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Hi Dung is obviously a valuable resource under all environmental conditions, and from any available ruminant. Is the bacterial input important? How about elephant or horse dung? Cheers, Ann On 7 May 2016 at 19:30, Naomi Miller <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Hi everyone, a friend just passed this link on. It’s great, especially if > you are interested in dung. > > Julia writes: The film is called Yak Dung (牛粪), and is about the manifold > uses of yak dung by Qinghai pastoralists on the Tibetan plateau. It's > short (just 49 minutes) and definitely worth taking the time to watch. > > Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfpTHOhExGI > > And a blurb: > With temperatures falling as low as -40º C on the plateau, yak dung is a > valuable source of warmth for herdsmen. A non-polluting fuel, it is used to > burn offerings to the gods and light oil lamps. Dung can be used to build > houses and walls. It is the natural fertilizer of the grasslands, and it > can be used as medicine and for washing clothes. Children can even make > toys out of it, while artists sometimes sculpt figurines of the Buddha out > of the material. The quality of the dung is an indicator of the > environmental health of the plateau and the yaks that roam it. In short, > for those of us who live on the plateau, dung is something we cannot live > without. But the day we will have to live without it is getting nearer and > nearer, and that day we will no longer be ourselves. Filmmaker Lanzhe is a > Tibetan herdsman from Qinghai Province. This is his first documentary; Yak > Dung has screened at festivals across China and in Sydney, New York, and > Toronto. > > Naomi > ------------------------------------------------- > Naomi F. Miller, Consulting Scholar > University of Pennsylvania Museum > Near East Section > 3260 South Street > Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA > tel.: 215.898.4075 > fax: 215.898.0657 > WWW: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~nmiller0 & > http://upenn.academia.edu/NaomiMiller > email: [log in to unmask] > >