Biodiversity
Welcome to c/Biodiversity @ Mander.xyz!
A community about the variety of life on Earth at all levels; including plants, animals, bacteria, and fungi.
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This is a work in progress, please don't mind the mess.
2023-06-16: We invite our users to contribute resources for the sidebar.
2023-06-15: Looking for mods!
About
Biodiversity is a term used to describe the enormous variety of life on Earth. It can be used more specifically to refer to all of the species in one region or ecosystem. Biodiversity refers to every living thing, including plants, bacteria, animals, and humans. Scientists have estimated that there are around 8.7 million species of plants and animals in existence. However, only around 1.2 million species have been identified and described so far, most of which are insects. This means that millions of other organisms remain a complete mystery.
Over generations, all of the species that are currently alive today have evolved unique traits that make them distinct from other species. These differences are what scientists use to tell one species from another. Organisms that have evolved to be so different from one another that they can no longer reproduce with each other are considered different species. All organisms that can reproduce with each other fall into one species. Read more...
Rules
- Don't throw mud. Be kind and remember the human.
- Keep it rooted (on topic).
- No spam.
Quick Links
Resources
- The Convention on Biological Diversity (UN)
- The Biodiversity Heritage Library
- Maps of the World's Biodiversity
- Ecosystems and Human Well-Being (free e-book)
- Falling Fruit: Map of the Urban Harvest
Bypass Paywalls
- On Ethics 1 2 3 4
- WaybackMachine (archive.org)
- Behind the Overlay Browser Extension
- ladder
- Anna's Archive
- Bypass Paywalls Browser Extension (see readme for Chrome & mobile options.)
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I'm sorry but even this won't make me a vegetarian. Hopefully lab grown meat advances so I can continue to eat meat without weighing on my conscience.
The science of consciousness is cool and all, but feel free to enjoy eating meat if that's what gets you off. No judgement here.
Edit: I should add that this was supposed to be a lame penis joke. Clearly didn't land as well as I'd hoped
Some judgement here. Knowingly causing suffering to sentient beings for your pleasure non consensually is kinda squicky. At least get the cow at the end of the universe that wants you to eat it.
Where are you going to draw the line? If every creature is worthy of consideration there won't be much left to eat.
Sentience. We got all these plant things to eat. Some of them even make things they want other beings to eat, i.e. fruit.
Good luck harvesting a field of soy without crushing a few field mice or worse
80% of soy is fed to animals for humans to exploit, so not really sure what you're getting at.
A plant based diet eliminates the vast majority of animal suffering (bonus points for reduced climate destruction, antibiotic degradation and future pandemic likelihood)
A plant based diet in the current food system produces massive amounts of animal suffering. If everything more complex than a nematode is sentient then you just have to accept that sentient suffering is the price for a large human population no matter what they are eating.
You produce far more animal suffering by farming/eating animals. Most of those animals people eat have to be fed, you know.
Sure, but you can’t let perfection be the enemy of progress.
That would be like saying, “Antibiotics cause digestive upset, and you already have a deadly bacterial infection in your colon causing digestive upset, so you’re just going to have to accept the infection because the antibiotics aren’t going to fix the digestive upset.”
The plants are already being grown. Whatever animal suffering exists from the plant being grown is going to exist either way. What we can do is eliminate or reduce the middle layer of additional animal suffering that comes from raising animals for food.
Gee gosh, haven't heard that clever and witty argument before. Not even vegans are trying to be perfect, they're trying to minimize suffering. The top comment didn't say they'd care about field mice, they said they don't care about sentience because they take pleasure in the products of its destruction. Not really interested in talking any more with someone that misses the point so obviously whenever on purpose or because of a lack of mental faculties. Bye.
https://www.livescience.com/plants-squeal-when-stressed.html
You're just comfortable with suffering you're willfully ignorant of. You don't care about sentience any more than they do.
So why bother limiting harm eh, let’s just go gloves off psycho because animals might die by accident while we’re trying to avoid harming them.
Braindead logic.
The suffering of sentient beings that directly results from human activity isn't an accident just because the harm wasn't the main or direct intention. Factory farming is not ethically justifiable whether it's cattle, fruit, vegetables, or grain.
Braindead logic is thinking you're better than anyone else because the creatures you harm get left in the field to rot.
Do you seriously think your argument has even a tiny bit of sense to it?
Until harm can be eradicated, we limit it. Trying to suggest that people eating a plant based diet might as well not bother because field mice is absurd.
we have to eat something. Vegans are aware of the suffering that farming plants causes. Unless you've got some alternative for people to survive.