this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] Litebit@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

nice, we saved cow, chicken, and pigs from extinction.

[–] aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 108 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (14 children)

we kill 3T animals a year for food/medicine/clothing/etc. Maybe we should stop?

edit: sorry, that was quite extreme of me to suggest we don't kill 3T animals a year.

[–] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 62 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I'm going to go brutally murder and deep-fry my dog just to cancel out whatever grass you ate today, you extremist vegoon! something something lions something desert island grumble grumble muh canines

Hope that serves as a warning the next time you feel like ~~expressing an opinion that differs from mine~~ being preachy.

[–] jol@discuss.tchncs.de 20 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Look I get you but

points at fangs

Canines though

[–] Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 23 points 1 week ago

^ Vampire! Run for your lives!!!

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[–] TimewornTraveler@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 1 week ago (3 children)

not sure what the edit is for... you looking to be disagreed with? are there comments I can't see?

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[–] KingGimpicus@sh.itjust.works 65 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Source?

Im gonna go out on a limb and say this is udder cowshit. Rats are mammals, as are raccoons, squirrels, and whole fucking masses of little basically unfarmable varmints. You're telling me that there's like 12 farm cows for every wild rat on earth?

Horse. Shit.

[–] needanke@feddit.org 75 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

The source apperently takes the percentages by biomass, not by count as it seems. So small varmints will not have as much of an impact as a human or cow would.

[–] hellfire103@lemmy.ca 33 points 1 week ago

in the comments section. straight up 'sourcing it'. and by 'it', haha, well. let's justr say. My pnas.

[–] then_three_more@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Which I think is intentionally disingenuous as it massively favours the large mammals over the far higher number of species of smaller mammals.

For example you'd need over 70 squeal monkeys to make to the biomass of an average American.

Humans and other great apes can be considered mega fauna, so it doesn't seem surprising that us and the animals we consume make up a higher percentage of bio mass. Were bigger.

[–] SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

I don't think it's disingenuous. It represents the total share of resource consumption. If something has 2x the biomass, it consumed 2x the materials needed to produce that biomass (purely in terms of the makeup of the body, that is)

I don't think count by itself is very relevant. There's more bacteria in a glass of water than there are humans in a country, but what does that tell you, exactly?

Although I do agree the infographic should be changed to specify biomass

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[–] theparadox@lemmy.world 24 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Quick Internet search.... https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass

They are referring to biomass.

  • 1 cow ~ 1200 lbs / 545 kg

  • 1 rat ~ 0.5 lbs / 0.25 kg

1 cow ~ 2400 rats by biomass

[–] KingGimpicus@sh.itjust.works 25 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (11 children)

Well thats not what the infographic says. It specifies "mammals", not "mammals by weight".

OK so how many tons of cow are accounted for by whales?

Or does the survey cherry pick land animals too?

[–] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 62 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Not saying at all this isn't a problem, but I hate bullshit statements that are deliberately deceiving.

These numbers are all by mass. Not actual number. Cows are huge. So are chickens, for birds. How this comic is laid out infers that there's 60 cows for every 40 of every other mammal, and that isn't even remotely close to true.

[–] silasmariner@programming.dev 30 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I think biomass is probably more important than sheer number for these comparisons. Although I would also accept 'proportion of world's arable land being used to sustain them' as I suspect the ratios come out pretty similar for obvious reasons.

[–] Limonene@lemmy.world 27 points 1 week ago (5 children)

The problem is that the infographic says "of all the mammals on Earth", which means individuals, not biomass. So the infographic is objectively false.

[–] Mustakrakish@lemmy.world 22 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] silasmariner@programming.dev 1 points 4 days ago

Misleading you to what conclusion that you wouldn't otherwise have reached?

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[–] jsomae@lemmy.ml 58 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (17 children)

Livestock have to live through horrible agony, like the worst kind of torture. This means (by biomass, which some people correlate indirectly with moral worth), at least 60% of mammals on Earth undergo horrible torture. Bentham's Bulldog, "Factory Farming is Literally Torture."

Excess pigs were roasted to death. Specifically, these pigs were killed by having hot steam enter the barn, at around 150 degrees, leading to them choking, suffocating, and roasting to death. It’s hard to see how an industry that chokes and burns beings to death can be said to be anything other than nightmarish, especially given that pigs are smarter than dogs.

Ozy Brennan: the subjective experience of animal's suffering 10/10 intense agony is likely the same as the subjective experience of a human suffering such agony. (~6 paragraph article, well worth a read.)

[–] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 18 points 1 week ago (11 children)

It says 60% of mammals are livestock, not 60% live in factory farms. I've been around cows in normal (non-factory) farms, and they seem fine. Way better off than wild animals that starve, die of disease, freeze to death, etc.

I have family members that have livestock and if something bad happens to them it's like someone hurt their child.

A seal in the 4% living in the wild may be eaten alive by a killer whale or torn to shreds by a great white shark.

We aren't going to prevent all animals from suffering, because how could we do that? Kill off all of the predators? Then there would be animal overpopulation and animals dying of starvation and disease.

Maybe we just focus on ending factory farms because that seems doable. But that effort won't be successful with obvious hyperbole claiming all livestock is treated like animals in the most horrible factory farms. Some people have actually been to farms that aren't like that you know.

People aren't stupid and if you misrepresent the facts, no one will believe anything else you're saying no matter how emotional you are when misrepresenting the facts.

[–] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Not the person you are replying to, but that is severely underestimating the amount of factory farming. They are the dominant method of production

Based on the EPA's definition of a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (i.e factory farm) and USDA census data:

All fish raised in fish farms were considered to be factory-farmed. More than 98% of hens and pigs. For chickens and turkeys, the share was more than 99%. Cows were a bit more likely to be raised outside in fields, with greater space and freedom. Nonetheless, 75% were still fed in concentrated feeding operations for at least 45 days a year.

https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-animals-are-factory-farmed

And even those that are not considered factory farmed don't always look how one may think, for instance non-factory farmed cows still use plenty of grain feed

Currently, 'grass-finished' beef accounts for less than 1% of the current US supply

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401

None of this is not limited to the US by any means. For instance in the UK:

There are more than 1,000 US-style mega-farms in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, including some holding as many as a million animals

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/18/uk-has-more-than-1000-livestock-mega-farms-investigation-reveals

Factory farming is unfortunately what scales well. If we want less factory farming we need the industry itself to be smaller. That is no impossible goal. Germany, for instance, has seen its overall meat consumption fall over the last decade

In 2011, Germans ate 138 pounds of meat each year. Today, it’s 121 pounds — a 12.3 percent decline. And much of that decline took place in the last few years, a time period when grocery sales of plant-based food nearly doubled.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23273338/germany-less-meat-plant-based-vegan-vegetarian-flexitarian

[–] jsomae@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (7 children)

60 % of mammals are livestock, not 60% live in factory farms

99% of US farmed animals live in factory farms, according to this random website I just found. I don't claim to be an expert, though, and worldwide is probably lower than than 99%, but I would bet you that the vast majority of livestock is factory-farmed.

Agreed though that not all livestock are factory farmed. I should have clarified.

I'll point out though that even some non-factory-farmed livestock are likely suffering. Bentham's Bulldog talks about how hens undergo severe agony:

Egg-laying hens in conventional farms endure about 400 hours (!!!!!) of this kind of disabling agony. Remember, this is agony about as bad as the worst thing that’s ever happened to you, unless you’ve had an experience as bad as being severely tortured.

(emphasis mine.)

--

A seal in the 4% living in the wild may be eaten alive by a killer whale or torn to shreds by a great white shark.

That's bad, though probably not anywhere near as much agony as being boiled alive for several hours until one's death. Regardless of whether you feel morally obligated to reduce wild animal suffering, you should admit that (a) from a utilitarian perspective, it's much easier to reduce factory farm suffering, and (b) from a deontological perspective, factory farming is (collectively) our fault, whereas the food chain isn't.

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[–] Gustephan@lemmy.world 54 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I don't think this is loss. I'm ready to eat crow if I'm proven wrong, but I think the real joke is the amount of time people will spend staring at this image and trying to figure out how it's loss

[–] floo@retrolemmy.com 16 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I’ve eaten crow. I would not recommend it.

[–] pHr34kY@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This sounds like a way to cause an outbreak of Corvid-19.

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[–] Pierre121000@lemmy.ml 51 points 1 week ago (2 children)
[–] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 22 points 1 week ago

I don't want to sound all Malthusian but that's kind of fucked??

[–] jsomae@lemmy.ml 19 points 1 week ago (5 children)

more elephants than I expected tbh

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[–] mysticpickle@lemmy.ca 34 points 1 week ago (2 children)

You forgot the citation bro.

[–] Bosht@lemmy.world 25 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Title made me think they were doing some 4 levels deep "loss" meme. It almost has it but frame 3 isn't close.

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[–] ryedaft@sh.itjust.works 24 points 1 week ago
[–] graycube@lemmy.world 23 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Are pets livestock, or did they miss a category of mammals? In the US there are more dogs than children.

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[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 15 points 1 week ago

birbs are only 2/3rds unreal confirmed ✅

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 15 points 1 week ago

I didn't realise rhinos were so small. No wonder I never see them.

[–] fossilesque@mander.xyz 15 points 1 week ago (4 children)

End of the Holocene, Last of the Megafauna party.

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[–] zod000@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 week ago

This is highly depressing to see first thing in the morning.

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