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.

Comments

Cows?

[UncleTogie]

Are moose endangered or something?

Re:Cows?

[DalM]

It won't be hunting.
It'll be habitat loss.

Re:Cows?

[Anonymous Coward]

And the end of the cows will come when meat and milk substitutes become cheaper and better than 'cow'

Re:Cows?

[ElizabethGreene]

>> If the trend of hunting the larger animals for meat continues for 300+ years..

Here in the US the primary threat to large (wild) mammal population is habitat loss, not hunting. The hunting permit system is such that Hunters spend giant piles of money on conservation to combat this problem.

There is a fantastic example of this working in my home state, Tennessee. Elk were hunted out of the state more than a century ago, but hunters paid to reintroduce them in 2000. There are ~500 in the state now. ... And yes, you can hunt them, if you are willing to drop the price of a decent used car to buy the permit.

Want more Moose? Take up hunting.

Re:Cows?

[dasunt]

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.

Re:Cows?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are moose endangered or something?

A moose once bit my sister.

Re:Cows?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in the US the primary threat to large (wild) mammal population is habitat loss, not hunting.

No, theres's more wild ungulates in the US now than there was per-Columbus. Border species do better at edges of forests, meadows, fields, and wetlands. There's more habitat than ever.

The greatest threat to large mammal populations like moose are overpopulation due to a lack of predators. The population booms, over consumes their food supply, and crashes. That is the primary motivator for reintroduction of wolf populations.

Re:Cows?

[LynnwoodRooster]

And for that - they must all die...

Re:Cows?

[Anonymous Coward]

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. Anybody that eats quality meat or milk products just about throws up at the bland garbage being produced as substitutes.

Re:Cows?

[x0ra]

No, but they're tasty.

Re:Cows?

[aix tom]

Hey, if God wanted us to fly, he would have given us first class tickets.

Re:Cows?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they not see my wife?

Re: Cows?

[Anonymous Coward]

If i can buy humanely produced meat, vat grown or otherwise for two bucks a pound more than regular stuff, i will never have real meat again. The fact that I won't pay double for an inferior textured product with less nutrition today doesn't mean cow populations won't plummet in out lifetimes.

Re: Cows?

[Nidi62]

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.

Re:Cows?

[houghi]

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?

Re:Cows?

[Bing Tsher E]

Bacteria don't have a sense of aesthetics to find anything 'tasty.'

Re: Cows?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do cows exist in the wild? They are numerous because we raise them in farms. If we could farm and eat owls and eagles, they would not be threatened. The same for rhinos and elephants.

Re:Cows?

[KiloByte]

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.

Re:Cows?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not in the western world. Where hunters gets quotas and mostly respect them.

Africa is different. Want to hunt rhino for some strange dark reason? Do it by night, pay the police to go elsewhere. Corruption will eradicate species before loss of habitat.

Re:Cows?

[Attila Dimedici]

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).

Re:Cows?

[Anonymous Coward]

vegans and vegetarians or the ignorant make the claims

Score:-1, Redundant

Re:Cows?

[c]

So hunting white rhinoceros or elephants or dolphins or any other animal would increase their numbers?

In theory, if the money raised by hunting actually goes towards conserving and protecting them.

In practice, where corruption is high or where governments are basically non-existant, it's going to fail. Also, where the animals wander into jurisdictions where they aren't protected, the system will break down.

Re:Cows?

[ravenshrike]

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.

Re:Cows?

[Anonymous Coward]

We can only hope. If you think you're pro-environment and still eat meat then you're just fooling yourself. One of the leading causes of deforestation and one of the easiest pro-environment life changes to make is to go vegetarian. No, free-range-whatever doesn't count either as it's also unsustainable.

Re:Cows?

[NicknameUnavailable]

Moose don't get poached like that and they don't outright target Humans for food so they're safe. The issue is that as Humans evolve intellectually we destroy things which can destroy us, this happened in Europe and it's now happening in the developing world. Elephants might actually be the exception to this rule but for the most part if it is dangerous we kill it, until the local population reaches a level of intellect at which they see the benefit to preserving the genetic diversity of a species. To put that in perspective: the debate about mosquitoes is still up in the air and we might end up deciding that in spite of genetic diversity we want to wipe them out - far from being megafauna.

Re:Cows?

[tsqr]

Are moose endangered or something?

Not particularly. But they don't outweigh cows, either. An adult male moose may weigh as much as 1500 lbs; cows weigh in at around 1600 lbs. Both are smaller than the bull, though, at 2400 lb. TFS says "domestic cow at about 900kg" (1980 lb). That's a really big cow, but not as large as a bull.

Re:Cows?

[ElizabethGreene]

> where corruption is high or where governments are basically non-existant, it's going to fail.

Corruption can be a problem, but it can work too. Zimbabwe, a bastion of corruption free governance, has strict controls on hunting and is extremely tough on poachers. They have a financial incentive to do so; the revenue from hunting pays for their salaries and the land for wildlife preserves.

In my home state we have 1.2 million acres of public hunting lands under management by our Wildlife and Resources agency. It's paid for entirely through license fees and taxes on sporting equipment (primarily ammunition taxes). That's what paid for the Elk program. They also relocate bears away from human dense areas and are working to eliminate (invasive) wild hogs too. They also partnered with the Feds to bring back red wolves to one of our National Parks, but afaik those aren't a stable population (yet).

Re:Cows?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you still drink coffee or eat soy products? Those cause more deforestation than any amount of ranching or livestock raising.

Re:Cows?

[hey!]

Well, the entire point is not yet.

What will do the moose in is the same thing that did the auroch in in the 1600s - habitat loss. The giant auroch is the wild ancestor of domestic cattle, and was an important game species from paleolithic times up to the Middle Ages. It was probably the very first species human attempted to prevent from going extinct, first by increasingly restrictive hunting limits, and then by establishing reserves. But an animal that size (over three thousand pounds in the paleolithic period) needs an enormous range to support healthy populations.

Expect moose populations to decline as their range is restricted by human development and climate change, starting at the southern end of their range where they're most vulnerable. A little further north the decline won't be as apparent as the moose population is concentrated in its restricted range, but you will see more diseased animals.

Re:Cows?

[jonadab]

No. They're listed in the "Least Concern" category, the same as squirrels and ants. And the people who make those categories are in general pretty far over on the "we need to be very careful about not causing extinctions" side of the issue.

Re:Cows?

[NicknameUnavailable]

So do bears, but neither are likely to attack a child wondering through the woods alone with even the slightest common sense (e.g. don't harass the animals, stay clear of a mother with her cubs, etc.) Things like cougars, rhinos, hippos, tigers, lions, jaguars, European wolves, etc will gladly do so - so they tend to get wiped out by anyone who can do so. Things like mammoths had a LOT of utility for people who hunted (literally every part of them was useful something to people living in that kind of extreme cold. If we reduce the wild populations to black bears (borderline tame) and moose it would only be a loss because of the genetics we might want to use some day (e.g. if we stumble upon some aliens and find it cheaper to release a horde of genetically modified kill-happy jaguars the size of elephants with rhino-like hides than to actually invade,) barring that they have potential medical benefits from their study and potential benefits in the realm of synthetic biology simply for being a large stable system of proteins and metabolic pathways - but as far as the environment goes - that's for us to do with as we please. GM them to be smaller and make them pets if you want to conserve them.

Re:Cows?

[ElizabethGreene]

I'm going to assume your response is in good faith and not some darker motive.

The primary cause for the loss of Rhino populations is uncontrolled hunting and poaching. Rhino horn is, for reasons I cannot fathom, a valuable commodity. Picture them as Gold bars on the hoof. In a classic tragedy of the commons, people have harvested these gold bars and killed off 95% of the population. They are literally killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

If Rhino hunting was controlled by permitting then you can restrict the number of animals harvested to a sustainable level. When there are too many you allow harvesting of both sexes. When there aren't enough you reduce the bag limits and allow taking of only males. The money from permits can go to prevent poaching and create protected habitats.

Realistic wildlife conservation requires management, not benign neglect.

Re: Cows?

[Ost99]

Giving up cow meat has both health and environmental advantages.

The environmental impact of producing meat from poultry and pork is efficient and is in line with vegetarian products in terms of environmental impact per kcal and per gram of protein.

Re:Cows?

[Obfuscant]

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.

Taste is learned. E.g., Vegemite, Marmite, Spam, Escargot, Haggis. History is filled with substitutes that replace the original after the people who grew up with the originals die and the tasteless youngsters take over. They learn to like the substitute and the original then tastes funny. And sometimes it doesn't take a generation -- personal tastes can change.

Anybody that eats quality meat or milk products just about throws up at the bland garbage being produced as substitutes.

And yet there are lots of people who order tofu or other soy crap because they prefer it. Tastes change. Often, tastes change because convenience or price trumps taste. Who in their right mind would prefer Sunny Delight over real orange juice, and just what is in that hot dog?

Re:Cows?

[Shotgun]

So hunting white rhinoceros or elephants or dolphins or any other animal would increase their numbers?

South Africa experimented with letting farmer raise rhinoceros for income. The rhinoceros population rebounded. But, then PETA complained and the country started banning the practice again.

So, yes. Legalizing the hunting WILL increase the numbers, because there will be an incentive for people to provide resources to keep them around.

Re:Cows?

[slew]

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.

Personally, I think keeping animals leashed and imprisoned in cages (or aquariums) for 'fun' sounds more wrong on many levels, but that is what many people are doing to. At least killing animals eating them retain a purpose for their existence that mirror what happens in nature (where many animals kill other animals for sustenance).

FWIW, even vegetarians effectively 'kill' plants for sustenance, so it's just a matter of what line you draw for 'killing' things to keep yourself alive for your own personal morality code.

Of course if you are just shooting animals for 'fun' and if someone does not end up using the carcass for sustenance, then it is arguably worse than keeping a pet. So-called big game hunters that waste their kills in that manner are much lower on my morality stack. But then again, who am I to impose my morality on others (but I feel generally free to comment on it).

Re:Cows?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

You think too small. There was an article the other day about attempts to resurrect a mammoth or mastadon.

I dare say in well less than 300 years every species extinct since the last ice age will be resurrected. This includes dodos, sabertooth tigers, that oddball giant bird in that old photograph from Australia, and many more. Tiny horses, maybe even the tiny humans from that island and neanderthals, though those raise greatly increased ethical issues.

I am opposed to recycling for either resource usage, pollution control, or "running out of landfill space", a leftover 1970s innumeracy scare, because in the not too distant future people will bid on the right to rip landfills open and have robots sort everything for profit.

People will wonder why we were so stupid and short-sighted. Don't worry about species extinction.

Re:Cows?

[Khashishi]

Do you still drink coffee or eat soy products? Those cause more deforestation than any amount of ranching or livestock raising.

Bullshit. I won't comment on coffee, but almost all soy grown is used for livestock feed. Human consumption of soy is a drop in the bucket.

Re: Cows?

[Khashishi]

Pork is half as efficient as poultry.

                            Beef, Poultry, Pork, Dairy, Eggs
Caloric conversion efficiency 2.9±0.7% 13±4% 9±4% 17±4% 17±9%
Protein conversion efficiency 2.5±0.6% 21±7% 9±4.5% 14±4% 31±16%

http://iopscience.iop.org/arti...

I'm not sure from the article how eggs and poultry should be combined, since they come from the same source -- can they be added together? Or does it not work like that for various agriculture reasons -- i.e. spent hens aren't typically used for human food in US.

Re:Cows?

[Khashishi]

None of those attempts were successful, of course. DNA decays rapidly after death. You maybe have enough intact to compare DNA for identity or other purposes, but for cloning you basically need 100% intact DNA. I am almost certain that your predictions are incorrect.

Re:Cows?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

All that means is that we'll switch from hunting to farming.

There's good eating on an elephant.....

Re:Cows?

[DarthVain]

As someone who deals with hunting statistics and have talked to long time hunting regulators insofar as hunting goes the biggest threat to big game is the advent of ATV's and the like over the last 30 years or so. Hunters have far more ease of access to areas they normally would not. It takes a certain kind of hunter to manually tromp many many hours (even days) into the back country for the opportunity to hunt. Now with ATV's and more access roads, it is much easier for more hunters to range much wider than ever before...

So while habitat loss due to various factors is a thing, there is also the loss of more less inaccessible habitat that big game were more less safe. The actual habitat is still there, and more less undamaged, but hunters are more successful at hunting in the past mostly because they can get to places they could not in recent history.

We aren't waiting for the next extinction event

[Anonymous Coward]

We ARE the EXTINCTION event.

The greatest evolutionary adaptation is:

[DalM]

Being tasty or useful to humans.

Re:The greatest evolutionary adaptation is:

[thePsychologist]

Perhaps you meant 'being easily farmable'. Because that's definitely not true for many ocean fish that are being caught to extinction.

Re:The greatest evolutionary adaptation is:

[quanminoan]

It's no longer evolution so much as selective breeding.

Re: The greatest evolutionary adaptation is:

[c6gunner]

Perhaps you meant 'being easily farmable'. Because that's definitely not true for many ocean fish that are being caught to extinction.

Well, it's a mix. We don't farm deer or ducks but we've activaly undertaken various efforts to keep their populations at healthy levels because they make for good eatin', and we don't wanna lose that. It's hard with ocean fisheries because we don't have legal control of international waters or the waters of other nation-states.

Basically you have to either be easily farmable or lucky enough to live within the borders of a semi-responsible country.

Re:The greatest evolutionary adaptation is:

[istartedi]

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".

Re:The greatest evolutionary adaptation is:

[tinkerton]

It's true. If you look at the total biomass of mammals it's all cattle, humans and pets, and the odd elephant thrown in for irony.

Re:The greatest evolutionary adaptation is:

[tinkerton]

there: https://xkcd.com/1338/

Re:The greatest evolutionary adaptation is:

[AmiMoJo]

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.

Re:The greatest evolutionary adaptation is:

[DalM]

... less adaptation and more blind luck... .

That's a good tagline for evolution in a nutshell.

Re:The greatest evolutionary adaptation is:

[nickersonm]

Ithe odd elephant thrown in for irony.

Or is it for ivory?

Re:The greatest evolutionary adaptation is:

[bluefoxlucid]

Over 20% of all biomass is ants.

Re:The greatest evolutionary adaptation is:

[bkr1_2k]

It's true. If you look at the total biomass of mammals it's all cattle, humans and pets, and the odd elephant thrown in for irony.

I read that as "the odd elephant thrown in for ivory" at first. Nearly spit my drink all over my computer...

Re:The greatest evolutionary adaptation is:

[tinkerton]

I read Vaclav Smil's book on the biosphere and he presents all these calculations but I forgot so much about it. The item about the ants must be in it.

Re:The greatest evolutionary adaptation is:

[Dragonslicer]

I dunno, cats are neither tasty nor particularly useful (unless you have a vermin problem)

That's exactly why they're useful. I know of a warehouse (a few decades ago now) that kept cats to hunt down the mice that were eating paper and cardboard. They were also good at hunting rats that were spreading all kinds of nasty diseases.

The greatest evolutionary adaptation is:size.

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Rats aren't tasty?

Re:The greatest evolutionary adaptation is:size.

[DalM]

Not tasty, useful. I mean, how do you think humans got electricity to power our smartphones before the advent of coal power production.

Not the first time the big ones have died off

[AzariahK]

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.

Re-introduction of species similar to ones extint

[williamyf]

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.

Study still wrong

[Roger W Moore]

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.

Re:Study still wrong

[Bruinwar]

Why would beef be related to the obesity epidemic?

Re:Study still wrong

[ravenshrike]

No... just no. What's causing the obesity epidemic is the combination of helicopter parenting restricting kids from any significant outdoor activity and sugar intake(probably HFCS intake but until someone follows up on the rat study with pig and monkey studies that one's unconfirmed).

Re:Study still wrong

[ravenshrike]

Yeah, it's not like I walked 5 miles every saturday(more often during summer break) starting at the age of 8 down and back to the local library during spring, summer, and fall or anything. It's not like the lack of lead in gasoline and paint has precipitously dropped crime rates from their heights in the late 80's early 90's and the idea that children are in more danger than ever before is complete and utter shite. No, the real answer is that I'm an internet tough guy.

Re:Study still wrong

[Roger W Moore]

It's a key ingredient in many fast food meals.

Re:Study still wrong

[Obfuscant]

It's a key ingredient in many fast food meals.

That's like claiming that a toy surprise is a reason for obesity because it is a key ingredient in happy meals. Or cardboard. Or lettuce. It's not the beef itself, it's the other stuff, and the amounts.

Re:Study still wrong

[Roger W Moore]

That's like claiming that a toy surprise is a reason for obesity because it is a key ingredient in happy meals.

If you are eating the toy surprise then I definitely agree that obesity is not your primary concern. However, since the beef is one of the sources of the fat content in fast food you are deluding yourself if you think it's contribution to the overall nutritional value of the meal is equivalent to the lettuce. Note that I never claimed it was entirely responsible only that it 'helped'. There are clearly lots of other bad things in fast food but the fat content of the processed beef is one.

De-extinction

[Jodka]

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.

Re:De-extinction

[SunTzuWarmaster]

This. It seems like I have this conversation with anyone about the subject.

"We are thinking about de-extincting the woolly mammoth. This is awesome!"
"Shouldn't we think carefully about re-introducing an extinct species into the world? Didn't they die off for a *reason* ?"
"Do you know what that reason was?"
"No"
"It turns out the reason for their extinction was "too delicious to live". Being large, slow-moving, dumb, made of meat, and having an awesome pelt means that humans LOVED to kill them. Best thing to kill! Biggest, most meat, most fur! Super good! They were hunted to extinction."
"Huh."

I really want to eat a mammoth-burger. I really do.

extrapolating even further

[ooloorie]

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!

What about Bison

[rossdee]

We nearly made bison extunct, but these days we are farming them, and bison burgers do taste good...

Re:What about Bison

[laie_techie]

I've been to South Dakota. SD bison burgers are no substitute for Texas cow burgers. Texas cows are tastier every day of the week.

The answer is the beefalo; or possibly grind bison meet with domesticated cattle meet to get the desired fat content.

"... hominims..." -- Not so much.

[brindafella]

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/...

Re:"... hominims..." -- Not so much.

[scottrocket]

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/...

Meh close enough, they sound alike! ; )

Re:"... hominims..." -- Not so much.

[david_thornley]

So your saying they're actually homonyms?

Re:Uday and Qusay

[ShanghaiBill]

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.

Ummm what about equines

[Tjp($)pjT]

Horses can be much bigger than cattle.

Re:Ummm what about equines

[Trailer Trash]

What about southern trailer park women? Oh, yeah, they said "cows" would be the largest land mammal, didn't say what kind of cow.

Chronic societal obesity MOOOOOO

[stooo]

Chronic societal obesity will change this. MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO !

Re:Uday and Qusay

[PopeRatzo]

Wildlife in Africa would be much better off if there were more Western big game hunters.

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.

Water Buffalo

[HiThere]

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.)

Re:Huh? Wait a minute...

[Tablizer]

Seriously, after returning from Walmart, I suspect humans will "win" the category soon.

They should make a movie

[garryknight]

Hominim? I thought he was good in 8 Mile...

Re: Uday and Qusay

[Anonymous Coward]

All hail Comrade Poop Ratzo for being always correct!!!

Where's my buffalo?

[Invisible Now]

Just saw one nostrils steaming, and big as a freight train still roaming the untracked West.

Re:Uday and Qusay

[ShanghaiBill]

If they really cared about wildlife, why not just pay big fees without having to kill something?

Is that what you do?

Re:Uday and Qusay

[stealth_finger]

Wildlife in Africa would be much better off if there were more Western big game hunters.

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.

Maybe.

[NormanHaga2580]

Just maybe, though humans hunt, a smaller body or species has and evolutionary function, a real feature. It requires less food.

Re:"Hominims"?

[UsuallyReasonable]

I get so tired of these bad hominim arguments.

Humans are catching up

[Subm]

> "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.

Re:Humans are catching up

[sl3xd]

Present trends suggest that in a few hundred years, humans may be the largest land mammals.

Some would argue we're already the tastiest.

Re:Uday and Qusay

[stealth_finger]

Closer to the difference between a murder and a massacre but nice try.

Forgetting a few species?

[sjbe]

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.

Re:Forgetting a few species?

[sl3xd]

We've already had tremendous success in our efforts exterminate Bison. They were down to 300 in 1900, and have only recently recovered past 100k, which is still a far cry from their earlier population of 100M.

As it currently stands, the Bison's fate will likely follow that of the Auroch - extinction by domestication.

Past Performance Does Not Indicate Future Results

[Zobeid]

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.

Re:Re-introduction of species similar to ones exti

[Zobeid]

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.)

Well that's a meaningless prediction.

[sabbede]

There's a paywall, so I can't read the thing to see if there's anything actually new in there, but from the abstract it doesn't look like there is. I'm pretty sure we already knew that humans ate almost all of the megafauna, but if they came up with some interesting model to describe it that's kinda neat.

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.

Re:Well that's a meaningless prediction.

[david_thornley]

One difference from earlier times is habitat destruction. That kills lots of species, and we're doing it pretty fast nowadays.

Re:Strange

[sabbede]

Elephants, hippos and giraffes also live in the places where humans have been the longest. If we were going to eat them into extinction, it would have happened thousands of years ago.

advancements in biology may allow unextinction

[mikeabbott420]

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.

The operative word being, "could".

[rgbatduke]

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...

Re:The operative word being, "could".

[iggymanz]

I extrapolated a population curve from the mid 1300s and found out the last human died when cowboyneal left slashdot. bastard, leaving us to die like that....

None of this is a problem.

[rally2xs]

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...

Re:Very simple and free solution

[rally2xs]

Seriously, that is an excellent idea.

Oh good

[sootman]

"... an armadillo-like creature the size of a car."

Thanks for that. I was running out of nightmare fuel.

Re:Uday and Qusay

[JaredOfEuropa]

More like the difference between a murderer and an executioner

Re:"Hominims"?

[Hognoxious]

Perhaps it's another word for "hominids"?

Science on Thursday

[Hognoxious]

Odd name for a journal. Is it based in Sheffield?

The solution is simple

[Bohnanza]

Just breed more delicious elephants

It's the elephants' fault...

[Stormy Dragon]

...for not being more delicious.

What a stupid extrapolation

[SuperKendall]

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.

Re:What a stupid extrapolation

[bluefoxlucid]

It's also notable sabertooth cats keep popping up, then going extinct. Bad example.

Fun fact to know when you rub under a housecat's chin and you get poked by teeth.

Re:Uday and Qusay

[PopeRatzo]

If it's the taking of a life which is wrong why does it matter if it's a white rhino or a chicken?

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.

Bull. Not to be punny...

[Petersko]

"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.

Re: Bull. Not to be punny...

[jimbo]

I love meat and think you may be right. However, I don't mind if it doesn't taste exactly the same, as long as it tastes good.

Re:"Hominims"?

[lars5]

Top. Notch.
[applause]

I think you mean raindeer and bison

[WillAffleckUW]

Both are domesticated in the US, Canada, and Northern Europe and Asia.

They're a heck of a lot bigger than cows.

Bias

[whodunit]

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.

Extrapolation...to stupidity and beyond!!

[Shotgun]

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).

Do they not know of Wal*Mart

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Do these researchers not know of Wal*Mart?

Re:Very simple and free solution

[Shotgun]

Seriously, it has been done. South Africa opened up the ivory market to farm raised rhinos and the population started to rebound. The PETA types got that shut down.

Re:"Hominims"?

[slew]

> Perhaps it's another word for "hominids"?

Perhaps it's not a word at all?

Perhaps not, but perhaps yes ...
Or, it could simply be of homonym of hominid...
Then again it could just be typo...
We will never know...

Doing my part

[jwhyche]

I'm doing my part. I'm eating as many of the damn things as I can!

I can't stay silent with my disappointment

[JudgeFurious]

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.

Re:Just the cows?

[Walter White]

So sad. And I'm pretty sure that bulls weigh more than cows.

Hopefully the supply of frozen bull semen will last until the cows can be cloned.

Cows cows cows

[XSportSeeker]

I, for one, welcome out cows overlords
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...