Birds of a Feather

NASA is constantly looking for better ways to feed astronauts, especially on long space missions. This is certainly not a new problem, and you may recall the orange flavour crystals, under the brand name of Tang, were invented by the space agency.

Russia has similar problems, and in an effort to find a solution, they experimented with quails, an easy to prepare delicacy. In 1990, the Soviets sent a pair of blue quail, along with astronauts, to the Mir Space Station.

The experiment was to see if quail would be a good source of food for astronauts; one which could be locally hatched. It was obviously much easier to send two birds instead of a dozen or so.

All was well and, because the female was pregnant before they left earth, after a few days she laid 15 eggs. She spent the next 21 days sitting on the nest and sure enough, eight of the fifteen eggs hatched. The cosmonauts were ecstatic, as they had visions of fresh meat for quite some time to come. Then the issues began to arise.

The first problem was the zero gravity in the space station. It seems the little feathered friends were unable to latch on to mom, and could not eat. Not to worry, as dad is patiently sitting in a corner waiting for mom to turn her attention back to him.

The biggest discovery of the trip was that zero gravity also lowered the libido in quails. The females stopped ovulating and the males had very reduced testosterone levels, and both sexes exhibited absolute apathy to mating.

To further explore the issue, in 2011, the University of Kentucky received a massive grant from the National Institute of Health, to determine if feeding cocaine to quails improved the aforementioned conundrum.

Surprisingly, the cocaine was linked to eliminating the behaviour; however the cost factor was much higher that the problem was worth.

If I ever have an opportunity to travel into outer space, I for one will stick to Tang.

Jonathan van Bilsen is a television host, award winning photographer, published author, columnist and keynote speaker. Watch his show, ‘The Jonathan van Bilsen Show’, on RogersTV, the Standard Website and YouTube.