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Thursday, February 6, 2014

Lactose Intolerant crickets aided by probiotics?


I was thinking of various ideas relating to crickets and their microbiomes. Specifically, in their digestive tract. Many people are lactose intolerant, so I'm assuming crickets haven't evolved an efficient way to break down dairy products. But what if they ingested bacteria that could? Could the bacteria survive within the cricket? Would the crickets that were fed diary and had the beneficial bacteria thrive more than those without the bacteria that ate dairy? Also, how would the crickets that never dairy at all do compared with the ones that did? I'm not sure if this is a practical experiment yet, but we'll see.

I also noticed in reading some anecdotal reports that bearded dragons could be fed yogurt and not have any ill-effects. I wonder if any creature that doesn’t normally have enzymes to digest lactose and related proteins could acquire certain bacteria that could and live relatively well. Lifespan and activity level might be good variables that would be affected by their diary diet.


At the moment, I’m simply trying to find a good way to collect bacteria samples from a very small cricket without creating a huge mess. I’ve literally streaked the plate with a cricket, embedded a cricket into agar, and finally used peptone to separate the cricket into a solution that was distributed onto a TSA plate.
 

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