• 5too@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    So I’m not bothered by the inconsistent scale… but why is there a dinosaur peeking through the bottom of the 1889 column?!

  • cddlhssy@sh.itjust.works
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    6 hours ago

    Settlers killed buffalo to force indigenous people into the reservation system. It was a big part of the genocide here, worth looking into if you get the chance.

    • MrMakabar@slrpnk.net
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      4 hours ago

      This is a buffalo:

      They are not the same animal as American bison, which are also not European bison for that matter.

      • Jerkface (any/all)@lemmy.ca
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        4 hours ago

        Isn’t that a water buffalo? Not the same animal as the American Bison (commonly known as the American Buffalo.) I think once they have a 200 year old city named for them, you just have to accept that that’s what they’re called.

        • MrMakabar@slrpnk.net
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          4 hours ago

          Isn’t that a water buffalo?

          or as you woul call it a water bison…

          Also the city was not on land, which had American bison, so no it is not named after the animal.

  • tinfoilhat@lemmy.ml
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    6 hours ago

    Each buffalo in the first picture represents 242,914 buffalo. Which means the last picture would be about 1/10th of a bison, and the middle one would be just the tip of a horn.

  • OddMinus1@sh.itjust.works
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    10 hours ago

    I don’t know the history of bison population. From the image, I assume there used to be a ton of bison. But then a science experiment involving velociraptors went awry, and only a small group of bison were left alive. Then those bison made an uprising against the velociraptor-experiments and invaded their area, allowing their population to grow again.

    How far off am I?

  • Pman@lemmy.org
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    9 hours ago

    What is the genetic diversity of the bison? Are they are going to be very inbred soon and die out?

  • nexguy@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    TIL There are 30,000 free roaming bison but there are 500,000 total including privately owned and commercial herds.

    • Soapbox@lemmy.zip
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      3 hours ago

      Yep. They are also far better for the land they graze on than cattle, as they evolved here, and so they generally eat only what they should and don’t overgraze. The meat is also far leaner and healthier than beef. We really should stop raising cattle and raise bison. The biggest issue is even “domesticated” bison are far more wild and dangerous to raise than the cattle we have bred to be docile. So risk averse ranchers are not interested.

      • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 hours ago

        Yeah, American bison don’t take well to husbandry, simply because they’re aggressive. They’re territorial and have bad eyesight, so their first inclination when they see a human-sized blob is usually to attack.

        But yes, if you’re going to eat red meat, bison is much better than beef. It’s so lean that natives could dry it and pound it into powder for trail snacking. You can’t do that with modern beef, because it has too much fat. Even beef jerky tends to be pretty greasy.

  • j_z@feddit.nu
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    20 hours ago

    Because they finally caged the velociraptor in the middle image?

  • megopie@beehaw.org
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    16 hours ago

    Also, like, it wasn’t just a “decision to stop” it was the end of a coincidence of factors. The mid century climatic conditions that led to several years of poor grass growth, with the combined hunting efforts of European American settlers on rail roads supported by the army’s policies against the Great Plains Indians, south eastern Indians displaced in to the great planes, and Great Plains Indians intensifying hunting via sophisticated methods they’d developed using horseback and fire arms, all driven by a demand for buffalo hides for use in industrial machinery. The end of the bad climatic conditions and the collapse of the hide trade due to development of other industrial materials is what stoped the over hunting.

    With the pressures of hunting decreased and a historic climatic event over, the population was able to rebound somewhat, but, due to the encroachment of farms and ranching never really recover. Also the genetic bottleneck of the population probably hasn’t helped things but that’s not super well studied.

  • lectricleopard@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    The decision to stop was required, but a ton of work was done to help the population rebound. What kind of misguided message is this trying to send?

    • Signtist@bookwyr.me
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      20 hours ago

      It’s trying to tell people who think it’s too much work to bother that it’s not. I do it all the time, like when I have to wash the dishes and I tell myself “I’ll just wash one dish” because I know if I do that I’ll be a lot more motivated to continue, but if I keep looking at the whole problem before I start, I’ll be too overwhelmed to do anything at all.

      • stray@pawb.social
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        3 hours ago

        That’s about how I read it. Sometimes you don’t have a solution to fix a problem, but ceasing to make it worse is a valuable course of action in itself. The bison aren’t back the way they were, but they’re not extinct either.

    • AppleTea@lemmy.zip
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      22 hours ago

      Sure, the bison population is 0.05% of what it once was. And now that we’re not actively attempting to extinct them, everything is hunky dory and no more work is needed.

      I don’t know how else to interpret this. It sounds like the Bison Society would rather be a society dedicated to literal anything else. The Kick the Can Down the Road Society, perhaps.

  • Paradachshund@lemmy.today
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    23 hours ago

    Each of the bison shapes in the 60mil example are actually clusters of bison so small you can’t see them with the naked eye.

    • potoooooooo 🥔@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      I get that, but I personally think 60,000,000 tiny buffalo would be more impactful. Can someone do a quick edit in Photoshop?