> > Which apple? Which orange? Northern Spy apples have 10 times the
> > vitamin C of Macintoshes.
>
> Hmmm.......that's good to know - sometimes I throw apple slices in for the
> crickets, too.
I don't know if there is evidence that any reptiles or insects require
vitamin C. Even among mammals, AFAIK, only humans and some other primates,
and guinea pigs are known to require vitamin C, everything else makes its
own. Inability to synthesize vitamin C seems to be a defect that an animal
can get away with if it normally eats a diet with a lot of fruit and other
high vitamin C foods. For other critters, vitamin C isn't a vitamin. (For
another example, the whole cat family requires taurine, an amino acid, found
only in meat. It's a vitamin for them, but not for other mammals, like us,
who can synthesize it. Cats on vegetarian diets go blind and get degenerative
disease of the heart and other organs, just as people with scurvy lose their
teeth and are unable to heal wounds.)
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