Subjectively speaking. Or maybe not.
Please try and resist the urge to say humans, I’m sure it crossed everyone’s mind
Koalas are fucking horrible animals.
They have one of the smallest brain to body ratios of any mammal, additionally – their brains are smooth. A brain is folded to increase the surface area for neurons. If you present a koala with leaves plucked from a branch, laid on a flat surface, the koala will not recognise it as food. They are too thick to adapt their feeding behaviour to cope with change. In a room full of potential food, they can literally starve to death.
This is not the token of an animal that is winning at life.
Speaking of stupidity and food, one of the likely reasons for their primitive brains is the fact that additionally to being poisonous, eucalyptus leaves (the only thing they eat) have almost no nutritional value. They can’t afford the extra energy to think, they sleep more than 80% of their fucking lives. When they are awake all they do is eat, shit and occasionally scream like fucking satan.
Because eucalyptus leaves hold such little nutritional value, koalas have to ferment the leaves in their guts for days on end. Unlike their brains, they have the largest hind gut to body ratio of any mammal.
Many herbivorous mammals have adaptations to cope with harsh plant life taking its toll on their teeth, rodents for instance have teeth that never stop growing, some animals only have teeth on their lower jaw, grinding plant matter on bony plates in the tops of their mouths, others have enlarged molars that distribute the wear and break down plant matter more efficiently…
Koalas are no exception, when their teeth erode down to nothing, they resolve the situation by starving to death, because they’re fucking terrible animals.
Being mammals, koalas raise their joeys on milk (admittedly, one of the lowest milk yields to body ratio… There’s a trend here).
When the young joey needs to transition from rich, nourishing substances like milk, to eucalyptus (a plant that seems to be making it abundantly clear that it doesn’t want to be eaten), it finds it does not have the necessary gut flora to digest the leaves. To remedy this, the young joey begins nuzzling its mother’s anus until she leaks a little diarrhoea (actually fecal pap, slightly less digested), which he then proceeds to slurp on.
This partially digested plant matter gives him just what he needs to start developing his digestive system. Of course, he may not even have needed to bother nuzzling his mother. She may have been suffering from incontinence. Why?
Because koalas are riddled with chlamydia. In some areas the infection rate is 80% or higher. This statistic isn’t helped by the fact that one of the few other activities koalas will spend their precious energy on is rape.
Despite being seasonal breeders, males seem to either not know or care, and will simply overpower a female regardless of whether she is ovulating. If she fights back, he may drag them both out of the tree, which brings us full circle back to the brain:
Koalas have a higher than average quantity of cerebrospinal fluid in their brains. This is to protect their brains from injury… should they fall from a tree.
An animal so thick it has its own little built in special ed helmet. I fucking hate them.
Tldr; Koalas are stupid, leaky, STI riddled sex offenders. But, hey. They look cute.
If you ignore the terrifying snake eyes and terrifying feet.
This is the obligatory response copypasta to that Koala copypasta:
I don’t know why it is that these things bother me—it just makes me picture a seven year old first discovering things about an animal and, having no context about the subject, ranting about how stupid they are. I get it’s a joke, but people take it as an actual, educational joke like it’s a man yelling at the sea, and that’s just wrong. Furthermore, these things have an actual impact on discussions about conservation efforts—If every time Koalas get brought up, someone posts this copypasta, that means it’s seriously shaping public opinion about the animal and their supposed lack of importance.
Speaking of stupidity and food, one of the likely reasons for their primitive brains is the fact that additionally to being poisonous, eucalyptus leaves (the only thing they eat) have almost no nutritional value. They can’t afford the extra energy to think, they sleep more than 80% of their fucking lives.
Non-ecologists always talk this way, and the problem is you’re looking at this backwards.
An entire continent is covered with Eucalyptus trees. They suck the moisture out of the entire surrounding area and use allelopathy to ensure that most of what’s beneath them is just bare red dust. No animal is making use of them——they have virtually no herbivore predator. A niche is empty. Then inevitably, natural selection fills that niche by creating an animal which can eat Eucalyptus leaves. Of course, it takes great sacrifice for it to be able to do so——it certainly can’t expend much energy on costly things. Isn’t it a good thing that a niche is being filled?
Koalas are no exception, when their teeth erode down to nothing, they resolve the situation by starving to death
This applies to all herbivores, because the wild is not a grocery store—where meat is just sitting next to celery.
Herbivores gradually wear their teeth down—carnivores fracture their teeth, and break their bones in attempting to take down prey.
They have one of the smallest brain to body ratios of any mammal
It’s pretty typical of herbivores, and is higher than many, many species. According to Ashwell (2008), their encephalisation quotient is 0.5288 +/- 0.051. Higher than comparable marsupials like the wombat (~0.52), some possums (~0.468), cuscus (~0.462) and even some wallabies are <0.5. According to wiki, rabbits are also around 0.4, and they’re placental mammals.
additionally - their brains are smooth. A brain is folded to increase the surface area for neurons.
Again, this is not unique to koalas. Brain folds (gyri) are not present in rodents, which we consider to be incredibly intelligent for their size.
If you present a koala with leaves plucked from a branch, laid on a flat surface, the koala will not recognise it as food.
If you present a human with a random piece of meat, they will not recognise it as food (hopefully). Fresh leaves might be important for koala digestion, especially since their gut flora is clearly important for the digestion of Eucalyptus. It might make sense not to screw with that gut flora by eating decaying leaves.
Because eucalyptus leaves hold such little nutritional value, koalas have to ferment the leaves in their guts for days on end. Unlike their brains, they have the largest hind gut to body ratio of any mammal.
That’s an extremely weird reason to dislike an animal. But whilst we’re talking about their digestion, let’s discuss their poop. It’s delightful. It smells like a Eucalyptus drop!
Being mammals, koalas raise their joeys on milk (admittedly, one of the lowest milk yields to body ratio… There’s a trend here).
Marsupial milk is incredibly complex and much more interesting than any placentals. This is because they raise their offspring essentially from an embryo, and the milk needs to adapt to the changing needs of a growing fetus. And yeah, of course the yield is low; at one point they are feeding an animal that is half a gram!
When the young joey needs to transition from rich, nourishing substances like milk, to eucalyptus (a plant that seems to be making it abundantly clear that it doesn’t want to be eaten), it finds it does not have the necessary gut flora to digest the leaves. To remedy this, the young joey begins nuzzling its mother’s anus until she leaks a little diarrhoea (actually fecal pap, slightly less digested), which he then proceeds to slurp on. This partially digested plant matter gives him just what he needs to start developing his digestive system.
Humans probably do this, we just likely do it during childbirth. You know how women often shit during contractions? There is evidence to suggest that this innoculates a baby with her gut flora. A child born via cesarian has significantly different gut flora for the first six months of life than a child born vaginally.
Of course, he may not even have needed to bother nuzzling his mother. She may have been suffering from incontinence. Why? Because koalas are riddled with chlamydia. In some areas the infection rate is 80% or higher.
Chlamydia was introduced to their populations by humans. We introduced a novel disease that they have very little immunity to, and is a major contributor to their possible extinction. Do you hate Native Americans because they were killed by smallpox and influenza?
This statistic isn’t helped by the fact that one of the few other activities koalas will spend their precious energy on is rape. Despite being seasonal breeders, males seem to either not know or care, and will simply overpower a female regardless of whether she is ovulating. If she fights back, he may drag them both out of the tree,
Almost every animal does this.
which brings us full circle back to the brain: Koalas have a higher than average quantity of cerebrospinal fluid in their brains. This is to protect their brains from injury… should they fall from a tree. An animal so thick it has its own little built in special ed helmet. I fucking hate them.
Errmmm… They have protection against falling from a tree, which they spend 99% of their life in? Yeah… That’s a stupid adaptation.
An entire continent is covered with Eucalyptus trees. They suck the moisture out of the entire surrounding area and use allelopathy to ensure that most of what’s beneath them is just bare red dust. No animal is making use of them——they have virtually no herbivore predator. A niche is empty. Then inevitably, natural selection fills that niche by creating an animal which can eat Eucalyptus leaves. Of course, it takes great sacrifice for it to be able to do so——it certainly can’t expend much energy on costly things. Isn’t it a good thing that a niche is being filled?
Sounds like I have my answer for next week’s question of “what’s the worst plant on Earth”
Meh, I’d rather let this copypasta be forgotten. It turns cool points into “bad” ones while exaggerating the rest. For example, it’s COOL that this animal evolved specialized digestive organs to process a food in a biological niche that other animals can’t exploit. There’s great variety among animal brain shapes / textures, and having such a complex brain doesn’t guarantee that all humans are that “smart”. Other animals are also sedentary or sleep a lot (sloths, cats) and this is seen as being efficient. Other animals also do things that are pretty gross when viewed through a human lens.
On top of all that, it feels like justification for everything humans are doing to endanger the population.
I change my vote to humans, for constantly over-analyzing everything, including jokes.
I’ll take it 😌
oh daddy ohhhhh!
Correct answer, but when you show your work it turns out to be just a coincidence. D-.
Wow. Just wow. This is more shocking than when i learned the truth about dolphins.
So, rule of nature: if it looks cute, it’s not. Cats are genocidal maniacs. Koalas and Dolphins are rapists. Hamsters are locked into an eternal gladiatoral tournament with the rest of their species and will kill each other in brutal ways for no reason.
mosquitoes?
Wasps taking a close second.
Hard disagree on both. Only two species of mosquitoes are a problem, and the males are important pollinators.
Wasps are so diverse that there’s so many that are cool! Lots of wasps are obligated pollinators like fig wasps. And they play a very valuable role as pest control as well. Hatchet wasps for example hunt roaches.
Wasps are bros, spiders are bros, and (outside of a. egypti) mosquitoes are pretty cool. Check out this pretty blue one (s. cyaneus)
Admittedly I had assumed that “mosquitos” was referring to just the malaria distributing ones… which was a pretty big assumption on my part.
When I said “wasps” I woefully neglected specificity: introduced (non native) wasps.
Very cool and self reflective response. I appreciate that. But there are >3000 species of mosquito. I don’t study them, but check out some biologists tubers. They are much more equipped to defend the little guys.
(I’ll also expand my limited knowledge on mosquitos in the meantime.)
That’s a completely logical assumption.
pest control
is a pest
spiderman pointing at spiderman
I’m super curious where these ">"s came from? I didn’t say any of that.
you don’t have to actually quote someone to use the quote function
kind of like greentext
My bad homie. I’m still learning markdown.
Totally with you about how awesome wasps are, and I agree surely mozzies have their cool looking examples and also are food for a bunch of other animals.
But I can totally understand the hate for mosquitoes. They are annoying, and sting, and the stings are itchy. And that’s not limited to A. aegypti…
Bedbugs. Not friendly at all. Hard AF to get rid of.
I have not seen them up close, just watched the videos where they come out of the cracks in wood when someone waves hand body heat over them. Gross.
They deserve the way they mate.
The deer ticks that spread Lyme disease.
Parasitical worms. I’d like to say why, but just thinking about it already makes me shudder.
I vote for seagulls- your local beach assholes.
I’ve been chased and harassed by seagulls, not for giving them food, but for eating food in their presence. I once saw a seagull grab a water bottle out of some lady’s bag. I remember witnessing a gang of seagulls dismember a live crab in front of a group of children. And to this day, I refuse to talk about the Nilla Wafer Incident.
They’re bullies, thugs, thieves, and they know it and are proud of it. Fuck a seagull.
Growing up in coastal scandinavia, learning to hate seagulls isn’t part of one’s upbringing. It comes naturally after experiencing living nearby them.
Seagulls seem cute in some circumstances but then act like they’re turned into insane zombies from all the human food they eat. Sea rats.
Yeah I do have an immense dislike for seagulls.
Yesterday one took a biscuit out of my kids hand.
Pensioner KILLS a seagull by swinging it into a wall
The Daily Mail:
Look, everyone told you not to stroll on that beach.
I mean, the stray cat I hang out with does all these things, too
Bed bugs… and possibly roaches (only the species that infest homes).
If you ever had to deal with an infestation, you know the psychological damage it can give you. I’m sure it can give you PTSD as well.
Mosquitos. Fleas. Ticks. Parasitic worms. Anything that causes diseases.
See I resisted saying humans. But fr, humans are the freakin worst.
Mosquitoes/Gnats. Not even their predators like them. Everyone else hates them.
Mosquitoes pose a viable food source for so many creatures and their extinction would have serious ramifications on the ecology of regions. That said, I want the little fuckers gone!
Do you have a source for this claim? I remember reading an article where a mosquito researcher claimed that eradicating mosquitoes would have basically zero effect on any ecosystem. While they provide an additional food source for several species, no other species is dependent on them. If they would disappear, their predators would just eat something else.
One could argue that if the mosquitoe’s predators switched their cuisine, it could have an effect on other insect species. But the reseacher was adamant that this would be neglicible, since in many regions mosquitoes don’t even hatch until mid-June and the birds do just fine without them.
I’m old enough that I wouldn’t be surprised if new data came out and I just never saw it to be honest. It was taught in my middle school science class, which was almost 30 years ago.
We’re about the same age. If I had a penny every time I discovered that something we were taught as the truth was later discovered to be completely wrong, I’d have a LOT of pennies.
Same here. I’m always happy to learn but it’s impossible to keep up on so many topics all at once.
Additionally to the other comment, i’ve read that the spiders wo mainly eat them prefer other food sources, since mosquitoes have low nutritional value. This was in context with the infertility virus(?) experiments in Africa.
What’s true now? Any expert around?
Mosquitoes and it’s not even a debate.
Humans
Sorry, resistance is futile.
Definitely not capybaras. That’s for sure.
Got to meet one last month!
I was seated, and it jumped up on my leg to get some greens I was holding.
It’s true, most chill animal around.
They are the host of a type of tick (Amblyomma sculptum) that carries a bacteria which causes a nasty disease.
They aren’t always as chill as the internet portraits them. If they’re with their offspring they can and will protect them. Being bitten by the largest rodent in the world is not a good way to start your day
My list is very subjective.
Cockroaches (pest) is my N.1 on the list
N.2 Ticks!!! The fuckers rain from the trees and latch onto you!!!
N.3 is shared by parasites, any worms, lice, fleas, you name it;
N4. Leeches. Because fuck leeches. They are slow, yet they will still get you, and unless you have coated yourself in DEET they will bite you, and the bite will bleed for a while, and if you are like me you may get an allergic reaction.
Anything that can be reasonably warded off with regular repellent and/or window screens gets a pardon from me.
Re N4: IIRC, The Presidents of the USA made a song about them.
Millions of leeches, leeches for me
Millions of leeches, leeches for free
Mosquitos, for inspiring the profession of Lawyers.
Why do people hate lawyers? I genuinely don’t understand.
In civil cases they’re used by those who can afford them to oppress those who can’t.
Lawyers follow the doctrine that both sides need representation in criminal cases but time spent is still weighted to those who pay.
Lawyers claim a position of moral neutrality when picking a side as part of a process which compensates each side differently.
One dramatic way to reform the system is to enforce an equal budget to both sides of a case in civil and criminal cases. If someone pays for thousands of hours of legal representation to attack you, you should be able to spend that money on legal representation too.
All too often defending a case is not worth the price.
Anecdotally I’d actually like to bring a case against my landlord but the similar cases against them have been sat for years and often time out due to technicalities when someone can’t afford yet another solicitors letter.
I see lawyers work on contingency every single day, for people who don’t have a pot to piss in. It’s also not generally out of the goodness of their heart, so I don’t want to make it seem like they’re philanthropists out here. If you have a case, odds are a lawyer will take it.
As far as defending a case, it’s interesting. I watch insurance companies spend 10 times what a case is worth to settle for the sake of defending it. Lawyers go after insurance companies all the time because the insurance companies have deep pockets, and sometimes you get an easy settlement. This is definitely not some kind of defense of insurance companies either, they’re the worst, but people will do their best to scam them wherever they can.
I see lawyers work on contingency every single day,
for high value cases, sure. not for the case that’s got little value in settlements for them to consume.
the rest get fucked. go to any courthouse and look at the people in civil cases who can’t afford a lawyer.
I see lawyers do it for anywhere from 10-50k settlements all the time. There’s law offices that just deal in volume PI settlements.
yeah settlements they can vamp off of.
who’s taking the case that’s not going to get a settlement? you do realize not everything is settled for money right?
Yeah, I guess I’m missing the point. You said only high value cases get lawyers, and I just knew that to not be true, and so that’s what I said. Yeah, are people with 50/50 cases getting representation? Probably not. I certainly see enough pro se plaintiffs though, and from my perspective I understand why they can’t find lawyers.
never interacted with the law much have you?
I don’t think lawyers are to blame for the corrupt legal system in the same way I don’t think doctors are to blame for the corrupt healthcare industry.
I don’t think all lawyers are to blame, just like I don’t think all docs are… but I fucking guarantee you, SOME lawyers and some docs are certainly to blame for the problems for both systems because it profits them greatly and they do nothing to stop it.
cats. those things are the jerks of the animal kingdom! i love the two that i have, but they are such deliberate assholes
howl constantly until you open the door for them, then they just walk away. they didn’t actually want to go in… they simply wanted the OPTION of going in.
See, thats because you don’t know how to raise cats. It’s ok. Most people don’t.
Here’s what you do.
Step 1, hire a clown to stand naked in the closet with a chainsaw. You’ll need this later.
Step 2, go onto your favorite dating site, find a mate, and spend the night at a hotel.
Step 3, fall in love
Step 4, move in together
Step 5, adopt a few cats. Nothing much. Just a few. 22 should be enough.
Step 6, have your girlfriend go on a fetish dating site and find a guy who’s into chastity. She doesn’t have to sleep with him ever, but now he’ll clean the house, clean the 44 litter boxes daily, cook the meals, tutor your kid in his 2nd grade math homework, tend to the garden, wash the car, clean the gutters, and then sleep in a dog cage at night.
Step 7, anytime the cats start their bullshit, you use a little water bottle to spray them and yell NO! Eventually they’ll assosiate no, with being told you don’t like what they’re doing.
Step 8, fuck with your cats brain. Stare at them wide-eyed. Just dead stare at them without moving a muscle. Eventually they’ll get bored, and look away. That’s when you start salsa dancing behind their back. Everytime they glance at you, you stop, and stare at them. If they walk away, follow them and stare. Until they look away. Then more salsa dancing.
Step 9, when they fall asleep, wrap your arms around them and cover them in kisses for being such a good cat.
Step 10, do a barrel roll!
Step 11, now when your cat starts crying outside of the door, you stare at them. They should begin to realize you don’t like them doing that, and now they stop.
Step 12, from now on, anytime they’re annoying, you be even more annoying! But not aggressive. I did not say be violent. I did not say to do anything bad. But if your cat is annoying, maybe you go over and tickle them while making turkey gobble noises.
And that should do it. A house with enough cats, and a free cleaning service to help maintain all those cats!
Now you can get on with your day!
Chekhov’s chainsaw clown not having any follow through is killing me
mosquitos are natures jerks, they prank humans by spreading malaria
