This is why cows kill so many people. Its really easy for an animal five or six times your weight to kill you just by interacting the same way it does with its own species.
That gets worse as the animal gets bigger.
And cows are basically calm little angels compared to say, hippos.
Moose 💀
…thank you, Rimmer…
Giant modern herbivores I would willingly pet in the wild. Buffalo: no. Elephant: no. Reindeer: no. Rhino: no. Water buffalo: no. Giraffe: no. Hippo: no.
Based on modern examples, I’d stay the fuck away.
I’d much rather turn a blind corner and find myself standing right in front of a grizzly mother with her cubs than a hippo or a moose.
There’s a band of capibaras living in my city… they already killed 2 people.
Capybara are dangerous?! Do they kill by biting or what?
Yes, they bite.
The local news had to run a campaign for people not to try to pet the capibaras.
Elephants are herbivores too. And you definitely do not fuck with elephants in the wild.
Remember, the wise phrase of “If not friend, why friend-shaped?” is not only for bears.
“Bear hug” is a wrestling move after all.
And also why, “little puppy kisses” is not in fact, a wrestling move.
I’ve seen videos of horses and deer eating small animals. I don’t remember which was which but one just picked like a pigeon up off the ground and started chewing.
Anyways, the point is that the herbivores we know today will often eat meat if it’s an easy meal. There’s no reason to think that a brachiosaurus would be any different.
I distinctly remember a horse eating a baby chicken.
Who started the assumption that herbivores were all sweet harmless cuddle bugs anyhow? Because they had obviously never interacted with a large herbivore before.
Most people aren’t ever really exposed to nature. You can have a cuddly dairy cow, but that’s not universal. Most encounters people have are going to be with animals that are docile and used to human interactions.
Also it is a little counter intuitive at first. Predators will retreat from a fight of it’s not worth the effort. Prey doesn’t retreat once the fight starts, because it’s literally life or death for them.
You can have a cuddly dairy cow, but that’s not universal.
Far from universal. About 20 people die per year in the USA from attacks by cows. They are huge powerful animals that don’t generally don’t give a shit about people (they’re used to them, for the most part) but if they decide you are a threat to them or their calf, you’re fucked.
There’s also a huge difference between beef cows and dairy cows.
My understanding: dairy cows interact with humans on a regular basis, for dairy stuff. Beef animals don’t interact with humans nearly as much.
People are gored by bison at Yellowstone every year. When I visited a few years ago, the rangers were actively having to tell people to avoid an elk who, with his harem, had decided to hang out in Fort Yellowstone for a couple days. People are dumb, or don’t think “wow that’s a 600+ lb animal the size of a minivan”.
Both of them attack. It’s just that carnivores treat it as you owe them money.
And herbivores treat it as they owe you money.
A lot of herbivores are occasional opportunistic carnivores. I bet that thing’s molars would make quick work of a human’s bones.
Herbivores will wreck your life if you mess with them. Remember that twit hunter who approached a deer and paid for it? Or all those other twits who need to be reminded bison in Yellowstone are NOT friendly just because they’re fluffy?
…that they survived into the fossil records is proof enough, stupid people think that anything that survived long enough to be in the fossil record was nice, uhh, i have a rust-colored bridge in San Fancisco for you…cheap…
…ffs, we only just discovered a new species that had been in the stomach juices of another big lizard…
Edvard Munch inspired parts of this cartoon, and I like it.
I was there.
65000000 years ago.
Hippos are absolutely vicious but most people assume they’re fat and gentle herbivores.
They might have been dolphins of the time.
I’m going to keep assuming they were nice and there’s nothing you can do about it
c/noncrediblearchaeology
