• Allonzee@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I understand why they kill us.

    In addition to destroying their habitats for strip malls, we rope them into entirely too many of our rhetorical infighting arguments.

    • finkrat@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      At least we put them on pretty 3D animated carbonated beverage advertisements for Christmastime for a while, that must’ve felt really nice until you consider that humans are exploiting your cute and cuddly experience to increase shareholder revenue due to sales of an unnecessarily sugared beverage made with tropical fruit seeds

  • daddyjones@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It wouldn’t be so bad if they could only cuddle you to death. Still not great, but better…

    • Maeve@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Dying of easily treatable disease because one can’t afford insulin or a healthy diet vs being loved to death? If only certain people had the choice. And I didn’t mean “loved” in the euphamistic sense.

  • pete_the_cat@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Same thing with big cats:

    A Jaguar or Leopard just looks and acts like a big house cat… but it can crush your skull with one bite and can drag your dead body 30 feet vertically up a tree.

  • Gigan@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I wish ancient humans had domesticated bears and bred them to be pet-sized

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      On a less jokey note, pretty much every living mammal has been subjected to domestication attempts at some point in history. Bears, elephants, tigers, hippopotami, moose… More often than not, there’s some kind of inherent physiological reason why it doesn’t work.

      Some animals don’t breed well in captivity (pandas, famously, but cheetahs are another classic case). Some can’t handle captivity at all - the few efforts at keeping Great Whites in captivity ended with the animals bludgeoning themselves to death on the walls of their enclosures. Others are consistently too aggressive to effectively tame (zebras, coyotes, chimps, elephants, and pythons are notable for all the historic instances domestication failed for these reasons). And some simply aren’t pleasant household companions - skunks, raccoons, and foxes are all notable for their powerful odors and their propensity to destroy the interiors of homes.

      There’s some speculation as to whether cats ever were actually domesticated successfully, or whether we’ve simply chosen to ignore their feral habits as such.

    • Num10ck@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      i read that Japan tried for a long time and lost many good people to it before giving up, long ago.

  • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 year ago

    Tigers are fairly common household pets in places like India, since they very much are like cats and are glad to be a cuddle-bug for free food. However this is at the risk that the tiger will forget herself and maul you in a moment of playfulness or annoyed aggression. And once you’re dead, well, there’s one last meal you can offer before it’s back to life in the jungle.

    This is not to say all tigers are amenable. Some are just assholes.

    Same with bears, and people have lived alongside bears for eons, knowing full well that alliance only lasts until famine comes a’knocking once again. (Grim fact, – relevant considering famine in Palestine – enough famine will drive us social apes to turn on each other and go full cannibal, which is why it’s regarded as a major humanitarian crisis, and cruel to induce. It’s also why Bron killed all the known thieves in anticipation of the imminent siege.)

    In the meantime, Grizzly Man lived with bears for ten years before getting killed by an unfamiliar one that was just a jerk.

    • TowardsTheFuture@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      Tigers also kill people way more often than bears.

      Stats on this are hard to compare because black bears are responsible for 1.2 kills in the US per year and tigers are like 34 kills per year in India which does have like 4x the population of humans, but also there’s a LOT less tigers to do that killing [like 5,000 tigers to 400,000 black bears] So like… yeah.

    • Sentau@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      Tigers are fairly common household pets in places like India

      Are you sure this statement is true¿? I never heard about any story of anybody having a fucking tiger as a pet

    • Everythingispenguins@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Seriously, polar bears are one of the few animals in the world that see humans as prey and a legitimate food source.

      There are many animals that can kill you, very very few that will eat you.

      • finkrat@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Humanity: having an obesity epidemic

        Polar Bears: “increased fat stores?? D E L I C I O U S”

        • Everythingispenguins@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Well you average American does have more blubber than an arctic seal.

          I can see a really interesting plan here we can save the polar bears and reduce the pressure humans are putting on the planet. Win Win