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submitted 10 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

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[-] HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml 70 points 10 months ago

On the other hand, being useful to humans have made them some of the most widespread and successful plant species on the planet.

[-] Wogi@lemmy.world 33 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Being useful to humans is the single most important factor in evolutionary success rates.

Sure, there's 8 billion of us, but we collectively KILL ~~30 billion~~ 70. 70 goddamn billion chickens every year, and there's always more of those fuckers. We kill more than double the number of chickens every year than are ever currently even alive. That's how many chickens there are.

[-] v4ld1z@lemmy.zip 6 points 10 months ago

go vegan :)

[-] Wogi@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

I'm on a strict enough diet already for medical reasons, trying to get that to work without animal products would be a nightmare I don't think I can deal with.

[-] v4ld1z@lemmy.zip 1 points 10 months ago

I don't know your condition, so I can't tell you what you can or can't do. Reducing is a good enough step towards lessening animal cruelty in the world, though, so consider that maybe.

Avoiding animal-derived ingredients in medicine or finding medicine that is not animal-tested is a pain and another thing entirely, however. I get it.

Just know your priorities, I guess. If you don't care, that's fine too.

[-] SomethingBurger@jlai.lu 3 points 10 months ago

Will humanity ever get rid of chickens???

[-] Wogi@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

Hawaii hasn't been able to get them off of one island so... No

[-] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Wait, are you telling me that Hawaii has wild chickens? Are we gonna have a Chicken War, like Australia did with Emus?

[-] Wogi@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

If you go to Honolulu you'll see them wandering on the streets. They're all over the place. I think they're seen as a nuisance? I dunno I thought they were charming.

[-] Chadus_Maximus@lemm.ee 2 points 10 months ago

Didn't work out so well for the rhinos to be fair.

[-] Wogi@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago

Rhinos aren't super useful.

Being super useful has a few requirements. Elephants, for instance, are incredibly useful. They're large, they carry burdens well, they can be trained and will behave well if they're treated well, they're social and understand commands.

But they have one baby every 22 months and it takes years before they're fertile. So they're not super useful. Rhinos, similarly, do not reproduce fast enough to check off the super box.

[-] Chadus_Maximus@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

If the rhinos are not useful why do we need to hunt them so much they're going extinct?

The animal also needs to be tamable if it wants to thrive.

[-] Agent641@lemmy.world 20 points 10 months ago

Grass: is useless

Humans: "Growing a nutritionally useless plant demonstrates that Im so wealthy I can afford to waste arable land"

Grass: is now one of the dominant species on earth

[-] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

We made grains from grass. If you let most grasses get tall enough to seed, they look like green wheat.

Also I'm not certain, but wheat and corn may give grass a run for their money in acreage cover, if you count the wheat and corn as a single species, but count each specific grass separately.