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Flt Lt. Roland Poindexter IV looked at his StarForce issue chronometer. 971 Terradays since leaving Earth. Time had flown! He dressed and made his way to the mess room.
It was cheerier than usual. Apparently it was a rare "meat day". Rather than eat vegetables alone, a practice discouraged
by StarForce since the mutinies, all craft now carried a complement of moths, locusts, geckos and iguanas in the hothouse.
Hydroponically grown food plants provided the bulk of nourishment. They were preyed upon by the crew and a variety of moths and locusts, all of them edible. In turn, the geckos and iguanas fed on whatever insects they could catch.
The best part was that the lizards were able to shed their tails, without any apparent harm, then grow new ones. Therefore, the crew got a regular, periodic supply of lizard tails to supplement their diets.
Roland tucked into a palm-sized, inch-thick iguana tail steak, with teriyaki seasoning. Mm-mmm, just like swordfish!
Roland looked up, to see a large, green iguana staring through the glass at him, with impassive eyes. It had no tail.
Regeneration "did you knows?"
http://www.joesabah.com/dseibert/024.htm
[Ling, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]
Anole tail regeneration details
http://www.anole.net/regeneration.html
[jutta, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]
Annotation:
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The idea is a sustainable farming proposal for meat, while on long space flights. |
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Since some lizards are able to grow new tails it stands to reason they'd be better to take with you than animals that must be slaughtered for food, no? |
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I think *shed* is a euphemism for "chopping it off" |
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This is done with stone crab claws on the planet earth. |
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reminds me of that 3 legged pig joke |
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Or the chicken without breasts. |
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[po], geckos and skinks dump their tails, as a defence mechanism. A hunting animal will be distracted by a tail flopping about while the animal makes a getaway. |
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I believe you UB. how exactly do they do that dumping thing? |
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Tail shedding is not common to all lizard species. But for those lizards that do shed, there are two different methods of tail loss. |
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Most lizards have areas of weakness in the vertebrae of their tails that run through the surrounding connective tissue and muscle. If a lizard is caught by its tail, it will contract the muscles in front of the weak area to split a vertebrae and shed the part of its tail held by the attacker. |
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The other method involves the tail breaking between vertebra. It is common in the more primitive skinks. |
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Neither method seems to be dependent upon force. Rather, it seems to be a decision made by the lizard, dependant upon circumstances. |
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so - a little row of perforations then? |
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Lizard tails regenerate slowly and don't grow back as big as the original. Sustainable source of meat? I don't think so. You'll have to just stick to the blue-green algae burgers (although apparently horse-shoe crabs do very well on spacecraft, I don't know if you can eat them though). |
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Just looked. Apparently it's only their blood that's useful and not in space but on earth for testing for bacteria. I'm sure I saw something somewhere about them being tested in zero-gravity though. |
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Jealous male iguana to female iguana -- will you quit strutting your tail from here to Alpha Centauri? |
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//Lizard tails regenerate slowly and don't grow back as big as the original.// The first cow didn't produce milke at a rate of gallons/day either. A little selective breeding should fix the regrowth problem. |
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Lobsters regrow their claws too, put a few in the blue-green algae tank to enjoy a claw every now and then. |
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