The cows. Thousands of years of sneaky deviousness — do not fear Skynet, it’s the time when the cows achieve full sentience (if they haven’t already) and rise up against us that you should be dreading.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Gary Larson strikes!!!!!
Look. I tried to warn everybody. The splash screen for Land of Milk and Money says, “Drama. Scheming. Cows.” You just can’t trust Bossy! Got milk?
/gratuitous plug
No doubt! His cow cartoons were among my favorites. My favorite is the one where, in the first panel, a herd of cows are standing on two legs, talking, holding martini glasses. The second panel shows them grazing on all fours while a car with people passes by. The third panel shows them standing again now that the car is gone. Udder genius.
You should check out Cows with Guns, if you aren’t already familiar with it. Cows not just with sentience, but heavy weaponry!
And this is why vegetarianism and veganism are wrong and evil. How else are we going to get rid of all those cows and pigs if we don’t eat steak and bacon? Huh? Huh? CHECKMATE SMELLY VEGGIES!!!!eleventy!!!
Louis
P.S. Dear fuck I hope it’s blatantly obvious I am joking.
The next Hollywood blockbuster: Planet of the Kine.
“Somewhere in the universe there must be something better than man. In a matter of time, an astronaut will wing through the centuries and find the answer. He may find the most terrifying one of all on the planet where cattle are the rulers and man the livestock.”
The day will come, cows with guns:
Reminds me of a great line Michael Pollan uttered in an interview:
So, it has come to this…
Image: The Belgian Blue Breed
@9 – Myostatin deficiency can be a scary thing
Image: Myostatin-deficient Italian greyhound with “Are you sure? Is this the body I was supposed to have?” expression
Yes, but it’s the horses which are pure evil…
The lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He maketh me down to lie.
Through pastures green he leadeth me, the silent waters by.
For lo, he hath great power, and great hunger.
Whence cometh the day we lowly ones
Through quiet reflection, and great dedication
Master the art of karate,
Lo, we shall rise up,
And then we’ll make the buggers’ eyes water.
Er… Waters
(From memory; hope I got it right.)
Damn, I had no idea that the mass of us and our domesticated animals so outweighed everything else. If you’d asked me, I’d’ve guessed at maybe 50:50.
@13: And of the domestic animals, only cows outweigh us. Of course, in this graph, size matters. We probably outnumber them, but they weigh 5-10 times as much.
I wish he’d labeled a few more of the groups!
I was about to make the same point as Trebuchet. 1 cow = 3-4 humans by weight, right? And we have guns. We can take ’em, PZ, stop worrying.
Unless of course the bovine in question is that Belgian Blue bull CompulsoryAccount7746 posted at #9… that’s gotta be like 10 humans. At least.
Agreed with trebuchet: I sure would like to see a more fully annotated version. And the cited source(s) are not even online!
grrrr
From another source I recall it being stated that there are around 1.4 billion cows on the planet, one for each human family.
So yeah, we do outnumber them…
I found myself compelled to look up “cattle” on Wikipedia and found this:
I’d guess the average weight of humans (your mileage may vary!) is somewhere under 75 kg, so it’s a 10:1 ratio or greater.
@7, rturpin:
Point of order: the Bovine Guru depicted in that video has udders, but is referred to repeatedly as “he”. Obviously, the whole thing must be fiction! :P
So are we outnumbered by the cows, or simply out-massed?
And which chunk represents poultry?
Shhh. We don’t want the rest of the world to catch on to the American plan to out-mass everyone else.
Dang blockquotes!
I am somewhat surprised that dogs get so little space (they’re not labeled, but they have to be one of the small sections, since all the big swaths are labeled).
Just watch a couple of episodes of The Incredible Dr. Pol, he will put your minds at ease. These animals would all die from having half-birthed calves lodged in their back sides, if it weren’t for human intervention. It’s almost a wonder that they can manage to stand there and successfully breathe.
edmond
The reason for half-birthed calves lodging in their back sides is human intervention.
Same with their lack of ‘intelligence’.
the one on the the other graphic that’s not clearly labeled “mammals”, is my guess.
I just saw a paramedic documentary in which one of the patients was crushed against a wall by a cow. Quoted weight was 650kg, call it 2/3rds of a US ton. Got both his legs broken, pelvis survived intact, but he had an obscure bleed in his liver where it was pushed against his spine. Cows is dangerous animals, if you’re not careful with them.
@Me, 23:
According (again) to Wikipedia, about 1.3 billion cattle and 7.1 billion people on earth. (Not counting the six humans who are currently NOT on earth.) So a little greater than 5:1.
Ah yes, a clear illustration of the evolutionary advantage of being delicious to humans.
I blame the wall.
What cows lack in self-awareness, they gain in bloody-mindedness and mass. Every so often a cow will take it into its head to walk slowly through an electric fence and a real fence and a hedge only so it can be the first thing you see when you open the curtains, standing in the middle of your garden as though it has every right to be there.
It’s all the more galling that a good natured slap on the arse will send it trotting home, not necessarily via the original hole it created.
This happened to me twice. And goats did more or less the same thing every other day for eight years.
Well yeah. Haven’t we got those yet? Dang. Continue the research.
I seem to remember reading in some Jared Diamond book that there are 22 million people in Australia, and 160 million sheep.
As to the graphic, what about zebras and antelopes?
I’ve met whole bunches of actual cows. The cow singularity is not near.
Probably the green block above the goats.
Replace cattle with Lystrosaurus and we have yet another way that humanity is re-engineering the conditions of the Permian-Triassic extinction.