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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
I highly doubt that...you give me like, I dunno, let's say 5 people, and a catapult, and I bet you I can hit a giraffe before it gets struck by lightning.
Even more confident if you give me a people-sized potato cannon.
Ah, the new Lemmy giraffaroo?
We should start a chain on Lemmy
Already started: !lemmaroo@lemmy.world
The head of the chain is currently here: https://feddit.org/comment/1716202
Cool
It's the old lemmaroo!lemmaroo@lemmy.world at this point.
You can edit your giraffaroo to point to this link: https://feddit.org/comment/1716202
can we catapult people in order of their current wealth hoarding?
Only into an active volcano
But that's the thing, you're NOT out there with your catapult, so the statistics still hold true. Assuming you were given the catapult and I was given a giant tesla coil, I believe I would still be able to zap 30x more giraffes than you could hit with your pathetic catapult.
Isn't it because it's illegal for us to hit them?
why you little
This is mostly caused by Africans wiring up giraffes for use as aerials to pull in distant TV stations.
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.
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
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!
Does it make a difference if I stand in front of the giraffe with a blue card while there's a zebra climbing onto the giraffes head?
Fun nature fact: Their horns act like lighting rods to provide a safe path to ground so as to keep the electricity away from their internal wiring and plumbing.
Please let this be true.
If you didn't wire your giraffes like this I don't know how you made it past apprenticeship and into the union. Imagine.
Who’s out here punching giraffes?
Kyle.
RFJ JR
How about the fact that humans live all across the world, even in places where you don't really have lightnings?
Wouldn't we have to compare the number of humans hit by lightning, only in the areas where giraffes live?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_lightning
The articles only compares to humans in the US... This is very unscientific especially comming from this media!
While that's true and what I'm about to say could be legend rather than reality, I grew up being told that giraffes also tend to go to the top of a hill during storms, making them more likely to be struck by lightning.
Have we tried running copper strips down the side of their necks?
Also, according to many big game hunters, they are the tastiest animal. Apparently giraffe meat has a delightful sweetness to it.
Sadly, giraffe ranching hasn't caught on. But maybe once lab grown meat is widely available someone will finally bring it to the masses.
They taste something like bald eagle, with a hint of condor.
Is it because of the spots?
It's their feet. They have four, so have twice as many as humans. But lightning works exponentially.
what kind of lightning works exponentially?
What about toads?
Yes, toads will hit giraffes more than humans. They get mesmerised and hypnotised by the long necks, they can't help themselves but to attack.
Also take 30x longer to clear their throat. Human: Ahem. Giraffe: Ahem ahem ahem ahem ahem ahem...
OK now give us tall people's probability as well. I am curious
:(
This is why we find lots of well preserved dynosours.