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Comment by lopis | Hacker News Reader

What do you mean? We can live without bees from bee-keeping just fine. That's like saying cows and us can't live without each other.

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sure - but the current number of cattle in the world would be unsustainable without human care and need for them.

on edit: fixed grammar

Not quite. Much of the industry for growing fruit depends on beekeepers renting out their bees as pollinators. As for cattle, well, yeah, they wholly depend on us. If you are in doubt just look at the relative sizes of populations of cattle vs mammalian wildlife.

Yes, cattle depends on us, but we definitely don't depend on them; that was the point I was trying to make.

Oh, really?

How do you explain wild feral cattle thriving in the Kimberley, Arnhem Land, etc. then?

https://news.csu.edu.au/feature/are-feral-cattle-the-brumbie...

https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/offtrack/the-banteng-...

http://www.windyhills.com.au/wild-cattle/

I don't think you appreciate quite how many heads of cattle exist compared to comparable mammals that live in nature, and what it would look like if the world's cattle population was "free range".

The way we raise cattle is extremely efficient. Not least in terms of space.

> I don't think you appreciate quite how many heads of cattle

Born and raised on a cattle station with multiple STEM degrees and decades mapping the world (large scale geophysical land and ocean survey) behind me ..

I don't think you appreciate how laughably condescending you come across.

Points being:

* I understand the total number of cattle under direct human management,

* I know that cattle can survive just fine without human management .. even in urban environments (ever seen free range unowned cattle in India?),

* I've already linked to what feral cattle look like and the damage they do.

Uhm are you gonna run around fields chasing wild cows for milk and burgers?

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