The agricultural sector is the nation’s dominant source for methane. “We think that the methane is low because of the way food moves through the kangaroo stomach, and not because of a unique gut fauna”.
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The thinking, says this Guardian report, was that the gut microorganisms found in kangaroos could be transplanted into livestock, thereby de-methane-ing many millions and billions of animal farts per year.
What can be done to reduce the amount of methane produced by kangaroos? However, when the team investigated the kangaroos’ methane production relative to their metabolism, it was essentially the same as that of horses; so the kangaroos are no less flatulent than other herbivores, although they still produce less methane than cows. Currently, around 20 percent of the world’s methane emissions stem from ruminants.
Are kangaroos as bad for the environment as cows?
The discovery, reported in the Journal of Experimental Biology, negates a prior theory that kangaroos possessed “unique microbes” that heavily reduced methane production. Munn and Marcus Clauss from the University of Zurich, Switzerland, made a decision to measure everything that went into and came out of kangaroos to get to the bottom of the problem.
The issue became the focus of study because methane is a greenhouse gas that increases global warming. The team measured how much methane kangaroos emit per food intake.
Over a 12-day period, Munn and colleagues studied western gray kangaroos (Macropus fuliginosus) and red kangaroos (Macropus rufus) that were both fed the same diets of alfalfa hay.
The research may seem of little outcome when only focusing on how much methane a kangaroo’s flatulence produces, but it is actually very important. Their research also allowed them to determine how their digestive system could curb the gas. Methane is less abundant in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, but it is more effective at trapping heat (infrared radiation).
The study was performed at the Fowlers Gap Research Station in New South Wales, where, for its intent purposes, the animals were separated into two groups and fed differently: one of the groups was given a limited amount of food and the other was treated to an all-you-can-eat buffet. They found that kangaroo methane production is no lower than that of many other herbivores.
So the poop people discovered that the more the animal eats, the less methane it produces.
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After pulling together the data, the team could see that their kangaroos produced similar quantities of methane to other kangaroos for their body size. Therefore, the solution would be for us to make sure kangaroos always have more than enough food, so that our cause of death doesn’t say “death by kangaroo farts”.
