No Simba, if they were all allowed to die naturally, there would be too many of them to share the grass. They would die fighting themselves for food, a miserable existence. Only a truley dumb species would ignore the natural order and allow their own to die of hunger.
There is that aspect though. Unless the Antelope are good at looking out for each other and taking turns, they will mindlessly degreen the entire area.
read a long time ago about how the deer population got out of control in this one forest, and within a few years the place was practically a desert. everything just fuckin died
That’s a common problem in places where humans eliminated the existing predators. Herbivores evolved to reproduce in large numbers to account for the predators and this is a disaster if suddenly there are none.
I’ve seen an arthritic goat hobbling around in agony.
With nature, you don’t generally peacefully breathe out your dying breath, even if there are no predators. You live until life as it is is torturous enough that you no longer live.
There is no alternative to life, and death is compulsory and often painful. We, as humans, are lucky enough to be capable to, at times, make that process quick, and, at times, painless.
Predation is not wrong. The quality of life is what matters - and because of that, death is necessary.
Life offers joy, but can dish out misery just as deeply. If life gives you joy, it lasts as long as it can. If life gives you misery, the depth of it is limited by death.
It’s morally better they die fighting us for food, while we right each other for food. Trust me.
No trust needed.
AKAB
What does the K stand for?
Kmufasa, the K is silent like in knife
Kings, most likely
Karnivores
I was thinking Kings but I like it
Kings.
Kscar
Knights
Kmufasa. K is silent.
All Kings Are Bitches?
They would overpopulate and exhaust all the resources. Then the last survivors would kill one another for the final scraps while poisoning the land… Have you ever thought about how the wasteland came to be? Let me narrate you a story about their ancient inhabitants… the pale apes.
They would overpopulate and exhaust all the resources.
Save your right-wing “overpopulation” bullcrap. Barely anything predates on elephants and rhinos, yet they haven’t managed to strip the continent of Africa and “exhaust all the resources.”
It’s exactly what happens, and we have about as good a natural experiment on this as it gets:
https://www.gi.alaska.edu/alaska-science-forum/when-reindeer-paradise-turned-purgatory-0
tl;dr: a Reindeer herd was setup on an uninhabited Alaskan island as a potential food source during WWII with no natural predators. The war ended before anything came of it, so the herd was left on its own. Within a few decades, they had stripped the island bare of all vegetation the deer could possibly reach, and then they all starved to death.
Also, see predator reintroduction programs, such as how wolves change rivers.
Elephants and rhinos don’t breed the same way a lot of other animals do. If they did, evolution would very quickly do what happened in Alaska to those deer. Animals like deer and rabbits breed in great numbers with the evolutionary expectation that predators will keep them in check.
If you think this process is brutal, well, yes, it is. The conservative thing would be to say that this is “natural” and therefore the correct and only way to run human society. This is wrong; we can choose a better path for ourselves while also accepting that nature works this way all the time.
tl;dr: a Reindeer herd
So your eco-fash hottake can literally be disproven by the fact that elephants exist, yet you are so desperate to cling onto it that you try to peddle forcing deer into becoming an invasive species on an island they have never adapted to as proof?
You’re aware that Elephants are not Reindeer, right?
You are aware that elephants exist, correct?
So because Elephants exist, Reindeer can go on without Predators? Dude, this is the most uncontaversial take in conservation. Predators are a necessary part of the cycle. That had nothing to do with how human society should run.
Because their evolutionary defense is literally defense, and not just having enough numbers to overcome predation.
Sure, there are species that exist without predation, but introduce predators (like humans) and oh, would you look at that… extinction!
Life is complex, and doesn’t have any one single explanation for how it exists.
but introduce predators (like humans) and oh, would you look at that… extinction!
Mammalian mega-fauna stil exists (and thrives) on the continent where human beings literally evolved.
Tell that to the Northern White Rhino.
The White Rhino has survived on this continent for thousands of years, until it was exposed to capitalist exploitation. Ie, the parasitic wealth-and-power accumulation of a tiny minority of the human race.
So… a predator it was unfamiliar with and had no defense against?
there is no hope for someone once they’ve fallen this far down the rabbit hole of leftism.
Save your right-wing “overpopulation” bullcrap
Wild what you guys think of as political. It’s just how it sometimes goes in nature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overpopulation#Deer
absolutely wild that someone would assume someone’s political views based on their understanding of ecosystems-level biology, but on lemmy, somehow, i’m no longer surprised
Barely anything isn’t nothing, they still have predators.
