Posted on 03/14/2024 1:50:30 PM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
Pythons turn their food into meat pretty efficiently, a study finds, making them an intriguing alternative to climate-unfriendly cows.
Put aside your chicken cutlets and meatloaf and say hello to python curries and satay skewers. Some snake scientists think eating these reptiles—already customary or at least acceptable in parts of the world—might help lessen the damage our food choices have on the environment.
With some eight billion people on the planet today, all of whom require protein to stay healthy, finding new sources of these nutrients is a crucial issue.
But how do you get from the challenge of providing sufficient protein to farming pythons for meat? For Dan Natusch, a herpetologist at Macquarie University in Australia, the idea came about tangentially. He and his colleagues were working with existing commercial python farms in Vietnam and Thailand to determine whether they could distinguish wild-bred snakes from captive-bred ones.
And of course, it all depends on whether people will take to eating python. Natusch says python meat is “pretty tasty and versatile” and argues that by his tally, a billion people in Southeast and East Asia, as well as parts of Latin America and Africa, already consider snake meat a culturally acceptable food. “It is really just Western cultures (which have few naturally occurring large reptiles) that haven’t been exposed to it,” he says.
Forbidden. Treif. Case closed.
Rustler’s Roost, Phoenix. Rattlesnake bites. (Like chicken nuggets). Tasty with a “dusty” aftertaste.
An email I just sent out:
Ah, yes. Sci. American. A once great publication.
30 years behind the times. I, in a land far away, a long time ago, has a 130-pound, 9.5 ft Burmese python in the freezer.
Thawed and steaked it. It was destined for a Dermestid beetle skeletonization but I never found the time to bring it to the UofMN zoology department.
Brought it to a potluck at XXXXXXXX [censored] - suitably labeled - so people would not mistake it for a large salmonid. [I had previously brought a low-country stew which included squirrel. I didn’t label it - just assumed that everyone knew that Brunswick stew included rodent or marsupial]
People were leery - my reputation preceded me - but it was well-received. Did not flake like a fish, but was tender and nondescript in flavor. No, it did NOT taste like chicken.
Rattlesnake is excellent. But don’t deep fry it or it’ll taste like chicken. There’s no point risking your life get a meal you could mistake for the one you’d get at the drive-through at KFC.
Oh, and I forgot. In some states, snakes are protected. ALL OF THEM. Even killing one in self-defense isn’t allowable because you should have known to stay out of his habitat.
Gator and Ostrich are exotic but tasty
Gator and Ostrich are exotic but tasty
You know those movies where somebody gets bitten by a rattler and sucks out the venom.
Let’s hope nobody decides to bottle and sell that stuff as a soft drink.
I have tried gator and found it, adequate because it tastes a bit gamey. I do love a good ostrich steak though.
My favorite is chicken, if it doesn’t taste like wet cardboard, followed up by beef. In fact, I eat more beef than chicken because it is on average better than modern, industrial farmfrankenchickens.
When I retire, I think I’m going to raise chickens for the eggs and meat and for my grandchildren to play catch with.
Rustler’s Roost is a great restaurant with a great view. I remember when it was still on the edge of the city.
It’s not snake.
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