Chapter 17 Fifteen guinea pigs and dormouse

small delicacies ★Rodents Rodentia is the largest order of mammals, currently comprising at least forty-three families and 1,687 recognized species, although the number may be more than this.Every year, new species are identified and renamed.However, their habitat is gradually shrinking, and any species may become extinct before humans can recognize it.They may just come and go without us knowing they were there. More than half of all mammals on Earth are rodents, and the actual number is staggering.The total number of individuals of many rodent species far exceeds the sum of several other mammal species.When it comes to food, rodents can be extremely important; at any given time, there are rodents totaling millions of tons on Earth.As prey for other animals, they have significant advantages over other large food animals. When they are used as food, there will be no food leftovers, no waste, and no need for electricity and refrigerators.

Human trapping and hunting of rodents may have begun as early as modern humans, and they, along with reptiles and insects, may have been our earliest prey.Capybaras (the largest rodent species), squirrels, rats, cane rats, mice, dormouse, guinea pigs, and many others have been staples of the diet of hunters and gatherers for thousands of years.And in other cultures, they have been a welcome supplemental or alternative game when humans were unable to hunt larger animals. Since most rodents are very small, the scale of our life is beyond their comprehension; unless our shadow provokes them to avoid like a buzzard or hawk, they will only notice snakes or other Predators comparable to their living range.Therefore, catching them is actually a simple matter.We can speculate that both mousetrap and traps should be technologies that existed very early.I have a trap that I brought back from a tribe called the Giriana on the coast of East Africa. It consisted only of a curved branch with natural springiness, a rough weave, and was no longer than six inches (about fifteen centimeters). basket, and a thread made of natural fibers without any moving parts.Fragile and biodegradable artifacts like this may survive today, so dating it back is impractical.Still, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to speculate that humans, real humans, and even humans earlier in evolution have been eating rodents because they are easy to hunt and readily available in abundance.

Animals as important as rodents have always had a good image in human minds.They were credited with medical value in many early pharmacopoeias, some of which still exist today.Roman women used to smear rat droppings on their husbands as a poultice to keep him from trying to get the attention of other women (I can see why this trick might work, unless the man took a bath immediately after applying rat droppings).Rats have been described as demons and have led to fear of them, while mice are sometimes lovable characters in storybooks, sometimes cartoon characters to admire or imitate their industrious virtues, and sometimes Nasty stuff.It can be seen that the human reaction to rodents varies greatly.

Humans have domesticated rodents of all kinds, or at least kept them in cages for experimentation, for furs, or as lesser-kept pets. , of the nearly 2,000 known species, humans have apparently singled out only two for food.Humans have now bred two additional species from West Africa, the African giant cheek pouch and the large cane rat, weighing about 2 to 3 pounds (about 0.9 to 1.3 kilograms), as food; the meat of these two kinds of rats is currently It has been sold in the market and has also received high evaluation.Humans have hunted these large rats for a long time, but only now have they been kept in cages for breeding.It will be worth noting whether they will become more weighty in size and weight under human-controlled breeding, as turkeys and chickens have done.Rodents are good food animals for breeding in cages.Like mice, they have a short gestation period of just a few weeks, and their pups mature quickly, do not require much space, and their food is plentiful and readily available. The meat was again very tasty.

★guinea pig The house guinea pig, or guinea pig, is one of seven species of animals in the genus Guinea.Wild-type guinea pigs can be found in Colombia, Suriname, Brazil, Venezuela, Guyana, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, and Peru.In Peru, apparently one of the six wild types (the guinea pig, of the seven guinea pig species, is now a separate species) has evolved into a new species that we have never heard of. When the Spaniards arrived in South America, they found that the Incas used guinea pigs as part of their daily diet.Not long ago, in the Indian town of Otavalo, in the province of Imbabura in Ecuador, people used to sell me and my wife (but we declined) roast guinea pig meat on a spit. .We see people selling live guinea pigs in the market; since peddlers sell guinea pigs in big bags on the street (as does the nearby open-air market square), the current rural industry of keeping guinea pigs is obviously not the same as that of Spain in the past. It was not far off when man came to save the souls of the world.It's interesting that many New World tribes used to eat dog meat as a staple food, only the guinea pig breeders didn't.In fact, according to the conquistadors' observations, the Incas actually despised those who ate dog meat.

Before the Spaniards came to their highlands, the Inca kingdoms (and pre-Inca kingdoms; guinea pigs were found to have been kept there probably as early as the dawn of Inca culture) kept their little treasure for themselves.Prior to this, the guinea pigs bred by the Incas already had many different coat colors that wild-type guinea pigs did not have. The Spaniards spread guinea pigs to many of the areas under their influence.Although we don't know whether guinea pigs have become a staple food in other areas, they have become pets and have become laboratory animals that have made outstanding contributions to medical experiments, and their names represent (at least in English) subjects of all experiments.

The English name of the guinea pig is literally translated into Chinese as guinea pig (guinea pig). Why is it named after a pig, which is obviously not a pig animal?And obviously from South America, why does it have an African name?There are two explanations for these two issues.The first theory is that Guinea is due to the confusion of Guiana or Guyana.The second theory holds that the Spanish brought some guinea pigs to West Africa and from there introduced the first guinea pigs to the English-speaking world.Both claims may be true. Currently, in many South American villages, guinea pigs are being released into the wild as semi-wild (not quite rewilded), transient symbionts that live around indoors and outdoors (symbiosis means communal food) .Keeping guinea pigs is not labor intensive.They are really cute when they are born, they are all fluffy, and their eyes and ears are opened.They can be used as a sport animal, like a wriggling stuffed animal, and later, slaughtered as a delicacy on the menu.The dizzying variety of guinea pigs bred by humans and kept as caged pets in many of the more advanced countries should not suffer the same tragic fate.

★Dormouse There are sixteen species of small rodents called dormouse, which are found in Europe, West Asia and Africa, and some of them are considered harmful to crops.They live mainly in woodlands and are nocturnal or only active at dawn and dusk.The dormouse is an obese or edible dormouse from West Asia and Europe that differs greatly from the African species.The dormouse has only recently been introduced to England and is therefore not considered a native animal.Its name means sleeping or drowsy mouse, in Louis.Carroll (Lewis Carroll) in "Alice in Wonderland", its performance is very impressive.

Guinea pigs are not only domesticated and used as fat and delicious food by humans, but also are bred to be beautiful and peculiar pets due to human needs, but the dormouse, which is not pleasing, is different. They are just kept, so They, like elephants and mongooses, can only be classified as animals for human use only. The Romans kept dormouse in specially designed cages, and at the end of the day they were moved indoors to jars where they were fed stone fruit until they were very fat and then slaughtered for human consumption.Because the dormouse is at its fattest just before it goes into hibernation, it follows that they should be considered a delicacy in late autumn.There is no evidence that humans ever attempted to tame the dormouse; in fact, according to Pliny, the consumption of the dormouse was banned in Rome around 14 BC, shortly before the birth of Jesus.We don't know why there is such a ban, but perhaps it is to reduce the ostentation and extravagance of some Romans!Besides the dormouse, certain birds, and possibly all shellfish, were prohibited from being eaten at that time.

Neither the guinea pig nor the dormouse is an important cultural breakthrough in human history.Guinea pigs are nothing compared to animals like goats, sheep, pigs, horses, donkeys, cows, dogs, camels, and buffaloes, and neither is a dormouse to elephants when it comes to human use of wild animals. pales in comparison.Humanity, however, has delved deeper into the wonderfully diverse world of the animal kingdom, and at the same time discovered the small benefits these two rodents have provided to our existence.