Believe it or not, many animals, including the crown of nature, eat stones. Some not on purpose, others on the contrary purposefully. Let's find out a little more about stone-eaters. Scientists have found a stone-eating ship worm on the Philippine island of Bohol, according to an article in Proceedings of the Royal Society B and a press release from Northeastern University. Worms live at the bottom of the river in sandstone rocks. They bore holes in the stone and eat it at the same time, but so far it is not clear why the worms need stones in the digestive system.
A family of bivalve molluscs with a long cylindrical body (hence the name) is called shipworms or teredinids (Teredinidae). They live in seawater and usually feed on the wood that gets there. These are not only mangroves or remains that end up in the sea, but also wooden structures (piers, ship docks) and ship parts. The worms bore holes in the wood using a scalloped shell located at the front end of the body. Symbiotic bacteria living in the cecum, a process of the cecum, help animals digest cellulose.
A dish made from the ground in Indonesia.
It was recently revealed that shipworms feed not only on wood, but also on stones. American marine biologists Reuben Shipway and Daniel Distel of Northeastern University and their colleagues from the United States and the Philippines have discovered shellfish in the Ataban River on Bohol Island. Several years ago, local residents told scientists about unusual animals and told where to look for them. The authors of the study found at the bottom of a sandstone cobblestone, dotted with holes, in which molluscs were found. The animals drilled through the stone and expelled sand. “We kept a few animals in a makeshift aquarium,” says Shipway. "You can put them in an aquarium and watch them siphon fine sand particles out of the siphon." Clams do not appear to feed on wood. The authors examined fragments of wood lying next to a block of sandstone and did not find traces of the presence of these animals in them.
The molluscs turned out to be representatives of a new genus and species of shipworms, which the authors named Lithoredo abatanica. Scientists have analyzed the internal structure of animals and found that they lack cecum, the intestinal section where symbiotic bacteria live in other shipworms. But the rest of their intestines was the same and there were fragments of stones in it. Energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy showed that this is the same stone in which the molluscs lived.
The clam is a stone eater.
Why the shipworm needs stones is still unclear. Scientists have suggested that the mollusk can use stones to grind food (as some birds and reptiles do), which gets to it with a stream of water. It is possible that L. abatanica feeds on plankton, bacteria or plant particles that enter the water, or through symbiotic bacteria. As shown by electron microscopy, bacteria live in the gills of the mollusk, but it is not yet clear what role they play.
In 2017, scientists described another shipworm living near the Philippines. Kuphus polythalamius lives in bottom sediments near the coast, rich in organic remains. At first, the researchers decided that this is the first member of the family that does not eat wood, but other food. However, later these mollusks were found in wood. Presumably, K.polythalamius lives in wood in the larval stage, and after metamorphosis moves to the bottom.
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A dish made from the ground in Indonesia.
Who else is eating stones?
Surely, many have noticed that almost all members of the bird family eat small pebbles. Why are they doing this? Agricultural experts conducted a series of experiments on ordinary domestic chickens, after which they found that a chicken that eats stones needs about 60 grams of grain per day, while as much as 80 grams is needed for a chicken that does not use stone additives. In fact, stones cannot replace normal grain or plant food for birds, here the secret is different.
Relatively speaking, a bird's stomach filled with stones works like the jaw and people. All members of the feathered family have a special organ, the so-called "muscle ventricle", which has very thick and powerful muscle walls. The studies of the French physicist Reaumur showed that the muscles of such a ventricle are capable of crushing glass beads and bending pieces of iron that a bird swallows. In practice, the stones that fall into this ventricle, when the muscles contract, move and grind the grain. Consequently, the chicken is more saturated and needs more grains.
The clam is a stone eater.
From time to time, information appears on the Internet and on television about unusual people who calmly eat stones and earth, and on a regular basis. Strange, the laws of physics and chemistry have not been canceled? How do they do it?
Here is one example
Pakkirappe Hunagundi is a resident of India. He is only thirty years old. As a child, he became addicted to eating bricks and stones. Over the past twenty years, he has eaten at least three kilograms of this delicacy daily. At the same time, the man feels very well, his teeth are all intact and there are no problems with the digestive system. The Indian plans to earn a little extra money, thanks to his non-standard gastronomic preferences
In addition to stones and bricks, the Indian diet also includes mud and sand. To get rid of the habit of eating things so little appetizing for ordinary people, he does not succeed in any way.
I first tasted the brick of Pakkirappe Hunagundi at the age of ten. The man does not complain about his health at all. His teeth are strong and white, despite such a strange diet. Pakirappa's mother absolutely does not like her son's taste preferences. She had repeatedly persuaded him to stop eating sand and stones. But no persuasion works. According to Pakirappa himself, bricks, stones and dirt are the tastiest things for him in the world. And even if he has to choose between them and the divine nectar, he will still be more attracted by the "heavy", but so beloved food.
Doctors say that the man suffers from Pick's disease. Its main symptom is the craving for eating inedible things. This eating disorder is very rare. The Indian is already quite famous not only in his native village, but also beyond its borders.
Pakkirappe Hunagundi.
In the Indonesian village of Taban, the ground underfoot serves not only as raw materials for bricks and pottery, but also for preparing snacks. This village is the only one in the world that produces Ampho, food that is made from gravel-free black soil from nearby rice fields. Although there is no medical evidence, residents believe that the soil is an effective pain reliever and even pregnant women are encouraged to eat it, as it is believed to have a very beneficial effect on the skin of the fetus.
There are no official recipes for cooking earth for food, but in general terms it looks like this: first, they beat the solid mass with sticks, then scrape off the rolls with a bamboo knife, which are baked and smoked in clay pots for half an hour. After such simple procedures, the soil can be ingested.
Can stones and earth be eaten? Of course, there are stones that are good for food, such as table or rock salt, saltpeter, magnesian to Glauber's salt and others. We take many salts together with food or use them in the form of various medicines. Currently, there is a whole science that studies minerals of natural origin (salts and their aqueous solutions, rocks, including varieties of clay and sand), which a person consumes for food.
During the famine in the Volga region in 1920-1921. in many localities, geology was widespread, and clay was even sold in the markets as an edible product. The Russian geologist P. L. Dravert wrote that a large amount of decomposition products of organic substances were used in the clay that the inhabitants of the Samara province ate. As it turned out, these were sapropels, which have been used for food since ancient times.
Pakkirappe Hunagundi.
Dravert mentioned the Indians of Venezuela who lived in the Orinoco River basin, who for two or three months when the river flooded were cut off from the mainland and were forced to eat only silty clay, which was roasted over a fire. On average, one person ate about two glasses of silt daily.
Edible clay was also known in India as "Mughal clay". In New Zealand, clays served as a seasoning for meat. The Maori people ate the greyish-yellow earth of volcanic origin, the so-called native oatmeal. In the southern United States, at the mouth of the Mississippi River, clay was also used for food, in the countryside it was called "Franulin's mud."
In Java, it is believed that clays facilitate the course of childbirth and reduce the number of complications, therefore, in its absence, women eat shards of pottery. Pregnant women from a tribe living on the slopes of Mount Kenya in Africa eat "white soil" from ant piles, or "black soil" and termite mounds.
Geoscience has turned out to be commonplace in Iran, where even during normal harvest times edible rocks are also sold in bazaars along with all kinds of food products; clay from Magallat and Giveh. Clay from Magallat is a white mass, greasy to the touch, sticking to the tongue, which the inhabitants of those places eat with special pleasure.
The clam is a stone eater.
The consumption of certain types of minerals is associated with religious practices. For example, in China, diatomaceous earth was very popular; it was called "black food" or "earthy rice". Diatomites are rocks composed mainly of siliceous remains of diatoms that are used as medicine and food. In ancient times, it was believed that diatomaceous earth is of supernatural origin and is the food of immortal dragons, so its use should have a beneficial effect on the health and well-being of believers.
In ancient sources, other rocks are mentioned that helped to satisfy not only hunger, but also thirst, had a beneficial effect on breathing, regulated the work of internal organs, were used to neutralize poisons, treat dropsy, jaundice, and eye diseases. In Africa, clay is still used to treat gastrointestinal diseases. The Arabs and ancient Greeks stopped vomiting with clay.
Over time, people began to appear who successfully made money by adding minerals to common foods. There is such a mineral - barite, or heavy spar, which is very easily ground into flour. It is cheap and heavy, and therefore is often mixed with various products that are sold by weight - especially wheat flour. At one time in Germany, the falsification of flour reached such proportions that the production of barite was even banned in this country. Counterfeiting of various food products with minerals turns out to be extremely widespread throughout the world. Back in the Middle Ages, minerals were mixed with flour, mainly to increase its weight and sell it at a higher profit. Various white minerals were added to the flour, pre-grinding them into powder: barite, chalk, gypsum, sand, etc.