"Janet Baraclough" wrote in message
...
The message
from "michael adams" contains these words:


"Janet Baraclough" wrote in message
...
The message
from "michael adams" contains these words:

While given that they had no predators at all until the arrival
of the motor car

You're mistaken. Both badgers and foxes can unroll, kill and eat
hedgehogs and I've seen dogs do it too. Birds of prey here are often
seen eating roadkill hedgehogs.



So, they are not "the end of their own
food chain" either..whatever that means!

Janet.

Badgers, foxes, and birds of prey can catch things by eating
hedgehogs then.

True. Some parasites like tapeworm can survive in different species
of host. Others can't (like the fleas specific to hedgehogs). Toxins may
affect one species but not another, due to differences in physiology.

And unless anything eats them in turn then they're the end of
their own food chain.

Wild animals that die of any cause, are usually eaten by other
species, from crows to rats maggots and worms.

The food chain stretches from the first thing to be eaten - a wheat
grain say - which could carry an infectious pathogen - all the way
through to the highest order organism which isn't itself a food
source. Quite often homo sapiens.

Human corpses which are returned to the earth are also a food source
to other organisms.

All organic matter that isn't burned is broken down into bacteria
and similar micro-organisms by fungi etc evetually. Maybe excepting
bone etc. Bacteria and such like are essential for nitogen fixation.
It isn't a true cycle however because the whole process depends on
photosynthesis from sun-light which isn't returned to the Sun.
The food chain I was more concerned with anyway, was the pathogenic
food chain. Slugs eat slug pellets and die, hedgehogs eat slugs and
die, whatever eats those hedgehogs might die. Pathogenic food chains
are always more newsworthy ie heavy metal-plankton-tuna-humans,
sheep scrapie rendered sheep - cattle BSE, totally unproven human
vCJD epidimiomically highly unlikely IMO


You were going so well up until that point as well.

If only I could say the same of you. You revealed the extent of your
misunderstanding when you wrote " there are no carrion in the UK -
vultures etc. not so far as I know at least -"


Not round where I live there isn't Janet. No dead animals lying around
and no vultures flying overhead. That's what we pay Our Council Tax
for, to get all that stuff cleared up pronto. The odd flat hedghog and
cat maybe. But that's more Tom and Jerry than carrion I'd say. Road-kill
and recipes for the prepartion therof, are usually more the province
of our transatlantic cousins I believe.

A bit late as well, if you don't mind me saying so. Dredging stuff
up from previous posts, smacks of desperation in anyone's book.




michael adams




Janet.

....