Talk:1338: Land Mammals

Is it mass or weight? --173.245.53.119 06:38, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

It says weight. Since most land animals live on the... land, there is not much difference. I suppose if a lot of aninimals lived near a prime pole vaulting location it could skew the results. 108.162.246.117 06:40, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm really curious, what are the other, unlabeled groupings? Author's website 108.162.215.46 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

On page 186 of Smil's referenced book, there is a bar chart with the following values in millions of tons (*=not used in Randall's graphic):
elephants 0.8
horses 40
pigs 100
cattle 450
people 280
*whales 80
*all wild vertebrates 30
*all domesticated vertebrates 650

108.162.215.46 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I think that this graph is actually more illustrative of how much support humans need to maintain themselves (the amount of cattle is astonishing). lcarsos_a (talk) 07:58, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

need? I don't think we need so much cattle. It's just that most people prefer hamburgers and steaks to beans. So, how much we use to maintain ourselves would be better. (BTW, you don't count yourself as human?) -- Hkmaly (talk) 10:39, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

According to [1] there are 525 million dogs, assuming 20 kg as average weight, this should give 10 squares in the diagram. I can't find reliable numbers for cats, but there are more cats than dogs, but they don't weigh as much, so their total weight could be similar to that of the dogs. --108.162.254.160 08:42, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

The blob of 13 under the word Livestock may very well represent both dogs and cats. 108.162.215.46 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Does anybody see a reason for the particular layout of the blocks? My first impression was a globe but obviously it doesn't correspond to any continents, etc. 108.162.254.66 08:44, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

I've been wondering myself... I do think it is a picture of something. My ideas so far: an eye, a fried egg, a cell. --Divad27182 (talk) 09:29, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

It may simply be something-like-a-circle of humans with the rest surrounding it. But it DOES look like a cell. -- Hkmaly (talk) 10:39, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Could it be a sort of relationship diagram? It looks like we're in the centre, with the animals we have the closest relationships with — our pets and our food — nearest, and those we're less concerned with further away. Gidds (talk) 11:34, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, the overall layout is human-centric, but that doesn't explain the intentionally lumpy and asymmetric regions. It would have been easier to place the blocks in regular shapes (circular, rectangular or otherwise) but Randall chose to do it this way. Cell with a nucleus is a reasonable guess. - Frankie (talk) 14:00, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

I think it resembles a (low resolution) globe, with humanity representing the major continent Boxy (talk) 14:19, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

I think it shows the relationship of the title text (assuming we are part of land mammals): there are about 1.2K squares in total representing a factor of 1K:1 overall. Thus the shape (resembling bacterium) is explained, the incorporation of all mammals into the shape, and the potential central location of humans (assuming most bacteria lives in our gut). 108.162.219.31 16:09, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

I would love to identify specific groups. The unlabelled animals come in groups, even the wild animals, even though only *one* of those groups (elephants for some reason) has been labelled. —TobyBartels (talk) 13:05, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Reason for elephant label == "This is how much/little the whole population of the largest land mammals amass to."? (Actually, given the scarcity of elephants, I'm surprised it's a full block. I suspect something else that could have been labelledsuch as "rats" would be far more.) 141.101.99.7 14:07, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Per the wikipeda page[2] on camels I expect that they are the blob of 3 gray squares. Mwiser (talk)

108.162.241.8 16:19, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

uhh.... chickens aren't... mammals? (?) Brettpeirce (talk) 17:22, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Stab at the numbers

Land Mammal	population in Billions	Average Kilograms	Total Kilograms in Billions	Notes
Humans	7.2	70	00504 !504	as of 2013
Cattle	1	1740	01740 !1740	as of 2012
Pigs	1	350	00350 !350
Chickens	19	1	00019 !19	not mammals
Goats	?	?	00000 !?
Sheep	1	?	00000 !?
Elephants	?	5000	00000 !?
Horses	?	500	00000 !?
Rats	10	0.35	00003.5 !3.5	10B is a guess
Cats	0.6	5	00003 !3
Dogs	0.4	40	00016 !16
Seal	0.022	200	00004.4 !4.4

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_heaviest_land_mammals
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_mammals_by_population