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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.
It won't be hunting.
It'll be habitat loss.
In Minnesota, moose populations are having difficulty with warmer winters leading to a higher parasite load (ticks). The warmer summers also stresses them.
In addition, at least one study has forecasted that with the expected amount of global warming, Minnesota forests will turn to grasslands in about a hundred years. The prairie/forest border will move up to the area of Thunder Bay, Ontario.
So at least where I'm at, moose may be locally extinct in a hundred years.
Passenger pigeons were tasty. They're extinct. A lot of other animals were "useful" at one time and went extinct, such as colorful birds in North America that all got killed for lady's hats.
Simply being tasty and/or useful apparently isn't enough; but it does help. Whales--almost extinct but huge, majestic, romantic. and protected *now*. That was a close call. Pandas! Whoah, big, furry, cute, stupid, and the PRC uses them as a symbol. These guys really have it dialed in; but they still almost got wiped out because of their specialized diet making it hard for them to live outside of their region. If panda evolution were really that great, they'd have figured out how to live on garbage.
We have a critter that does that, and they even call it the "trash panda". Raccoons. Big. Sort of useful as rustic hats. You can eat them... but most people don't. It's dark meat, and really not as gamey as you'd think; but I digress. The trash panda is not endangered. It's adapted to us better than the other panda.
I guess the point is... tasty and useful is trumped by a lot of other factors. I mean... roaches, gack! They're everywhere in the city, and we do all kinds of things to kill them but they just keep going. They're not useful. Only a few people obsessed with trying to make us all insectivores would call them tasty. The roach is hearty and omnivorous. It lives off our garbage.
A better way to sum up the greatest evolutionary advantage would be: "being able to co-exist with humans".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Do you know what happens in the US when the population of a game animal gets too large? The next season the bag limit is raised or more permits are issued. This is repeated until wildlife management authorities determine that the population is back to sustainable levels.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
So hunting white rhinoceros or elephants or dolphins or any other animal would increase their numbers? Or might it be that it is not that simple and other factors might be needed as well. I doubt that the moose is somehow an exception.
And if increasing the numbers is the goal, why shoot them? Do not shoot them and just take their pictures. Charge for that. The issue is that people are not willing to do that.
Having animals just so we cab shoot them for fun sounds somehow wrong, because that is what they are doing. Happens with a lot of other animals as well. They are often literally sitting ducks (or other animals) that are released just so they can be shot.
Now if that is your idea of fun, please so. We could discuss it at length, but do not use this as an excuse that you do it to save the animals. That is just a lucky side effect.
Again: I am not against hunting for food. So how does a spotted owl taste or a bald eagle? Hunting them should increase the numbers, right?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
so never? meat and milk substitutes still suck arse, only vegans and vegetarians or the ignorant make the claims that it tastes almost as good.
While it indeed will take like 50-100 years for fake meat to approach the real thing, you can bet on certain governments banning actual meat within less than 20 years of fakes entering mass production.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
I dunno, cats are neither tasty nor particularly useful (unless you have a vermin problem), but have effectively enslaved millions of humans and risen to the top of the evolutionary pile.
I'm hesitant to say that is an evolutionary adaptation, because it seems more like luck that they evolved to be highly efficient genocidal sociopaths and extremely compelling "pets" for a significant number of humans. So less adaptation and more blind luck, or a flaw in the human brain that makes it susceptible to abuse by fluffy balls of fur.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
That is a nice theory, except that all of the hunters I know would prefer to hunt caribou to hunting white tailed deer. According to the sources I have seen, the spread of white tailed deer has more to do with agricultural practices which expand their habitat at the expense of the habitat of boreal caribou (the subspecies of caribou which inhabited Minnesota at one time).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Poaching for their horns to sell in the Chinese woowoo medicine market is what killed the rhinos off. Not people going out to hunt them for the purpose of hunting them.