Maybe critters need calorie-counts, too.
Animals are getting fatter, according to a new academic study.
Scientists studied 20,000 animals from 24 different species — including cats, dogs, rodents, horses and monkeys — over the course of decades and found they were all in need of a serious diet, according to a paper published in the British journal Proceeding of the Royal Society B on Nov. 24.
David Allison, a professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, first discovered that a group of 65 marmosets showed “pronounced” weight gain between 1971 and 2006.
The plump primates got an average of 7.7 percent fatter, and had a startling 114 percent jump in the overall odds of becoming obese over every decade analyzed, despite no major change in diet in a controlled lab environment.
The study also found that all the other animals and rodents had similarly huge weight gains and increases in obesity rates.
The street rats may have gotten bigger chowing down on larger prey or on more human garbage, the study said. But that doesn’t explain the jump in animals living in captivity on controlled diets.
The paper speculated gains in those animals was due to increased light, which affects eating patterns; new viruses; or genetic changes due to stress and the availability of food.