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September 6, 2013
Strange But True!
Q. What was author Mary Roach doing with her entire arm inserted through a hole in a cow's side and into one of its stomachs?
A. This was an agricultural research cow at Rutgers University, and the hole (a sort of side window for viewing the processes of digestion) was a “fistula,” or an unnatural bodily tunnel, Roach wrote in Mental Floss magazine. The fistulated cow was prepared by cutting — under topical anesthesia — a small circle in its hide and another in the rumen (biggest of the cow's stomachs) below it. Then these two openings were stitched together into one hole and fitted with a plastic stopper to allow researchers to insert different feeds and see how they were digested.
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