Cabybaras seem to, so maybe a rabbit the size of a
llama would as well. |
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