Saturday, October 12, 2013
Even American animals are getting fatter
Norm Lopez cleans himself in front of his Sacramento home in August. Lopez has a fervent, almost cult-like following in the community. Do the same factors that influence human weight gain influence pet weight gain?
Increasingly, scientists are turning their attention toward factors that humans and animals that live around them have in common with relation to weight gain.
Everyone knows Americans are fat and getting fatter, and everyone thinks they know why: more eating and less moving.
But the "big two" factors may not be the whole story. Consider this: Animals have been getting fatter too. The National Pet Obesity Survey recently reported that more than 50 percent of cats and dogs—that's more than 80 million pets—are overweight or obese. Pets have gotten so plump that there's now a National Pet Obesity Awareness Day. (It was Wednesday.) Lap dogs and comatose cats aren't alone in the fat animal kingdom. Animals in strictly controlled research laboratories that have enforced the same diet and lifestyle for decades are also ballooning.
In 2010, an international team of scientists published findings that two dozen animal populations—all cared for by or living near humans—had been rapidly fattening in recent decades. "Canaries in the Coal Mine," they titled the paper, and the "canaries" most closely genetically related to humans—chimps—showed the most troubling trend. Between 1985 and 2005, the male and female chimps studied experienced 33.2 and 37.2 percent weight gains, respectively. Their odds of obesity increased more than 10-fold.
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By The Atlantic Wire
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