(ORDO NEWS) — Scientists have found that the feces of baby kangaroos can be useful in the fight against global warming: the bacteria contained in them reduced the production of methane in an artificial cow’s stomach, which could potentially work on live cows.
Methane is one of the most dangerous greenhouse gases: it retains heat in the atmosphere about 30 times better than carbon dioxide.
The main source of this gas is agriculture, especially ruminants such as sheep, cows and goats, which have large numbers of methane-forming bacteria in their digestive tracts.
Biologists have resorted to all sorts of tricks to slow down global warming but keep consumers enjoying meat products, from changing the diet of farm animals to using chemical methane inhibitors.
However, none of these methods were effective enough, and in the end, scientists “turned for help” to other herbivores, in particular to the kangaroo.
These marsupials also have bacteria in their digestive tract that help digest food, but the end product of their work is not methane, but acetic acid.
True, it turned out that this process only fully works in kangaroo cubs, while adults already emit more methane (albeit not in such quantities as cows).
After isolating a culture of bacteria from the feces of kangaroos, scientists from the University of Washington (USA) used an artificial analogue of a cow’s stomach to test how infection with kangaroo bacteria would affect methane production.
First, the population of methane-producing bacteria in the artificial stomach was reduced by adding antibiotics, and then acetic acid bacteria were introduced into it, which, for several months of observation, did not allow the “old masters” to increase their numbers.
The culture has only been tested in an artificial stomach, but the researchers hope to test it on live cows soon.
It is not yet known how effective acetic acid bacteria will be at digesting food and how they will affect the overall health of animals.
But if successful, farmers will receive an inexpensive feed additive that will help reduce their farms’ methane emissions.
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