There are only five well-documented fatal lightning strikes on giraffes between 1996 and 2010. But due to the population of the species being just 140,000 during this time, it makes for about 0.003 lightning deaths per thousand giraffes each year. This is 30 times the equivalent fatality rate for humans.
Pic by Luca Galuzzi
Insane to think there's only 140k of them. Seems super low for some reason.
Wild mammals only make up 4% of the total mammal biomass, and that 4% includes whales. We're just not leaving a lot of room for nature anymore.
This is surprising to me, I grew up in a rural area where deer far outnumbered people. Also you'd think despite their small size the sheer number of rodents in the wild would increase the biomass by more than that. There are large amounts of the earth that is still uninhabited by humans, in mountains, cold climates, islands and keys, oceans, lakes, etc. I'm sure the scientists are right, I'm just shocked.
This is just mammals, so most water creatures aren't being counted, which is going to be the majority of all animal biomass. So those waters you mention are mostly being ignored, but for living on land and for explaining land usage, just comparing the mammals is more informative.
I suspect that for my country, if you'd add human + pig + cattle biomass together, that you'd end up with about 99% of the biomass of all land animals. The remaining 1% is probably going to be mostly chickens. Other livestock, pets or wild animals will be lost in the rounding error. It's only a suspicion though, I can't find actual numbers straight away.
Edit: I did find some numbers after all: humans + pigs + cattle are 99.9% of the mammal biomass in my country. It's actually worse than I thought it was going to be. I can't find a number for chickens + birds, just the mammals.
Holy fuck, more biomass in cattle than chicken?
May I ask what country?
Is it possible that you're thinking of slaughterhouse biomass? I was talking about the biomass of concurrently alive animals and I would expect just milk cows to outweigh chickens in a lot of countries.
My guesstimations are for Flanders, the northern half of Belgium. There's also a lot of chickens, but pigs + cattle weigh more per animal + live longer, which is why I expect them to weigh significantly more than the chickens at any given time. It's not sustainable in any way, I read once that about 90% of the livestock food is imported, 2/3rd of that from outside Europe.
Ah yeah, I was including slaughterhouse biomass
That explains it, thanks!
Lakes and rivers still have otters and beavers, etc. Not huge biomass but still relevant. Oceans have all sorts of mammals, most of the largest ocean creatures. Only 30% of land is inhabited by humans and our agriculture but land and freshwater is only 29% of earth and 71% of earth is oceans. 30% of 29% is like 8.5%. Once you start factoring in how little of the earth we actually inhabit or our agriculture, it is pretty surprising how heavily we dominate the mammal kingdom.
It's even more surprising, how we can fuck up the planet in this way, although we aren't even everywhere
But, where we are, we disturb, fuck up, and only look for our own comfort.
As the supposedly intelligent race on the planet, I would expect much more from us, than just survival - and even that we don't get right, as it seems, that it over consumption kills the resources we need
Yeah, really intelligent...
I'm not saying, that another dominant animal would do it better, but I've really much higher standards, when it comes to people, as we have the ability for empathy as well, but mostly we got the power.
Seems we can't move intellectually from being just animal and fulfilling our own needs