[throwawaytemp27]

Have you ever looked at a pie chart of mammal biomass by species. It goes Humans then cows then everything else is way back. I strongly strongly doubt that big dumb slow cows would be number 2 in biomass absent our loving burgers.

[nosianu]

Uhm... I don't understand what the connection to my comment is?

I did not (and did not intent to) make any reference to biomass, not indirectly either. At most, maybe cows now bs. wild bovine herds of the ancient past, which even if we only look at the number of buffalo killed in the US must have been gigantic, so no less than we have cows now, at worst only slightly less but I doubt we have reliable figures about the size of herds before humans killed many e.g. for Africa, Asia or India. As a Middle European, I know we had plenty of large bovines but killed them quickly early on, for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs.

I made no comparisons human-bovine.

[throwawaytemp27]

You mentioned the huge number of bovines in the past. I strongly doubt there were anything like the 1.5 billion cows there are now. One reason it’s impossible is that we have literally transformed huge land areas from forests and other types into land for cows. If you don’t get how what I’m saying related that is fine.

[nosianu]

> I strongly doubt

Based on what?

https://www.flatcreekinn.com/bison-americas-mammal/

"The Bison: from 30 million to 325 (1884) to 500,000 (today)"

So the estimate for the number of buffalo only in North America alone already includes hundreds of millions. Then we have Africa, Asia and Europe.

That is easily that many bovines. The Eurasian steppes are (and were) even more vast than the ones in NA (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Steppe_P...). Map for Africa, steppe and savannah: https://exploringafrica.matrix.msu.edu/wp-content/uploads/20... (also remember Africa is much larger than shown on our common Mercator maps, so those areas are even larger than they appear)

There is no reason to assume the herds on other continents - before human hunting - were any less than the ones in NA. And bovines were not limited to the savannahs and steppes, just that there were the largest herds. Just look at the distribution map for the aurochs -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs#/media/File:Aurochs_di... -- it is much larger than just the steppe areas.

It is not just bovines either - other groups of which include animals like deer, giraffes, elephants and many others are also plant eating large mammals.

Also, I don't understand this modern need of saying things like "I honestly believe" and, in your case, "I strongly doubt". Feeling "strongly" does not improve the quality of your argument.

In your first reply you even used "I strongly strongly doubt " - riiiight... I would like to see more focus on the facts than on the feelings. Or do you feel that we are in some sort of competition here?

> If you don’t get how what I’m saying related that is fine.

You still did not explain what your comparison of human to bovine biomass was supposed to be about, which was your original reply.