Animal myths quiz

....let's give this one a try since we are all animal lovers here!
http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/my...s/animals.html

Wow - some of those were gross!

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You've won 50 total points out of a possible 80.

I got them all right. 80 points!

Congratulations!
You've won 80 total points out of a possible 80.

I watch animal planet too much I think

"Congratulations!
You've won 80 total points out of a possible 80."

And I don't have cable to watch Animal Planet! Did have to guess at a couple.

I got 5 out of 8 correct - bought the urban legend on the dog-rat

I got 7 of 8 correct...I didn't believe the headless chicken story.

70/80 - I thought someone being robbed at snake point was an urban legend

60/80

I stink I'm 40/80. I kept thinking a couple of the last ones were false and then changed the last few to true.

Yes I was duped by the sewer rats

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You've won 50 total points out of a possible 80.

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That headless chicken one was shocking!!!

You've won 50 total points out of a possible 80.

Some of them tricked me

You've won 50 total points out of a possible 80.

Wow some of those were interesting, especially the chicken... Its a conspiracy lol. I guessed true on the last one, Im glad it was false... I would have flipped if I was that lady.

That was fun, thanks! But I have to mention one thing that bothers me...

They claimed that it is not possible to get Creuzfeld-Jakov Disease from gelatin products -- but even in their own answer, they leave the door of possibility wide open! And when the stakes are this high, I say even a remote possibility is too much.

If you've ever seen hidden-camera video inside slaughterhouses, showing the way animal carcasses are handled, you know it's almost inevitable that there is cross-contamination of all kinds of tissues, as well as of intestinal contents (including E-coli).

Also... there have been some U.S. cases of death from supposedly unidentified illnesses whose symptoms sound suspiciously like CJD. Call me a conspiracy theorist if you like, but there's a lot of money riding on the meat industry, and a lot of people who have a vested interest in making sure no CJD case is ever diagnosed in this country.

It all makes me very, very glad I'm a vegetarian!

Originally Posted by CarolPetunia

That was fun, thanks! But I have to mention one thing that bothers me...

They claimed that it is not possible to get Creuzfeld-Jakov Disease from gelatin products -- but even in their own answer, they leave the door of possibility wide open! And when the stakes are this high, I say even a remote possibility is too much.

If you've ever seen hidden-camera video inside slaughterhouses, showing the way animal carcasses are handled, you know it's almost inevitable that there is cross-contamination of all kinds of tissues, as well as of intestinal contents (including E-coli).

Also... there have been some U.S. cases of death from supposedly unidentified illnesses whose symptoms sound suspiciously like CJD. Call me a conspiracy theorist if you like, but there's a lot of money riding on the meat industry, and a lot of people who have a vested interest in making sure no CJD case is ever diagnosed in this country.

It all makes me very, very glad I'm a vegetarian!

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Well, poor slaughterhouse sanitation aside. A person cannot get CDJ from a cow infected with BSE.

Basically what causes these diseases is ingestion of indigestible proteins, that make their way to your brain. They are EXTREMELY similar to a protein in the brain that is important in maintaining your brain cells. The presence of these other proteins causes your own inherent proteins to change shape into that of the disease protein (scientists STILL don't understand how though - its actually a very cool process and disease). So basically you end up with a bunch of proteins that no longer do what they were supposed to - so your brain cells are no longer maintained and the brain cells die and the tissue takes on a "spongy" look.

The problem with BSE causing CDJ in a person is that the protein that causes it (which is similar to the brain protein in cows) is NOT similar to the human brain protein. So even if ingested by a human and it traveled to the brain - its not similar enough the proteins there to cause any of them to change shape and stop working. Its harmless.

The mad cow scare was caused by media looking for a good story. And like anything they went out and found some crack pot scientists to agree with them and caused the scare. Ask any scientist worth their salt and they will tell you the same thing - there is NO WAY BSE can cause CDJ in a person.

The recorded cases of CDJ occured in a canabalistic tribe (I think in east europe). They found only women and children had CDJ and looked into why - it was because the women and children got second dibs when eating the dead (it was considered respectful to eat those that died) and ended up eating the brain/spinal cord of the diseased (many of whom died of CDJ). Once modern scientists made them stop eating their dead- they stopped getting CDJ. Although there have been a few other sparse cases of the disease - many scientists think these few unfortunates just had a mutation in the protein that is affected by this disease and essentially gave it to themselves.

70.

As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly. Oh, sorry, wrong quiz, but I feel in good company if Ann Landers can also get tripped up on that one.

So I'm bringing a big economy bag of rice to the next wedding and letting it fly. I'm also going to bring some of those fake trick birds that explode, just to add more enjoyment and humor to a happy occasion.

Alwaysangel, it sure sounds as if you know what you're talking about, but that's precisely the opposite of everything I've ever read on the subject, so... I don't know what to think! And that's usually the way -- various phases of research get reported, various organizations put their own spin on it by "buying" their own research, different writers tell the story more and less accurately, and pretty soon it's almost impossible to find out what's true.

Still, if you read the Mythbusters answer on that question... it is worded so as to leave the door of possibility open, and that's why it bothered me. A 99% likelihood of safety is not the same as 100%, doggone it, and it worries me when people are so imprecise with such important issues. It's just like AIDS -- in the early years, they were so quick to reassure us that it couldn't be passed this way, couldn't be passed that way... but in fact, it can be and has been passed in all sorts of ways that they called impossible when they were really only improbable. That's what I was getting at.

I sure hope you're right about BSE vs. CJD... but you'll forgive me if I remain HUGELY cautious! The stakes are just too high to trust that we know all there is to know, or that accidents can't possibly happen.

And anyway... BLECCH!

Originally Posted by Bikeman

As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.

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Oh, Bikeman! Your quote makes my little heart go pitterpat! It's so rare these days to run across anyone who remembers that...

Originally Posted by CarolPetunia

Frisk, it sure sounds as if you know what you're talking about, but that's precisely the opposite of everything I've ever read on the subject, so... I don't know what to think! And that's usually the way -- various phases of research get reported, various organizations put their own spin on it by "buying" their own research, different writers tell the story more and less accurately, and pretty soon it's almost impossible to find out what's true.

Still, if you read the Mythbusters answer on that question... it is worded so as to leave the door of possibility open, and that's why it bothered me. A 99% likelihood of safety is not the same as 100%, doggone it, and it worries me when people are so imprecise with such important issues. It's just like AIDS -- in the early years, they were so quick to reassure us that it couldn't be passed this way, couldn't be passed that way... but in fact, it can be and has been passed in all sorts of ways that they called impossible when they were really only improbable. That's what I was getting at.

I sure hope you're right about BSE vs. CJD... but you'll forgive me if I remain HUGELY cautious! The stakes are just too high to trust that we know all there is to know, or that accidents can't possibly happen.

And anyway... BLECCH!

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Haha. Yes, and its completely understandable because the media pushed it for so long and found lots of "scientists" to "confirm" it. And for the most part thats all a layman would hear/read about - magazine and newspaper and TV stories about how you can get CDJ from BSE. The average person doesn't go around reading scientific journals and therefore would never get the actual scientific premise of the disease. All they get is the media version. But seriously - ask a doctor, researcher or scientist and they'll explain exactly what I did. And it aggravates the hell out of me that the media can manage to cause such a scare with no basis in reality or science whatsoever. But thats the power of the media (FAR scarier than mad cow disease if you ask me).

And yeah the mythbusters thing was really poorly explained but the myth busters have never studied virology I assume and therefore are going with the media spin instead of the scientific explanation.

<---Med student who majored in virology in undergrad. (just so you know I'm not pulling it out of my @$$)