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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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).

The greatest evolutionary adaptation is:

[DalM]

Being tasty or useful to humans.

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]

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

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.

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!

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.

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.