A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
This is why cows kill so many people. Its really easy for an animal five or six times your weight to kill you just by interacting the same way it does with its own species.
That gets worse as the animal gets bigger.
And cows are basically calm little angels compared to say, hippos.
Moose π
Anyone who's played Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead will tell you: Moose are NOT to be messed with. Hoo boi.
In the right (wrong?) season, if you see them across the map, pray they haven't seen you.
I imagine this models a healthy respect for real moose too lol.
I have played Vintage Story and moose are the apex predator for me. Ill fight any number of horrifying eldritch rot rust monsters from another dimension before i go near a moose.
...thank you, Rimmer...
Goose πͺΏ
One of the creatures I'm most worried about meeting camping or hiking is a moose. If they had a moose's temperament they would have been one of the most terrifying things to walk the earth. They would also probably be getting hammered off fermented prehistoric fruit
Good Dinosaur reference?
I live in (not tropical) Australia, so there are practically no animals that are dangerous (camels and big roos might do you harm if you got them at speed in a car)
No lions, tigers, wolves, or bears here. No hippos, no elephants
We have crocodiles way up north, but even they won't go after you if you stay out of the water
Spiders, octopuses, jellyfish and snakes:
Harmful spiders are redbacks (which are the same spider as black widows) and Sydney funnelwebs, neither of which chase you or seek your shoes (do check under the dunny seat for redbacks though, but it's not an issue in indoor toilets). Don't dig up web lined holes with your hands and you won't be bitten by a funnelwebs
The blue ringed octopus is the only dangerous octopus and it tries to keep out of your way. If it is trapped in a small tidal pool don't pick it up and you won't be envenomated
Jellyfish - don't swim in the ocean where there are signs telling you not to swim in the ocean. Box jellies and irukandji are regional and seasonal and the beaches they threaten are well signposted (that's also in the tropics and just south of the tropics)
Snakes - Australian snakes aren't dangerous. They are highly venomous but they don't want to risk tangling with humans; humans eat them, and have for 40,000 years (that's 4 times longer than humans have had bread). Give them room and they'll move off. They pretty much won't bite unless you corner them, try to catch them, or step on them.
In most of Australia you could sleep unprotected, with your food in an esky at your feet
Australian parrots are big on getting hammered on fermenting fruit
Giant modern herbivores I would willingly pet in the wild. Buffalo: no. Elephant: no. Reindeer: no. Rhino: no. Water buffalo: no. Giraffe: no. Hippo: no.
Based on modern examples, Iβd stay the fuck away.
How do you feel about manatees?
Ooh...or a capybara?
100 pounds? Capybaras aren't anywhere near the size of my other examples. But Iβd stay out of the water with a manatee. I donβt think a manatee would care about my existence, but Iβd be fine with petting one while Iβm on a boat and itβs in the water.
Capybaras are awesome!
Petting a manatee is a $10,000 fine. No touch.
Yeah thatβs the only thing that would keep me from swimming with on. Also that I hate swimming in murky water, reeds, or sea weed.
They're cool to swim with! Water's plenty clear where they hang. Ex-gf was a diver and had a side hustle taking people swimming with manatees near the warm springs where they post up for the winter.
They'll come right up on you! You just can't touch them. She even got a pic of a newborn! Like, a few minutes old newborn!
I'd much rather turn a blind corner and find myself standing right in front of a grizzly mother with her cubs than a hippo or a moose.
There's a band of capibaras living in my city... they already killed 2 people.
Capybara are dangerous?! Do they kill by biting or what?
Yes, they bite.
The local news had to run a campaign for people not to try to pet the capibaras.
Elephants are herbivores too. And you definitely do not fuck with elephants in the wild.
Don't kink shame me
Remember, the wise phrase of "If not friend, why friend-shaped?" is not only for bears.
I've seen videos of horses and deer eating small animals. I don't remember which was which but one just picked like a pigeon up off the ground and started chewing.
Anyways, the point is that the herbivores we know today will often eat meat if it's an easy meal. There's no reason to think that a brachiosaurus would be any different.
I distinctly remember a horse eating a baby chicken.
Who started the assumption that herbivores were all sweet harmless cuddle bugs anyhow? Because they had obviously never interacted with a large herbivore before.
Most people aren't ever really exposed to nature. You can have a cuddly dairy cow, but that's not universal. Most encounters people have are going to be with animals that are docile and used to human interactions.
Also it is a little counter intuitive at first. Predators will retreat from a fight of it's not worth the effort. Prey doesn't retreat once the fight starts, because it's literally life or death for them.
You can have a cuddly dairy cow, but thatβs not universal.
Far from universal. About 20 people die per year in the USA from attacks by cows. They are huge powerful animals that don't generally don't give a shit about people (they're used to them, for the most part) but if they decide you are a threat to them or their calf, you're fucked.
People are gored by bison at Yellowstone every year. When I visited a few years ago, the rangers were actively having to tell people to avoid an elk who, with his harem, had decided to hang out in Fort Yellowstone for a couple days. People are dumb, or don't think "wow that's a 600+ lb animal the size of a minivan".
A lot of herbivores are occasional opportunistic carnivores. I bet that thing's molars would make quick work of a human's bones.
...that they survived into the fossil records is proof enough, stupid people think that anything that survived long enough to be in the fossil record was nice, uhh, i have a rust-colored bridge in San Fancisco for you...cheap...
...ffs, we only just discovered a new species that had been in the stomach juices of another big lizard...
Herbivores will wreck your life if you mess with them. Remember that twit hunter who approached a deer and paid for it? Or all those other twits who need to be reminded bison in Yellowstone are NOT friendly just because they're fluffy?
My dog kills things for sport, she sees and she stomps, her brother is a big baby and just cries whenever she is doing something she shouldn't. You can't trust behavior so generally
Edvard Munch inspired parts of this cartoon, and I like it.
I was there.
65000000 years ago.
What's going on in panel 4 with the extra limbs?
compressing two frames of animation in one, arms out wide then down to stomp
arms out wide then down to stomp
Shaka, when the walls fell!
Doomers ready with the letter "A":
I thought you meant "Akshually"....
Oof! Yeah, sorry...
Anyway, uhm, the comic isn't AI-generated of course.
Regardless, people paranoid about these things do exist...
They might have been dolphins of the time.
c/noncrediblearchaeology
I'm going to keep assuming they were nice and there's nothing you can do about it
Hippos are absolutely vicious but most people assume they're fat and gentle herbivores.
#notallbrachiosaurus
