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Well, exaggerations aside such as blocking the sun, cows and pigs represent 60% of all mammal biomass on earth right now ... > Humans account for about 36 per

Well, exaggerations aside such as blocking the sun, cows and pigs represent 60% of all mammal biomass on earth right now ... > Humans account for about 36 percent of the biomass of all mammals. Domesticated livestock, mostly cows and pigs, account for 60 percent, and wild mammals for only 4 percent. > The same holds true for birds. The biomass of poultry is about three times higher than that of wild birds. > "It is definitely striking, our disproportionate place on Earth," Milo told The Guardian. "When I do a puzzle with my daughters, there is usually an elephant next to a giraffe next to a rhino. But if I was trying to give them a more realistic sense of the world, it would be a cow next to a cow next to a cow and then a chicken ... [0] I would love to see how that compares to the great bison herds, or the great African savanna migrations Maybe as an idea, just the food and the fact that bison etc used to have a more active life and varied foods than modern cows meant that they released less methane? Lastly, ought be noted that methane releases from industrial agriculture are very much under counted and that might need to be accounted into the comparison [1] [0] https://www-ecowatch-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.ecowatch.com/amp/biomass-humans-animals-2571413930 https://www-ecowatch-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.ecowatch... [1] https://www-technologynetworks-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.technologynetworks.com/applied-sciences/news/amp/methane-emissions-from-livestock-may-be-routinely-undercounted-349404 https://www-technologynetworks-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/ww...

truffdog 5y ago
It wasn't an exaggeration- https://blog.history.in.gov/flocks-that-darken-the-heavens-the-passenger-pigeon-in-indiana/ https://blog.history.in.gov/flocks-that-darken-the-heavens-t... Pre-Columbian animal density in the Americas was insane, from cod in the east, to buffalo in the middle, to salmon and sardines in the west. People thought it was limitless until it very abruptly wasn't.
- shipman05 5y ago
  > Pre-Columbian animal density in the Americas was insane, from cod in the east, to buffalo in the middle, to salmon and sardines in the west. People thought it was limitless until it very abruptly wasn't. I'm unsure about the fisheries, but the other numbers are debated now. Until very recent times, the reports of European explorers pushing into the interior of North America were taken as a good proxy for the pre-Columbian state of those areas. We now know that those areas were far more densely populated before 1500 than they were more than 200 years later when European settlers started moving in. European diseases preceded European settlers and completely wiped out much of the continent's population. AFIK, it's still being debated, but it seems reasonable that: - Predators like wolves kept large herd animal numbers relatively low - Large populations of Native Americans killed those predators but continued to keep the numbers of herd animals low via hunting - Native American population collapse coupled with low numbers of predator species allowed bison herd numbers to explode - European settlers arrived in the 1700s and 1800s and made the mistaken assumption that both the Native American and bison populations they encountered represented the way things had always been.

truffdog 5y ago

It wasn't an exaggeration- https://blog.history.in.gov/flocks-that-darken-the-heavens-the-passenger-pigeon-in-indiana/ https://blog.history.in.gov/flocks-that-darken-the-heavens-t... Pre-Columbian animal density in the Americas was insane, from cod in the east, to buffalo in the middle, to salmon and sardines in the west. People thought it was limitless until it very abruptly wasn't.

shipman05 5y ago
> Pre-Columbian animal density in the Americas was insane, from cod in the east, to buffalo in the middle, to salmon and sardines in the west. People thought it was limitless until it very abruptly wasn't. I'm unsure about the fisheries, but the other numbers are debated now. Until very recent times, the reports of European explorers pushing into the interior of North America were taken as a good proxy for the pre-Columbian state of those areas. We now know that those areas were far more densely populated before 1500 than they were more than 200 years later when European settlers started moving in. European diseases preceded European settlers and completely wiped out much of the continent's population. AFIK, it's still being debated, but it seems reasonable that: - Predators like wolves kept large herd animal numbers relatively low - Large populations of Native Americans killed those predators but continued to keep the numbers of herd animals low via hunting - Native American population collapse coupled with low numbers of predator species allowed bison herd numbers to explode - European settlers arrived in the 1700s and 1800s and made the mistaken assumption that both the Native American and bison populations they encountered represented the way things had always been.