4 ms·
ummmm, hmmmmmmm, It's high time we realised that we are the largest single niche, and animal biomass, that possibly, has ever existed, and it is a law of biolog
by metalman 2y ago
ummmm, hmmmmmmm, It's high time we realised that we are the largest single niche, and animal biomass, that possibly, has ever existed, and it is a law of biology, that each niche will be filled.
This means that any peicemeal approach is going to lagg, and uncontrollable epidemics become more and more likely.
Confounding factors are that our diets and lifestyles are converging into a more homegenous whole, and all in all we live longer, but are less fit ,while dependent on our haphazard use of "medicine" to provide cheap health care.
My personal experience is that I now notice a lot more fungal smell in otherwise good looking food, and have stopped buying certain foods, not that I worryed about catching anything, but that it tastes bad, and is alarming only because it is a "stealth" fungus, often showing as just a tiny bit of black stuff, rather than an obvious fuzzy mess.
- mbil 2y agoHumans aren’t the largest biomass
- mrob 2y agoRelevant paper: The biomass distribution on Earth https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1711842115 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1711842115 I saw a good 3D visualization of this data using a customized version of Minecraft: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXDZ2LTTKUE&t=505s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXDZ2LTTKUE&t=505s
- maxerickson 2y agoYeah, that sounded wrong to me. We punch pretty high for a single species though: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2021/08/total-biomass-weight-species-earth/ https://www.weforum.org/stories/2021/08/total-biomass-weight...
- chasil 2y ago"By weight, human beings are insignificant." https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/29/17386112/all-life-on-earth-chart-weight-plants-animals-pnas https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/29/17386112/al... (Sorry you're getting down voted.)
- metalman 2y agodiferent sources put humans as second only to cattle, for a single animal species, so I was wrong, but I did mean single species of animal. As to getting down/up voted, I am useing it as an anylitical tool to understand what facets of what I write are offensive, at least to some, and a fine line seems to exist where some of what I say, gets positive comments, or engagement, while bieng down voted at the same time, which is puzzling but interesting.If I go through what I write a few times, sometimes I can see the possibly ambiguous bits, and make them clearer, which seems to lessen the down voteing. Kind of like a tough love writing school around here that way.