this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2025
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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.
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.
it's not "massively favouring" large mammals. it's just the metric they were interested in. it's not disingenuous to select this metric. we're not voting for president of the mammals.
But why that metric? What makes that metric a good metric to use? Was that metric genuinely the best, or was it the best to get the answer they wanted to satisfy whoever was funding the study?
No, but in general it's worth questioning any stats and figures because people we vote for use them to make policy decisions
Clearly Big Invertabrate was behind this.