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.
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.
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.
On the other hand, being useful to humans have made them some of the most widespread and successful plant species on the planet.
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 billion70. 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.Didn’t work out so well for the rhinos to be fair.
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.
If the rhinos are not useful why do we need to hunt them so much they’re going extinct?
The animal also needs to be tamable if it wants to thrive.
go vegan :)
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
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.