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Could skippy stop cows farting and end global warming?

Friday, 3 February  2006 

Kangaroos don't produce methane

The world is freaked out about climate change, global warming, and greenhouse gasses, and it could be up to skippy and his stomach juices to save the day.

We all know kangaroos are pretty special, but it's their lack of flatulence, or more precisely the lack of methane emissions, that has researchers excited.

While they eat pretty much the same thing, cows end up producing a lot of methane, and kangaroos don't.

Researchers think a whopping 10 percent of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions could be permanently eliminated if scientists can introduce microbes found in the stomach of kangaroos into livestock feed.

Dr Athol Klieve is a senior research scientist in microbial biotechnology at the DPI, "When you ferment grass in the stomach like kangaroos do, they produce hydrogen, and you have to get rid of that hydrogen, or it slows down and stops the fermentation of the material...The production of methane is actually one solution to the problem of getting rid of hydrogen...There are alternative mechanisms of getting rid of that of that hydrogen. One of these is to produce acetate. Acetate is used by the animal as a major part of its energy resources.

“We’ve been able to isolate a number of species of bacteria that do take hydrogen through to acetate and it’s those bacteria that we hope to be able to move across to sheep and cattle, to bring down the methane emissions in sheep and cattle”, Dr Athol Klieve.

And it's not only the atmosphere that will be able to breathe a sigh of relief, farmers could save feed money, “Methane is actually a loss of feed energy. It’s an inefficient use of your feed. If you can, instead of using that feed energy as methane to the atmosphere and causing greenhouse problems, if you can convert that to something like acetate, that’s more energy available for the animal for growth and production”, Dr Athol Klieve.

Last Updated: 3/02/2006 5:02:00 AM AEDT

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