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Cow Could Soon Be Largest Land Mammal Left Due To Human Activity, Says Study (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The cow could be left as the biggest land mammal on Earth in a few centuries, according to a new study that examines the extinction of large mammals as humans spread around the world. The spread of hominims -- early humans and related species such as Neanderthals -- from Africa thousands of years ago coincided with the extinction of megafauna such as the mammoth, the sabre-toothed tiger and the glyptodon, an armadillo-like creature the size of a car. "There is a very clear pattern of size-biased extinction that follows the migration of hominims out of Africa," the study's lead author, Felisa Smith, of the University of New Mexico, said of the study published in the journal Science on Thursday. Humans apparently targeted big species for meat, while smaller creatures such as rodents escaped, according the report, which examined trends over 125,000 years. In North America, for instance, the mean body mass of land-based mammals has shrunk to 7.6kg (17lb) from 98kg after humans arrived. If the trend continues "the largest mammal on Earth in a few hundred years may well be a domestic cow at about 900kg", the researchers wrote. That would mean the loss of elephants, giraffes and hippos. In March, the world's last male northern white rhino died in Kenya.
Are moose endangered or something?
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
Watch “Pleistocene Re-wilding: Lions in a Den of Daniels?” on #Vimeo https://vimeo.com/35978505?ref...
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
We ARE the EXTINCTION event.
Being tasty or useful to humans.
What? Rats aren't tasty?
Although creimer can not reproduce, he does have two udders!
Most mass extinction events end up with fewer large animals surviving, including those long before people arrived. See Lilliput effect. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilliput_effect) The point of the article in the summary is that people are driving this extinction event, but I'd be cautious about making that correlation too casually. We're also living in the only time in biological history when one species was trying to preserve the others.
I've said it before and I'll say it again:
Take species that are alive right now, and re-introduce tem in areas where animals similar to those species became extint.
This is not unprecedented. In the pleistocene, there were horses in America, those became extint, and later re-introduced, with little or no effect in the ecosystem
Same with the Hippos in colombia (imported by no other than Pablo Escobar Gaviria, of "Narco" fame). Here, the efect on the ecosystem is low, but since the animals are very territorial, the populalition has a relationship with them of "Awe and respect"
In Venezuela there used to be an animal called Mixotoxodon Larensis, similar (but not related to) rhinos and hippos. It went all the way from brazil to Texas (the toxodon originated in patagonia, but our variation traveled more). We could re-introduce rhinos in venezuela and Brazil. Rhinos eat grass, like cows, so no biggie for the ecosystem, and are not a huge problem for humans (unlike Hippos hicha are VERY territorial).
In Venezuela we used to have a thinguie called the mastodons (other parts of america had them too, they came from the north), similar to elephants, so we may as well adopt elephants, either african, assian or both. Again, vegetarians, big, no biggie for the environmet.
Also, we used to have gavialoids (there are crocodiles, aligators, and gavials), but they became extinct, so may as well get gavials and "fake gavials" (which, funny enough, turned out to be true gavials ;-) ) which are on the brink to extintion, and re-deploy. Since they eat only fish, are no danger to humans, and could deploy in places with "bad" fish (think piranha or electric eels).
I think a similar case could be made about the other continents.
The opportunities are plentyfull, is just the disposition.
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
Being tasty or useful to humans.
Which is exactly why this study has the wrong conclusion. Thanks to all those tasty cows helping to cause an obesity epidemic in a few centuries, the largest land mammal will be humans, not cows.
The largest land mammal is my ex-wife!
As they are cut down and paved for "affordable housing". Those 20 billion people gotta go somewhere.
(of course I'm one of them, but.. still....)
Bye Falisa
Who the fuck edits this shit?
Oh, that's right...no one.
That is why some of us believe that de-extinction is the ethical choice.
The U.S. has vast tracts of undeveloped wilderness under federal and state ownership. Additionally, the nation is substantially over-farmed because of that rediculous corn ethanol mandate. There is certailnly space for them.
We should bring some of these great creatures back in North America to undo some of the harm humankind has already done.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Even better, in 400 years, extrapolation shows that the larges land mammal will have negative mass.
Negative mass is great news: not only can we use such animals for large scale balloon powered flight (in place of expensive helium or dangerous hydrogen), when such negative masses are properly arranged they can create wormholes, allowing for instantaneous interstellar travel!
From the moment the bullet enters the animal it is a special and intimate moment shared by the hunter and the animal that no one else can understand. Very spiritual.
TTHS FAKE NEWS !
So, there won't be bulls anymore?
Having a bunch of entitled jackoffs running around Africa gunning down and mutilating big game doesn't help the situation.
https://twitter.com/PoodleMama...
https://twitter.com/MiaFarrow/...
It doesn't help, but the real problem worldwide is that we keep taking habitat and turning it into subdivisions and cities.
We nearly made bison extunct, but these days we are farming them, and bison burgers do taste good...
Quite a few humans give the cow a good run for their money size wise
But yes , we tend to shape the eco system to our needs, be damn the natural eco system. As long as we do not fall into the trap of having too monotonous eco system (risk of illness spreading like wildfire and destroying entire species , like canvendish banana) then I am not exactly sad. We may miss up on some thing (like all those pharmacopia we found in the amazon) but ultimately there is nothing really that special on a naturally evolved eco system.
Sorry, but, "... hominims..." is wrong.
However, "hominin" (or at a stretch "hominid") would be correct. See the diagram at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and see the original article that uses "hominin" liberally: http://science.sciencemag.org/...
Looking at space, radio, science and computing from a 'down-under' amateur enthusiast perspective.
"The cow could be left as the biggest land mammal on Earth in a few centuries"
I'm taking bets that they're wrong. Who's in?
Can't wait to see the final results.
...Hominids.
OP is an asshole! She is not THAT fat!
Having a bunch of entitled jackoffs running around Africa gunning down and mutilating big game doesn't help the situation.
Actually, it does help. Big game hunters pay high fees that are used for habitat conservation. They also create jobs for local people that then see wildlife as an economic benefit, rather than just seeing them as crop/livestock destroying pests.
Wildlife in Africa would be much better off if there were more Western big game hunters.
Horses can be much bigger than cattle.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Chronic societal obesity will change this. MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO !
aaaaaaa
You might want to tell that to the white rhinoceros. There are three left in the world today because baby-dick failsons like Eric and Don Jr went around blasting them to hell,
We're talking about guys whose "sport" requires that something die. They're sociopaths. There are better ways of managing wildlife than trophy hunting.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Aren't water buffalo larger than cows? I rather think that they are, and they are clearly not on their way out.
That said, the "red list" is clearly an underestimate of the threatened animal species. It's more a list of "those in imminent danger this decade". It's really hard to figure out which species are in more distant danger of extinction. This partially depends on how the climate changes, and what unexpected events this causes. Someone above mentioned moose. They don't currently seem to be in danger, but they depend on a certain ecology, IIRC, they are browsers rather than grazers, so they need trees and shrubs they can eat, etc. If a warming climate dries out the territory where they're living and turns it into a grassland, they'll need to migrate, and often it turns out that new migration routes are blocked. That's not likely a "this decade" kind of danger, but it's an "if this goes on..." kind of danger.
A lot of animals would do a lot better if people and fences didn't block their path to a better territory. But unlike most animals, people are even territorial about other species passing through their territory. (There are, of course, good reasons, but that doesn't change the problem.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
If they really cared about wildlife, why not just pay big fees without having to kill something? Photograph it instead.
What type of dipshit considers killing these animals with a high powered rifle, an 'achievement'?
Make it legal for people to own, buy, sell, and USE any species that is endangered.
It is a pereversity of illogic that the people who claim to love many animals demand laws to "protect" those animals that make it so nobody can gain monetarily from them.... which makes them worthless and converts those species into wards of the welfare state (i.e. burdens only funded by handouts forced from taxpayers).
On the flip side, it should be noted that animals that can legally be bought, sold, and owned as pets are plentiful. Animals that can also legally be killed and eaten and have products made from their remains are valuable and therefore extremely plentiful with vast commercial enterprises dedicated to breeding them and raising them and keeping them healthy.
Consider: People clearly like ivory products. Many laws have been passed to make the ivory trade illegal, and therefore the animals whose ivory is preferred are dwindling and the people who will stop at nothing to get ivory are poaching these animals. People also clearly like hamburgers. Cows can be bred, bought, sold, and slaughtered so McDonalds (among many corporations) makes it a certainty that there will never be a shortage of cows.
Making ownership of an animal costs taxpayers NOTHING. Government programs to protect an endangered species, on the other hand, are very expensive and the funding is hard to secure in government budgets so there's never enough conservation activity.
Come on, their sociopathy doesn't even come close to yours.
But the evidence that "hunting elephants saves them" is thin.
https://www.theatlantic.com/sc...
The science is clear, lion populations decline where there is hunting.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com...
Hominim? I thought he was good in 8 Mile...
Garry Knight
All hail Comrade Poop Ratzo for being always correct!!!
You might want to tell that to the white rhinoceros. There are three left in the world today because baby-dick failsons like Eric and Don Jr went around blasting them to hell,
We're talking about guys whose "sport" requires that something die. They're sociopaths. There are better ways of managing wildlife than trophy hunting.
The problem with most game is poaching, not hunting. There's a huge difference.
There is something strange with the summary:
Humans apparently targeted big species for meat, while smaller creatures such as rodents escaped, according the report,
If the trend continues [...] That would mean the loss of elephants, giraffes and hippos.
Are people eating elephants and giraffes? I would think that cows, pigs, chicken would be the more popular meat.
cap: remark
A story written around the last true sentence.
"Wildlife in Africa would be much better off if there were more Western big game hunters."
Nothing can help Afrcan wildlife because the human population there is going to TRIPLE over the next century. No lion, elephant, rhino, or other large animal will exist outside of a game preserve or zoo.
But won't be
Just saw one nostrils steaming, and big as a freight train still roaming the untracked West.
"Knowing everything doesn't help..."
You might want to tell that to the white rhinoceros.
The major threat to wild rhinos is poaching. Hunting licenses pay for anti-poaching patrols.
We're talking about guys whose "sport" requires that something die.
That is an appeal to emotion, but is not logical. I am not a hunter, but I appreciate the people that do go and hunt in Africa. They help fund conservation, boost the local economy, and encourage Africans to protect wildlife as a source of income. Practical success is better than idealistic failure.
If they really cared about wildlife, why not just pay big fees without having to kill something?
Is that what you do?
We dont need any other large animals. They are taking up room that would otherwise fit a hamburger stand.
Moooooooooo
You might want to tell that to the white rhinoceros. There are three left in the world today because baby-dick failsons like Eric and Don Jr went around blasting them to hell,
We're talking about guys whose "sport" requires that something die. They're sociopaths. There are better ways of managing wildlife than trophy hunting.
I'm no fan of hunting but there's a big difference between it and poaching.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Just maybe, though humans hunt, a smaller body or species has and evolutionary function, a real feature. It requires less food.
Yes, the difference is about the same as between killers and murderers.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
why do they say soon and 2 or 3 hundred years? there will be thousands of other factors in between.
[quote]In North America, for instance, the mean body mass of land-based mammals has shrunk to 7.6kg (17lb) from 98kg after humans arrived.[/quote]
If a lot of smaller mass mammals (humans) move in, mean body mass should be shrunk, shouldn't it? It is not a proof! I don't mean they are not under extinction or anything. It is purely wrong evidence to back it up!
And guess what one of the main reasons is for poaching? China. Chinese folk medicine. Rhino horns, just chop off the horn and leave the rest of the carcass behind, much easier to smuggle just the horn. Also, Chinese traditional art of carving elephant ivory, though that's less of a pressure these days because you can get them to stop caring about some stupid carvings, but they gotta have their magic penis pills.
> "the largest mammal on Earth in a few hundred years may well be a domestic cow at about 900kg"
Guinness says the heaviest human they've weighed is 635 kg (1,400 pounds).
Present trends suggest that in a few hundred years, humans may be the largest land mammals.
With my recent coming to terms that being a homosesual is ok I hooked up with cdreimer last night. We hit it off right away and before I knew it we were back at my place. That pudgy bastard is a demon in the sack and I don't believe I will be able to walk much today. He came pretty fast the first time but the dude just kept on going strong. It was like he was churning butter in my rectum. By the time he was done he had shot 4 loads in my ass and I was in heaven. It was so good I finally got an erection for the first time in 20 years and cdreimer was kind enough to suck me off.
APK
P.S. - I love the musty smell of that man and hope he never changes... apk
Closer to the difference between a murder and a massacre but nice try.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Well unless we are planning to get rid of bison or water buffalo which are generally bigger than cows that isn't likely to be true even for captive animals. Heck some breeds of draft horses are about the same size as the biggest cows. The biggest draft horse ever weighed in at about 1525kg.
Aye've learned two never tryst hominims - their bod knews.
The majority of this documented trend seems to be based on hunting. And that makes sense, because for the majority of human existence we were hunter-gatherers.
The shift to agriculture marked a big change in human society, but agriculture hasn't been kind to large animals either. We've put up fences to impede their movement, and we've treated them as pests that prey on our livestock or trample and eat our crops.
Now we're in another big shift, to industrialization. How will an ever-more-industrialized world treat large animals? Although poaching is still a problem in certain parts of the world, for various reasons, it does seem like hunting is on the way out. We're only beginning to see how traditional agriculture may shift toward high-intensity farming in enclosed environments: greenhouses, hydroponics, vertical farming, etc. Human population has become huge, globally, and yet we're ever more concentrated in cities, while rural areas are becoming depopulated and semi-abandoned.
It looks to me like these trends bode well for large animals. The reasons we've had in the past for killing them are in decline.
We could bring endangered African cheetahs over here to the USA and let them chase after pronghorn antelope in exactly the way that our now-extinct American cheetah (Miracinonyx) once did. (And this idea wouldn't even be possible to contemplate if we hadn't first saved the pronghorn from near-extinction by over-hunting.)
Homorapians. What can you do \_()_/
What isn't neat or interesting or meaningful or even valid is the silly prediction in the title. Here's some reasons why: 1. Most remaining megafauna is found in places where humans have been the longest. If we were going to eat all the hippos, it would have happened a long time ago.
2. You can't assume that trends based on what prehistoric human tribes did will continue over the next few centuries.
3. We stopped hunting megafauna for food when we figured out how to domesticate animals. Cows are the biggest thing we eat.
4. It reeks of trend extrapolation fallacies.
If we learn enough to recover lost species, which seems inevitable, then we will probably reverse that trend. With the destruction of habitat it won't mean much but I expect animals like elephants to at least exist in theme park type settings. for what that's worth.
This program was made possible by a grant from the Ultra-Humanite, and viewers like you.
I mean, how can one argue with a post like that? I "could" receive my gold-plated potty, towed by my pony, in the next twenty minutes. The oceans "could" boil from global warming, turning the Earth into a Venus-a-like. The Higgs boson "could" have reached a state somewhere in the Universe just out of sight where particles lose their mass and the wave of Universal extinction "could" be rolling towards us to end the Universe (in the vicinity of the Earth) long before we lose all the large land animals.
Heck, we can do better than that. We can find data from pretty much any time and place, addressing any subject. We can find a trend in it (almost all data has SOME trend). We can draw an interpolating line through the trend -- linear, polynomial, whatever. Then we can use that line to extrapolate the trend and claim that whatever it predicts COULD happen.
Damn! You're right! It could!
News at 11! My grandson Jacob could reach ten meters in height in fifty years! Hey, I'm just extrapolating a trend, here...
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
Why? Because all the overpopulated areas of the world depend heavily on technology for their existence, and will diminish said population when the electricity is turned off for a few years. When will that happen? When our undefended electric grid succumbs to a Carrington-event-scale solar tantrum. Word is that US population will drop by 90%. 30 million people aren't going to make shit go extinct. They may be eaten by the residual mountain lions and grizzly bears, tho...
"... an armadillo-like creature the size of a car."
Thanks for that. I was running out of nightmare fuel.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
1. Be kinder to each other.
2. Have a reduction reproduction rate everywhere until the world is down to about 4 billion which would be perfectly sustainable in the long run.
I bet the crazy Vegans would love that.
More like the difference between a murderer and an executioner
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Odd name for a journal. Is it based in Sheffield?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Just breed more delicious elephants
-----
Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
...for not being more delicious.
The only difference between a hunter and a poacher is money. Dead is still dead.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It makes sense large animals were hunted for meat in the past. But going forward, since we have and raise cows there is no reason to hunt large animals for meat, so they will carry on.
There's no reason to think for example that elephants will vanish in a few hundred years.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
big whoop.
This means humans are winning the evolutionary struggle. Take that Man Eating Tigers. We are winning. Pretty soon you will all be DEAD. Fuck you, your big teeth, and finely honed physicality. We have guns. You should have studied calculus, and thermodynamics instead of PE in school.
It is the victory of brain over brawn.
Now lets explore space so we can bring the might of Humanity crashing down on the heads of those evil Communist Nazi space aliens.
I predict Walmart shoppers will supplant the cows.
You're talking to an audience of 90%+ of people who find it perfectly acceptable to kill for a taste (an unhealthy taste too) so even as you got modded up and supported by replies, don't think that you're somehow among the moral pillars of humanity here.
If it's the taking of a life which is wrong why does it matter if it's a white rhino or a chicken?
To think there is a significant difference between the two is the real hallmark of being a sociopath. If nothing else, an ignorant and lazy fool.
While I'm inclined to agree, here is the big difference:
Killing to eat is what animals do. Killing for fun and "sport" is what sociopath humans do.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"It's more likely to be two bucks a pound less than regular stuff, eventually and you probably won't be able to tell the difference either in terms of nutrition, taste or texture."
Meat changes texture as it gets used. Chuck and tenderloin wind up being very different. Unless you've got a machine working that vat full of meat stuff, it's never going to have the taste and texture of the real thing.
Have you seen them? They're YUGE!!!
Both are domesticated in the US, Canada, and Northern Europe and Asia.
They're a heck of a lot bigger than cows.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Does it hurt to be that stupid? Why did you ignore everything GP said? There's no difference but money between a hunter who takes his allotted kill and has a vested interest in conservation and a poacher who kills as many of an animal as he can for profit, species be damned? That's an insult to hunters everywhere, and you're an idiot.
I guess these researchers just plumb forgot that buffalo are still raised as domestic animals in much of the country. There's a ranch not a few miles from me that does, and a few local small-town eateries have "bison burgers" on the menu - expensive, but literally a nice change of taste on occasion.
I hate it when scientists do this - massage facts for better PR impact (the link between cows and human domestication for human use is much stronger than with bison.) Those worthies among us who worship "The Science" with pseudoreligious zeal take exception to those who can't reconcile that faith with the less-than-saintly deviations scientists make into PR.
Somewhere along the line, scientists figured out that if journalists could twist their papers into moronic headlines and get away with it, then they could write the headlines into their conclusions and do the same. What a shitshow.
How about we try getting the editing up to the 4th grade reading level? You know, something ambitious.
Guess I'm an animal then, because I hunt and kill to eat.
And yet, the largest land animal, the elephant, continues on in Africa where these extinctions started, and even in India, one of the more heavily populated areas of the world. Then there is the rhinos and hippos (still in Africa).
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Do these researchers not know of Wal*Mart?
Time to offend someone
I'm doing my part. I'm eating as many of the damn things as I can!
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
I really hoped this story was about our ability to produce elephant+ sized cows in the future and was hoping to live long enough to buy a brisket I could smoke and then crawl inside to eat my way out. Turns out it was just another dream that will never come true.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
All hail the Elecow! Surpassed only by the mighty Cowephant!
I, for one, welcome out cows overlords
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...