/sci/ - Science & Math

>>9767233
The world has never had this many cows (several magnitudes more than all the buffalo that ever were).

In fact, up until 300 years ago, the world never had even 1/10th this many land mammals. Our cats and dogs alone are estimated to collectively outweigh all the land dinosaurs at the peek of the Jurassic, and also outweigh all the wild land mammals alive today combined.

>>9687074
>>9687097
Lions are a social species with empathy within their own, and the ability to adopt pets. If they were to develop sapience and larger societies, they might very well develop similar moral qualms and quandaries as we do, for the same reasons. Empathy is what all our morality grew out of.

I presume they might, much as we sometimes do, instead aim at minimizing the suffering of their livestock. Perhaps defending the idea that healthy happy livestock, that have a quick death, or healthier than those that suffer their whole lives - again, much as we do.

Though the main problem I always see with the vegan morality, is they seem to have this delusion that the livestock population would just slowly widdle away from attrition, were everyone to stop eating animals. The real problem is that there's a market cliff, so what you'd end up with instead is billions of animals slaughtered in short order, creating the largest animal genocide in human history - and indeed, any history, going back to the KT extinction event. There's simply too many of em, and they are sitting on some of the most valuable fertile land around, so it's not as if they are going to be allowed to live there.

>>9030324
Fair point.

Though there's some question as how sustainable things would be without that diversity... And it is a bit creepy that we've cut that diversity in half in just the past fifty years - in most cases, without even really trying to do so, but instead through incidental random habitat loss.

>>8662652
Until we decide we don't want them there, or need those parks for something else.

Land reserves, like Yellowstone, work fine for deer, for now, but parks in cities do not, and urbanization and habitat destruction is going to continue to spread indefinitely - unless we develop biological immortality and enforce a population cap on ourselves or some other strange such thing.

Given we wiped out about 50% of the land dwelling megafauna over the past half century alone, I suspect, by the time our grandchildren come along, there won't be any such thing as large "wild animals" - only the domesticated, the few feral ones derived from them, and perhaps a handful of reserves in zoos and such.

>>8659969
Hate to tell ya, but given our population size, we're probably the least destructive species on Earth. Largely because we're the only species that gives a fuck, rather than forced to live within our means as a matter of the circumstances we create.

But, well, pic related. Can you imagine what would happen if any other animal on the planet of our mass bread to these numbers without being controlled and corralled by us though? They'd simply destroy everything.

Animals overtake their resources and die out all the fucking time. They rarely, if ever, decide, "Hey, maybe we should start rationing this shit and not eating endangered species X for awhile." When it happens, it is because circumstances forces it upon them, not because they made the conscious decision.

More importantly, humans are the only species with any possibility to leave this doomed biosphere, and take a plethora of genetics along with it. So we're the story of life on Earth's only hope for survival. It's unlikely the biosphere has enough time left in it to develop another, if whatever wipes us out also puts an end to all other complex life.

Sure, we might be the ones to end all complex life ourselves, but that's the gamble life has decided to take: GTFO or die trying.

>>8442737
>2/3's of all vertebrates are going to die in 4 fucking years? how the shit could that happen?

That's not what the article says...

>The analysis, the most comprehensive to date, indicates that animal populations plummeted by 58% between 1970 and 2012, with losses on track to reach 67% by 2020.

2/3rds lost in 50 years, not four. (Not that it isn't still impressive.)

But fear not, the domesticated ones will still be common as fuck - provided we don't all go vegan. Hell, the large wild land mammals are already effectively extinct, when set next to their populations.

>>7390391
> forgot my image

>>6409026
Even dogs and cats should be included for the love of buddha

There are billions of dogs and cats on the planet, their sheer mass requires inconceivable amounts of fuel and resources to sustain. Doubt it? The last research I saw found owning a dog to be equivalent in terms of resource use to a 4.2L Toyota Land cruiser.

Think about how much resources are used up by a family of 4 Americans with 2 cats and a dog and 2 SUVs. Its a hell of a lot of land, water, and primary energy.

Back to the point of protection, consult this chart. It shows clearly to what extent we humans are "sharing" the planet, as demonstrated in mass fraction.

For more info, read Vaclav's Smil's 2012(?) paper on the Biosphere (forget exact title). He concludes as of now we are consuming roughly 20-40% of the Earth's primary productivity and his mass calculations corroborate what is shown in the graph.