Newsday.com
August 1, 2009
By The Associated Press
EMILIE BAHR (New Orleans CityBusiness)

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Hippos and other plant-eaters in the zoo may hold the secret to renewable fuel, say researchers at Tulane University.

From those animals' feces, the scientists have identified more than a dozen different strains of bacteria that can help turn plant waste into butanol, an alcohol that can fuel internal combustion engines.

"It sounds — and is — humorous, the image of scientists running around the backside of a giraffe or hippo," said Eric Smith, associate director of the Tulane Energy Institute, "but these animals evolved an efficient way of consuming cellulose long before we thought about it."

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