Today’s interesting fact has to do with what type of food our ancestors ate.

From studying bones and teeth, and the various isotopes found within them, they have found they can accurately determine the diet of the creature they are studying as well as where the animal grew up and if it moved from one area to another.

From their studies we know that before 10,000 BC, the average human ate average of probably 65% plant to 35% animal derived foods.

After 10,000 BC depending on where they were in the world, this changed to as high as 90% plant to 10% animal derived foods.

Before 10,000 BC humans got their animal protein from various sources.

In order of decreasing importance to the diet or if you prefer the amount they ate, we have insects or their grubs, small lizards, mammals and birds, fish, shellfish, and the occasional large animal.

It is also interesting to note that before 10,000 BC, the average human was taller, stronger and healthier than after 10,000 BC when they became weaker, shorter and had more infections.

There are multiple reasons for the decrease in health the ancients but one they have positively identified is the switch to a more vegetarian diet.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with Medicine and Zoonoses.

We often think of the possibility of humans catching diseases from animals, pets, domesticated or wild.

Go anywhere these days and you will hear Mothers telling their children to not touch an animal because they could catch something.

A disease that transfers to humans from animals is a zoonose.

Flu, Rabies, SARS, Salmonella, toxoplasmosis and HIV are a few of the diseases that have regularly made the transition from animal to human.

Bovine tuberculosis is another disease that can sometimes infect people through their milk.

Herds that have been identified as having TB have been culled to prevent this from occurring.

It is often thought that TB crossed from Cattle to Humans when they were fist domesticated.

However, gene sequencing has shown that the TB that infects cattle originally came from the humans; their TB is a descendant of ours.

Researchers thought that that armadillos would be good subjects to test leprosy treatments on, because of their low body temperature.

When researchers realised that wild armadillos carried leprosy, it was suggested that it had always existed in the new world, and had not been imported from the old world by European settlers as originally thought.

Alerts recently went out asking people to not touch or interact with the animals.

But gene sequencing has shown that the leprosy infecting wild armadillos actually had crossed over very recently from humans and has not had the chance to mutate into a new separate species of bacteria, so it looks like the European settlers did bring it with them.