Okay, so where's the coyote obesity epidemic?

This week, we ran an article by Karen Ravn exploring a variety of less-mainstream theories for why the waistlines of Americans are expanding. Like: it's a virus. Or nobody gets enough sleep any more. Or it's the stress.

We've heard from readers who remind us of theories we've missed -- such as this one, from Ravi Rao of Victorville:

"Hormones such as growth hormone and other anabolic hormones are given to dairy cows and cattle to improve their meat and milk production. Our children (and adults) who eat this "excessively hormonal" meat and drink the "excessively hormonal" milk are plumping up just as the dairy cows and beef cattle do."

And here's a note from Paula Maxwell of Los Angeles, who writes: "Why is it we don't see any overweight wild animals?" She's not, of course, including pet cats and dogs in this analysis, since they, too, are getting flabby -- presumably because they get tidbits in abundance and are more sessile than ever (though I have seen no data on whether pet bowls have slowly increased in size over the decades).

Any opinions? Got a favorite obesity theory?  Post them below. 

-- Rosie Mestel

Comments

[Patricia]

Why don't we see obese wild animals? Because wild animals don't have complex social structures and agriculture allowing them to build up food surpluses and thereby eat merely for pleasure or out of boredom or to numb pain. They spend the entire day (or night for nocturnal hunters and foragers) looking for the calories they need to survive until tomorrow. Sometimes they go to bed hungry. Especially when humans have intruded and messed up their food supply.

[Dr. Ken Goodrick]

No one would keep a dog in a tiny cage and feed it pizza and fast food, because that would make it obese and destroy its health. Are not most humans doing the equivalent to themselves? Gluttony and sloth have been made very easy, but that doesn't mean one must capitulate to the influences of modern society.

[Kate]

Who says there aren't obese wild animals? Have you ever seen a bear? A whale? A raccoon? A hippo? A prairie dog? Even gorillas in the wild can store very large amounts of fat with age that we would classify as obese.

There's absolutely nothing in nature that prevents the accumulation of fat. Food limitation is definitely not the issue. What's going on is that fat mass is highly regulated in all animals to put them in a range of sizes that are adaptive to the animal in its environment. And the reason coyotes don't store large amounts of fat is because it's not adaptive for them.