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Article: The chicken and the tern.
- Article from:
- Oceanus
- Article date:
- August 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Chickens aren't especially delicate or demanding. Ask anyone who keeps them: Chickens eat almost anything.
Terns, on the other hand, are quite selective: Winging their way over the wide sea, they eat only fish.
So you might think that chickens would have cast-iron stomachs capable of ingesting a variety of dubious ingredients without harm--while more-discriminating terns would be far more sensitive to contaminants in their food.
Yet for one dangerous and prevalent environmental pollutant, dioxin, the exact opposite is true. Chickens that eat large amounts of dioxin-contaminated food sicken and die. But terns regularly consume substantial ...