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Post by PipSqueak on Jan 4, 2021 9:28:38 GMT -8
So I wanted to give my gerbils a treat and was wondering if they can have some cooked whole wheat pasta, cooked rice (plain obviously with just water) and cooked oats (also plain with just water.)
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Post by betty on Jan 4, 2021 11:52:33 GMT -8
I don't feed any cooked food - but I belive all three of those are fine (if well drained of course as they can become quite gloopy/sticky).
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Post by LilyandDaisy on Jan 4, 2021 12:30:22 GMT -8
Mine like a few grains of rice when we're having it. I prefer to give oats dry due to the stickiness of cooked oats.
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Thea
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Post by Thea on Jan 5, 2021 3:22:27 GMT -8
can they have uncooked rice? I think they can and I feel like that's a really stupid question, but I've never really been 100 percent sure
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Post by tanzanyte on Jan 8, 2021 2:45:44 GMT -8
I didn't think most animals could have uncooked rice? I remember years ago, my friends neighbours used to put it out for the pigeons to try and kill them - I shudder at the thought! Something to do with it expanding slightly in their stomachs and causing blockages in the intestines as it doesn't get broken down, but I guess it would depend on how much was ingested. Hopefully someone can dispel this as myth.
Btw, can gerbils eat raw pasta?
Vanilla has had cooked porridge. I prefer to give them dry oats, but Vanilla decided to nick a bit of my daughters porridge when she'd left some and not taken her bowl out to the kitchen. Thankfully it was cold at that point.
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Thea
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Post by Thea on Jan 8, 2021 4:17:42 GMT -8
Ah ok, won't do that then! I'm pretty sure they can have uncooked pasta so I was just thinking it was the same sort of thing. I'll have to have confirmation on uncooked pasta though.
Rolo likes dry porridge oats too, never given her cooked porridge. I bet she would love it though, I've heard they can have it. Hey, thinking about it that would be a good way to give meds (because it's so tricky to!) maybe mixing medicine into a tiny bit of cooked, cold porridge? haha
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Post by PipSqueak on Jan 8, 2021 5:44:46 GMT -8
Gerbils can have dry pasta. In my homemade food mix the recipe said to put 10 grams of dried whole wheat pasta so yes it is safe. My gerbils love it and yesterday I gave them a tiny piece of cooked pasta and they really enjoyed that.
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Post by Scott on Jan 8, 2021 16:33:23 GMT -8
I didn't think most animals could have uncooked rice? I remember years ago, my friends neighbours used to put it out for the pigeons to try and kill them - I shudder at the thought! Something to do with it expanding slightly in their stomachs and causing blockages in the intestines as it doesn't get broken down, but I guess it would depend on how much was ingested. Hopefully someone can dispel this as myth. Urban legend. Birds eat rice all the time and love it-- ask the farmers who grow it about their bird problems. And if you've ever put bird feeders out and seen what happens to the bird seed if it gets wet, it expands at least as much as rice does, but none of the birds at my feeder have ever exploded. Your friend's neighbors just made some birds happy. If I were to give my gerbils pasta I'd do whole grain--the regular white flour pasta is nutritionally poor. And I'd do it dry, since gerbils don't need the moisture and dry will give them something to gnaw.
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Post by Markpd on Jan 8, 2021 17:47:12 GMT -8
I could be wrong here, but I think the idea of dried (uncooked) rice swelling and killing it's eater is from WW2, as I recall it was a form of torture by a certain country where a large amount of uncooked rice was force fed to a prisoner, then they would force them to drink water and it expanded and killed them! I can't remember where I heard that from now though, and I haven't checked it out more recently to see if it's correct.
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Post by Scott on Jan 9, 2021 7:58:04 GMT -8
I could be wrong here, but I think the idea of dried (uncooked) rice swelling and killing it's eater is from WW2, as I recall it was a form of torture by a certain country where a large amount of uncooked rice was force fed to a prisoner, then they would force them to drink water and it expanded and killed them! I can't remember where I heard that from now though, and I haven't checked it out more recently to see if it's correct. I can't imagine how that would be true--or what the point would be. Seems like a LOT of work if the goal is to kill someone; whether the goal is a quick or a slow death, and/or a painful one, surely there are simpler ways to do it. Especially in wartime where you don't want to basically throw away your own rations just to kill someone.
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Post by Markpd on Jan 9, 2021 8:24:26 GMT -8
Possibly it was done to extract information from PoWs, the country I was thinking of was particularly malicious to it's PoW. I'll see if I can find credible information about it....
See here - Sergent Bill Tate's memoirs of his treatment by the Japanese military as a PoW, be warned it is harrowing and includes rice and water torture, although it didn't kill him. Perhaps it isn't meant to kill? Anyway, I'm not looking into it any further, it's horrific, and way off topic.
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Post by Scott on Jan 10, 2021 11:31:36 GMT -8
This still doesn't make sense. First of all, I'm not disputing the brutal behavior of the Japanese military during WW2; it's well-documented. But this particular claim doesn't hold up. With all due respect to Sgt Tate, this story sounds like his son's embellishment--it was the son who published these accounts, after his father died, so we don't have Sgt Tate's firsthand reports. I'm not young, and I've been following reports of Japanese military atrocities for a long time and I'd never heard of this, but I'm not going to dismiss something simply because I hadn't heard it. In looking for corroboration I've come up empty; all other reports are of too little rice, not too much. Second, the story doesn't hold up: if you make someone eat rice and water, the rice can't expand any more than the combined volume of that rice and water. So if you make someone eat X amount of rice and drink Y amount of water, then, assuming the rice absorbs all the water, the amount of expanded rice cannot exceed the volume of rice and water that was already in the stomach. Going back to what I said about it not making sense for a military to waste rations that way, they'd accomplish the same thing by just forcing the prisoners to drink water. I'm also puzzled by the claim that, after being force-fed, the "guards jumped up and down on his swollen stomach." Wouldn't having people jumping up and down on your stomach injure anyone? But enough about theory; I tried testing it out. For some reason, the story details this being done with both raw and par-cooked rice. So I measured out 50g of rice and partially cooked it, then I measured out 50g of raw rice. I drained the par cooked rice and added fresh water, and added water to the raw rice; I then marked the volume: Parboiled is on the left. Starchy foods take about 2 hours to exit the stomach; after that, what was ingested would pass through the intestines so I wanted to see what happened to the rice while still in the stomach. So I waited over two and a half, and this is what it looked like: Though modest expansion occurred with partially cooking (compare the green-lidded and blue-lidded containers), rice seems to expand very slowly with room temp water. So, experientially, this story does not seem possible. Getting back OT: I don't think we have to worry about rice and gerbils.
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Post by Markpd on Jan 11, 2021 11:20:35 GMT -8
Still staying off topic then... if you make someone eat rice and water, the rice can't expand any more than the combined volume of that rice and water. So if you make someone eat X amount of rice and drink Y amount of water, then, assuming the rice absorbs all the water, the amount of expanded rice cannot exceed the volume of rice and water that was already in the stomachThat's where you're going wrong, you're assuming they're being feed water and rice at the same time, they're not. The idea is that they are filled with raw/dry rice 1st, thus taking up all the 'normal' space, then they are force fed water (as I said to start with), which can go in because of the gaps between the rice, the rice expands as it absorbs the water causing the stomach to expand. Whether that could ever kill I don't know, I should think that would be very painful at least, and where someone jumps on your stomach cause worse injury than if it was empty. Your experiment shows the rice has expanded a little (which we knew anyway, but nice to see anyhow), so this story is possible, although unlikely as it doesn't make sense to waste food on torture (I agree), not to mention the difficulty of getting someone completely full of dry rice.
My original point was the idea that eating dry rice and then drinking can cause stomach expansion came from WW2, it did come from then at least (although quite possibly earlier).
I can't make any claim to validity to that story, other than it shows that the idea came from at least WW2.
In normal voluntary eating and drinking by any person or animal I seriously doubt it would be an issue though. Now can we stop hijacking this thread?
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Post by Scott on Jan 11, 2021 15:25:15 GMT -8
That's where you're going wrong, you're assuming they're being feed water and rice at the same time, they're not. The idea is that they are filled with raw/dry rice 1st, thus taking up all the 'normal' space, then they are force fed water (as I said to start with), which can go in because of the gaps between the rice, the rice expands as it absorbs the water causing the stomach to expand. Your experiment shows the rice has expanded a little (which we knew anyway, but nice to see anyhow), so this story is possible, although unlikely as it doesn't make sense to waste food on torture (I agree), not to mention the difficulty of getting someone completely full of dry rice.
My original point was the idea that eating dry rice and then drinking can cause stomach expansion came from WW2, it did come from then at least (although quite possibly earlier).
I can't make any claim to validity to that story, other than it shows that the idea came from at least WW2. If the water fills in the space between the grains of rice, then it still can't occupy more space than the rice+water took up. If you look at my pictures, yes, the rice expanded, but the total space--rice+water--remained the same.
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Post by Markpd on Jan 11, 2021 15:56:08 GMT -8
It does though because the rice grows larger pushing outwards (on a full stomach), the rice in the bowl isn't constrained, imagine the rice had a cover on it (that doesn't float), it would have lifted it.
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