7 ms·
FYI, this a bad idea because Hippos are not cute placid animals. They are deadly dangerous. They may be herbivorous, but a Hippo is two tons of bad-tempered "ag
by SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
FYI, this a bad idea because Hippos are not cute placid animals. They are deadly dangerous. They may be herbivorous, but a Hippo is two tons of bad-tempered "aggressive and territorial" bastard, and they can move faster than you can, on land or in the water.
"the hippopotamus is the world's deadliest large land mammal, killing an estimated 500 people per year
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-36320744 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-36320744
- bigyikes 3y ago> "the hippopotamus is the world's deadliest large land mammal, killing an estimated 500 people per year” ah yes, the humble hippopotamus, my favorite LLM (sorry llamas!) :)
- qup 3y agoThey rejected the RLHF, no doubt
- dmm 3y agoreinforcement learning from human fatalities
- kerkeslager 3y agoThis would have been a pretty bad AI (animal invasion).
- jokowueu 3y agoTechnically speaking , arnt humans the most dangerous land mammal ?
- jylam 3y ago"large land mammal"
- bloomingeek 3y agoYes, but you can't eat them, silly. (All kidding aside, I hear hippo taste like chicken.)
- Alex3917 3y ago> the hippopotamus is the world's deadliest large land mammal, killing an estimated 500 people per year I'm pretty sure that excessive consumption of beef and pork kills a lot more than 500 people per year.
- rmdashrfstar 3y agoThe largest and strongest animals are herbivores and yet people are obsessed with eating flesh because “protein”, lol
- pawelmurias 3y agoYou should eat only grass for a year and report back how you feel about this.
- Firmwarrior 3y agoDoes wheat-based cereal count?
- ceejayoz 3y agoHippos have to graze up to 16 hours a day. Meat is a shortcut that enabled our species to put time into other things that made us the dominant species on the planet.
- timeon 3y agoSo is wheat/gluten.
- grumple 3y agoHerbivores have digestive tracks that are better at breaking down plant matter than ours [1]. They also spend far more time eating [2]. Obviously these are not huge problems these days, since we can grow plants that give us more protein and calories, while being easier to digest. But to say "hippo get strong from eating plant, you get strong from eating plant" is pretty silly. If you spend 5-6 hours a day eating grass like a hippo, you will die from starvation. 1. https://stluciasouthafrica.com/hippo-facts/hippo-digestive-system/ https://stluciasouthafrica.com/hippo-facts/hippo-digestive-s... 2. https://ielc.libguides.com/sdzg/factsheets/hippopotamus/diet#:~:text=Spend%20day%20in%20water%2C%20night,land%20grazing%205%2D6%20hours https://ielc.libguides.com/sdzg/factsheets/hippopotamus/diet....
- shawabawa3 3y agoPresumably a few generations of selective breeding could get us some nice docile hippos
- BigCryo 3y agoHey, pigs can be very dangerous too.. many a lad has been treed in rural America in decades past by a herd of feral hogs.. go read the book Old yeller or even watch the movie if books are not your thing
- whizzter 3y ago"""Legit question for rural Americans – How do I kill the 30-50 feral hippos that run into my yard within 3-5 mins while my small kids play?"""
- moron4hire 3y agoI'm assuming you mean pigs, not hippos. My understanding (and you'll have to check your local laws) is that there is no "hunting season" for wild pigs because they are considered a pest species and thus they can be culled at anytime, with no restriction on type of weapon. So basically, this is one case where an AR-15 would actually be a decent weapon for civilian use. Most places won't let you use a high-capacity, auto-loading rifle for hunting, but wild-pig-pest-control isn't hunting. On the other hand, AR-15s are kinda 'spensive, so an AK-47 pattern rifle in 7.62x39mm might be a better choice (and surplus ammo is plentiful). The AK-74 pattern rifles in 5.45x39mm that I've seen have tended to be almost as expensive as a "cheap" AR-15, so at that point I don't know why you wouldn't just get an AR-15 for the more common ammo type. If price is especially a problem, then a Hi Point carbine in 40S&W or 45ACP won't break the bank and should have enough stopping power. Plus, they usually come with some cheap optics that are more than adequate for the effective range of the rifle, which basically makes the thing almost as easy to shoot as a video game. But they are quite, erhm, ugly (mushy trigger pull, bad ergonomics), so if you can swing a more expensive rifle, that'd be preferable.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- zrail 3y agoImma let you finish but 30-50 feral hogs is a meme. See sibling comment.
- dangus 3y agoWhich is why “nearly became a food staple” is not a very honest headline. Nobody would have succeeded at this endeavor, so the idea that this “almost” happened is ludicrous. You might as well say that Star Trek almost invented warp drive.
- Aissen 3y agoMankind has transformed deadly predators (wolves) into routine companions (dogs); and over centuries created multiple species specifically for food consumption (many plants, but also modern cows, sheep, etc.). I think hippos would have been possible; albeit probably not desirable.
- justinator 3y agoI think there are many theories that say that the dog had some say in the matter of being domesticated. Could have actually been there idea to start! It’s a wonder how few truly domesticated animals there are which may lead one to believe that it’s not so easy or natural. I guess we could give each hippo a lobotomy but that really wouldn’t go over well with the PETA crowd and I’m not shy to say I’d probably side with them on this matter.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dangus 3y agoThat's true, though none of the aforementioned animals need to live inside a body of water.
- justrealist 3y agoUn-castrated bulls are also deadly dangerous. We just have a lot of infrastructure around keeping them away from people (and minimizing the number that remain intact).
- chimeracoder 3y ago> Un-castrated bulls are also deadly dangerous. Yes, but nowhere near as dangerous or as aggressive as hippos are. Cows are domesticated. There's a reason that all attempts to domesticate hippos have failed.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y agoDairy bulls are the worst. It might be wrong to say that they are effectively domesticated... the genes for high milk production are tangled up with those for aggressiveness (I hesitate here, "hostility" might be a better word) in males.
- iancmceachern 3y agoCattle are equally, if not more, dangerous, and also kill over 500 people a year in the US
- chimeracoder 3y ago> Cattle are equally, if not more, dangerous, and also kill over 500 people a year in the US According to the CDC, it's closer to 25/year[0] (108 over 4 years). And that's just raw totals, not accounting for populations size or the relative likelihood of encounters. People underestimate how dangerous cows are, but hippos are way more aggressive and dangerous. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5829a2.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5829a2.htm
- bombcar 3y agoAlso I've seen cows alongside the road many times (as required by international law, you have to moo at them) - but I've never seen a hippo except in a zoo.
- stephenhuey 3y agoThere are a little over 100,000 hippos in the world and almost 100 million cattle in the USA, so on a per capita basis it's not even close! My grandfather raised cattle in Texas and we had to be aware at times, but the level of caution was nowhere near the extent needed when my brother and friends went fishing for giwan ruwa ("river elephant" aka Nile perch) in a remote part of Nigeria, because hippos were nearby! And when my friends took a 3-day canoe trip down the Zambezi River, the guides were vigilant about hippos more than anything else, because they are very aggressive when they feel threatened and they can bite a crocodile in half. Cattle are domesticated animals, but hippos are wild!
- iancmceachern 3y agoTrue, but comparing a domesticated animal in a feed lot to wild animals doesn't really track. Comparing hippo deaths in captive populations, like in zoos, ate more comparable to domesticated farm animals.
- fencepost 3y agoSo it'd be just like herds of cattle except all of them with the gentle demeanor of uncut bulls in close proximity to other uncut bulls. Eeeeeeasy! For someone else to do.
- munificent 3y ago> the hippopotamus Jesus Christ, they should find that hippo and take the fucker out before it kills us all.