• HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml
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    8 months ago

    On the other hand, being useful to humans have made them some of the most widespread and successful plant species on the planet.

    • Wogi@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Being useful to humans is the single most important factor in evolutionary success rates.

      Sure, there’s 8 billion of us, but we collectively KILL 30 billion 70. 70 goddamn billion chickens every year, and there’s always more of those fuckers. We kill more than double the number of chickens every year than are ever currently even alive. That’s how many chickens there are.

        • Wogi@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Rhinos aren’t super useful.

          Being super useful has a few requirements. Elephants, for instance, are incredibly useful. They’re large, they carry burdens well, they can be trained and will behave well if they’re treated well, they’re social and understand commands.

          But they have one baby every 22 months and it takes years before they’re fertile. So they’re not super useful. Rhinos, similarly, do not reproduce fast enough to check off the super box.

        • Wogi@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          I’m on a strict enough diet already for medical reasons, trying to get that to work without animal products would be a nightmare I don’t think I can deal with.

          • Firestorm Druid@lemmy.zip
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            8 months ago

            I don’t know your condition, so I can’t tell you what you can or can’t do. Reducing is a good enough step towards lessening animal cruelty in the world, though, so consider that maybe.

            Avoiding animal-derived ingredients in medicine or finding medicine that is not animal-tested is a pain and another thing entirely, however. I get it.

            Just know your priorities, I guess. If you don’t care, that’s fine too.

    • Agent641@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Grass: is useless

      Humans: “Growing a nutritionally useless plant demonstrates that Im so wealthy I can afford to waste arable land”

      Grass: is now one of the dominant species on earth

      • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        We made grains from grass. If you let most grasses get tall enough to seed, they look like green wheat.

        Also I’m not certain, but wheat and corn may give grass a run for their money in acreage cover, if you count the wheat and corn as a single species, but count each specific grass separately.