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submitted 4 days ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

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[-] KingGimpicus@sh.itjust.works 64 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Source?

Im gonna go out on a limb and say this is udder cowshit. Rats are mammals, as are raccoons, squirrels, and whole fucking masses of little basically unfarmable varmints. You're telling me that there's like 12 farm cows for every wild rat on earth?

Horse. Shit.

[-] needanke@feddit.org 75 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

The source apperently takes the percentages by biomass, not by count as it seems. So small varmints will not have as much of an impact as a human or cow would.

[-] then_three_more@lemmy.world 15 points 4 days ago

Which I think is intentionally disingenuous as it massively favours the large mammals over the far higher number of species of smaller mammals.

For example you'd need over 70 squeal monkeys to make to the biomass of an average American.

Humans and other great apes can be considered mega fauna, so it doesn't seem surprising that us and the animals we consume make up a higher percentage of bio mass. Were bigger.

[-] SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I don't think it's disingenuous. It represents the total share of resource consumption. If something has 2x the biomass, it consumed 2x the materials needed to produce that biomass (purely in terms of the makeup of the body, that is)

I don't think count by itself is very relevant. There's more bacteria in a glass of water than there are humans in a country, but what does that tell you, exactly?

Although I do agree the infographic should be changed to specify biomass

[-] wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

It would be MUCH more than 2x resource consumption, because every action that animal takes requires greater energy to move it around. The energy required to sustain larger lifeforms is significantly greater than the proportion of their mass.

[-] yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 3 days ago

Not necessarily, many small animals have an utterly insane metabolism making them eat their entire body mass in a couple of days. For example, hummingbirds eat the human equivalent of 150,000 calories per day.

Larger animals typically cannot afford to spend so much energy - there is just no large food source that has sufficient calory density.

[-] wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Good point! I'd love to see a by-genus breakdown of average metabolic rate vs body mass.

[-] ogler@lemmynsfw.com 1 points 4 days ago

it's not "massively favouring" large mammals. it's just the metric they were interested in. it's not disingenuous to select this metric. we're not voting for president of the mammals.

[-] then_three_more@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago

But why that metric? What makes that metric a good metric to use? Was that metric genuinely the best, or was it the best to get the answer they wanted to satisfy whoever was funding the study?