Julian and Jackie wrote:
> Many raw beans are poisonous. Ehrenfried is usually pretty good at these
> things. Is he still on the list?
>
Yes I am. I was a little bit in stress and I have had to change my e-mail
too, because there isn't a "hoelle-auf-erden" anymore... (and no devil
too? I hope so! ;-))
It is commonly believed, that _raw_ beans of the genus "Phaseolus" (the
bean sort you most often can find here in Europe, which is eaten as the
hole thing with the pod too) have toxins (called phasin) in it, causing
vomiting, stomach cramps and also blood cell accumulation, but may be, the
phasin is located much more in the pods(?). Some genera of beans may not
be very toxic (Vicia seems to be a high risk for some allergic people
only), but some of the genera, especially Macuna and Canavalia used in
Asia and South America are raw even more toxic than Phaseolus.
With soy-bean I'm quite unsure.
Sometimes I think, I have to postulate, wild living gerbils _must_ have a
cooking chamber underground (haven't they??), so they can cook the beans
and also the heat is needed to resist in the very cold climate in
Mongolia... ;o)) It will remain one of the unresolved questions in nature!
Might be, the beans in the food source are dried at a higher temperature
too...? I don't know. As Protein source, sunflower seeds - if they wouldn't
be so fat - are high in protein too... perhaps the residues from
oil-pressing would be very good...? (So an oil-mill is needed?... ;-))
Kristen wrote:
> this was the only gerbil book I ever ran across with pictures of a siamese in
> it and also one that named a few of the colors
>
The siamese, in the gerbil book Kristen mentioned, is probably one of
Vera Br�ckmann's. But the first book with a siamese pic on it I came across was
the very good book from Fred Petrij in Dutch "DE GERBIL als gezelschapsdier",
1996.
Ehrenfried
--
gerbil links: http://home.wtal.de/ehr/gerbils/links.htm
