It’s still a 3 pound bird spine busting mammals and birds 4 or 5 times their size.

Yeap, I think that’s the main point, despite our squabblings, hier und da.
I.e.-- raptors and carnivores of the feline-variety have an almost magical-ability to OWN their prey, so to speak, physics be damned.

It may seem counterintuitive, but you’re thinking of it from a human perspective.

Dang… and I always & specifically aim to *avoid* that!
(what a burn-my-arse call-out 😔)

For a person trying to be an assassin, having some Freddy Krueger hands would be awesome. And it’s not like the owl doesn’t put them to great use. For defense, they’re the go to. They are sharp and will stab really good and the keep the face safe. They’ll toss themselves in their backs and slash those things all around, turning themselves into an insane porcupine.

No-no-NO, that’s not what I was commenting upon. Animals can indeed have slashing, devastating teeth, claws & otherwise to deter rivals and predators. But that is not what I was talking about.

What I was talking about was the fact that the GHO has -astronomically- overpowered crushing strength in its talons, compared to its typical prey, which has never been measured as being over 16lbs in the wild, AFAIK.

In superhero terms, it’s almost like having the ability to fly, but only doing some cool hops. But that’s also why I proposed my theory above.

Hahaha, we’re always arguing upon this or that. But… but… but… wait… wHHHAAT!??

“Most of what I read describes the grip as what actually kills the prey. The talons are basically backup in the task.”

REALLY NOW…?

Most of what I read describes the grip as what actually kills the prey. The talons are basically backup in the task.

But just look at the absurd amount of crazy, killing force upon… small rodents, for the most parts! Why, exactly…?

Now maybe you’re right, and maybe you’re wrong, but I KNOW THIS-- across nature, one of the cardinal rules is that we DON’T waste resources and we DON’T take unnecessary risks. For example, that’s one of the most fundamental concerns across all of nature.

Estimated mass of individual prey for the owls has ranged from as little as 0.4 g (0.014 oz) to as much as 6.8 kg (15 lb) --WP

Based on the grip strength mentioned above I would have half-suspected that these birds were carrying off sheep and the like. But no, it sounds more like it’s about absolutely making sure they get a crushing grip so as not to let the prey accidentally escape. At least, that’s my armchair theory of the moment.

Not saying you’re right or wrong, but these types of events only happen occasionally, mais non?

Even most of the modern remote people seem to want to have some aspects of the modern though.

Hoo… that’s for sure. :S

I didn’t know anyone who would trade modern life for being a caveman again, or even one if someone from a hundred years ago.

For the rekkid, there never really was a “caveman.” IMO that’s more of a bumbling, modern trope which essentially allows us to more-easily persuade ourselves that previous human states were necessarily miserable or inferior compared to our own.

Haha, I’m not saying that it’s an EITHER/OR, but moreso that it’s a nuanced collection of pros & cons, and that we modern, naked apes have a natural bias for interpreting our state of being as ‘superior.’

I mean, whole treatises on psychology have been dedicated upon that phenomenon, if I’m not mistaken.

Anyway, but no-- I’m pretty sure there are various, flourishing cultures of people who want nothing whatsoever to do with our so-called ‘modern life.’ These range from Amish / Mennonite-types, to the last few, surviving tribal peoples here and there, to monks of different religions in their monasteries to… various communes (more or less), to some folks intentionally living that lifestyle, to whoever else that might be…

Now, I think part of our faulty thinking upon all this tends to run along the lines of: ‘we’ve accomplished so much’ and ‘we have and can enjoy all these various amenities & privileges,’ sort of looking past the fact that living in this fast-changing, hyper-competitive situation, absolutely overloaded with other humans is in fact stressful and worrying, as per what humans ACTUALLY SAY when polled, and when responding to studies.

So there’s the rub, so to speak.

we aren’t ever going to get the toothpaste back in the tube with the environment. Mankind could get better at what we do, but we’re not realistically going back to natural living.

For sure. Which is why… welp.

Thanks for the interesting comments, matey. Let’s see… (and pardon, kinda in a rush here)

In reading comments from some other articles, other people refer to us humans as well.

Hmm, not sure I got that part?

If you’d look at humanity in the pre-industrial age,

So to be clear, across ~99.8% of our history.

…you’d say we needed much more space to live so we could run our marginally productive farms and to hunt game,

Given our population density across the 2Myrs of Homo, I’d argue that we barely needed any space at all, being in our traditional clan/tribal state, which naturally shifted with the seasons and such. As for agriculture? I believe modern science estimates it’s only about 10Kyrs old. Again, just a blip in human history.

but now we can live in multi-story buildings in huge cities and technically thrive better than ever in history.

I think it could potentially work, but under the capitalism model, is proving to be an absolute disaster, directly leading to the current, ongoing mass-extinction event. (r/collapse for more info than you might want to know)

Is that different than reducing the animals’ habitats while providing them with superior nutrition and medicine?

As a former zoo-worker, I believe in zoos at the BEST of times. Unfortunately, that’s not necessarily the case when you look at situations around the world. In any case, above all-- other animals don’t need special care from us in the slightest, generally-speaking. They simply need their habitats *not* to be messed with, critically.

Wow. Cool post & article that brings up a lot of great points.

I found the bit about interpreting animals’ emotions particularly interesting. I.e., there’s no question to me that we naked apes can easily misinterpret or ascribe false emotions to (other) animals, yet there’s also the seeming fact that given exposure-time, we can also learn to gauge them with some accuracy.

Given that Homo is 2Myrs old, and that the overwhelming majority of that time was spent in the wild, there’s no question to me that our ancestors were likely vastly better at such interpretation. Along those lines, I wonder if some of the “feral children” in history who eventually learned to speak a language had something to say about such things…

Okay, thanks for explaining.

As has happened before, I’m frankly a bit grouchy upon criticism of my AI-aided content. I do feel the post as it stands is relevant to this sub, as it’s based on a real phenomenon (the definition of a group of owls) applied to a famous place which bears that definition, and then populated by the actual subjects of this sublemmy. In short, it’s a simple joke / riddle combining those different elements.

I came up with this idea myself and I wrangled ChatGPT until it came up with the final image I was (more or less) pleased with. Otherwise, if my health wasn’t so shitty, I might have taken the time and effort to do a watercolor on the concept, but realistically that’s not possible anymore. Cheers.

This is really the zinger you finally settled on after all that?

Hah, I think it was moreso my catching myself and changing course. If an apology is in order, then I hereby offer it.

The problem on my end is that I like contributing where I can (on top of running my community) but am almost always working through a level of pain & fatigue, having a pretty much fatal disease in CFS/ME.

Admittedly, I have a short fuse when it comes to what I perceive as low-effort critique, even if it’s just me mistaking the situation and replying inappropriately. I’m generally at the end of my rope at that point, and should undoubtedly be doing something else, even if it’s just to ignore replies(!)

I’ve also been stung like this before when contributing occasional AI-aided content. A common thing seems to be people assuming I put zero creativity or effort in to coaxing out something which I thought was fairly amusing after my work and final edits. [for example]

OTOH, this has been about my sixth post across about two months in this particular sublemmy, and all have gone well so far until this one, which perhaps did slightly-less-well. “Anon6789” has been going above and beyond, and seeing that, I’ve wanted to help out when I can.

the sheltering and the big disaster

Okay, I’m listening!

deleted by creator

deleted by creator

deleted by creator

deleted by creator

Nope, not me. Check my history to see my business…

Yeap… we… well… we have our DRIVES, us lemmings ducks lemmings ducks!

Bah, what force shall prevail in the end?! 🦺

Oh rabbits, was it really… that wild? oO