Food for Thought

File this under “Suggestive Connection”: In a report on the BBC, an Australian researcher is recommending a vast increase in the farming and eating of kangaroos in order to combat global warming. Because of their different digestive systems, kangaroos do not produce as much methane as cows and sheep (currently the main source of meat for Australians), and thus humans switching to a different sort of muscle to chew on would reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions.

In an unrelated—but perhaps not that unrelated—story, a team of scientists have discovered that many prehistoric species extinctions, including that of the three-meter tall giant kangaroo and marsupial lion, were caused not by natural causes, such as catastrophic weather events or habitat change, but by the newly evolved human beings. Apparently, we hunted them to death — presumably, as many animals continue to be today, for our consumption.