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Yeah totally, I have read that the total biomass of cows and dogs dwarfs that of say lions or elephants Because humans like eating beef, and they like having e

by chubot 1y ago

Yeah totally, I have read that the total biomass of cows and dogs dwarfs that of say lions or elephants Because humans like eating beef, and they like having emotional support from dogs That seems to be true: https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass Livestock make up 62% of the world’s mammal biomass; humans account for 34%; and wild mammals are just 4% https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/environment/weight-responsibility-biomass-livestock-dwarfs-wild-mammals https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/environment/weight-respons... Wild land mammals weigh less than 10 percent of the combined weight of humans https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2204892120 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2204892120 I mean it is pretty obvious when you think that 10,000 years ago, the Americas had all sorts of large animals, as Africa still does to some extent And then when say the Europeans got here, those animals were mostly gone ... their "biomass" just collapsed --- Same thing with plants. There were zillions of kinds of plants all over the planet, but corn / wheat / potatoes are now an overwhelming biomass, because humans like to eat them. Michael Pollan also had a good description of this as our food supply changing from being photosynthesis-based to fossil-fuel-based Due to the Haber-Bosch process, invented in the early 1900's, to create nitrogen fertilizer Fertilizer is what feeds industrial corn and wheat ... So yeah the entire "metabolism" of the planet has been changed by humans And those plants live off of a different energy source now

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graemep 1y ago
That is only mammalian biomass, though. > And then when say the Europeans got here, those animals were mostly gone ... their "biomass" just collapsed A lot of species had long been extinct, but the biomass of the remaining ones fell. Megafauna extinctions always follow 1. the mere arrival of humans and 2. agriculture and growth in human populations. Places the humans did not reach until later, kept a lot more megafauna for longer - e.g. New Zealand where flourishing species such as moas became extinct within a century or two of human settlement.
- chubot 1y ago
  Yeah I actually meant that the first extinction happened 10,000 years ago when humans first arrived on the continent! Humans arriving is what caused the biomass of animals to collapse And then Europeans arriving basically finished the job ... that one probably affected the plants more, due to agriculture. (but also the remaining animals) Yeah New Zealand is a good example.

by chubot 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

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graemep 1y ago

That is only mammalian biomass, though. > And then when say the Europeans got here, those animals were mostly gone ... their "biomass" just collapsed A lot of species had long been extinct, but the biomass of the remaining ones fell. Megafauna extinctions always follow 1. the mere arrival of humans and 2. agriculture and growth in human populations. Places the humans did not reach until later, kept a lot more megafauna for longer - e.g. New Zealand where flourishing species such as moas became extinct within a century or two of human settlement.

chubot 1y ago
Yeah I actually meant that the first extinction happened 10,000 years ago when humans first arrived on the continent! Humans arriving is what caused the biomass of animals to collapse And then Europeans arriving basically finished the job ... that one probably affected the plants more, due to agriculture. (but also the remaining animals) Yeah New Zealand is a good example.