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Comment by wouldbecouldbe | Hacker News Reader

Animals are fine, and so are people who grow up drinking that. It probably strengthens certain parts of the immune system.

The main reason we need to purify it is because of the stuff humans put in it.

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You're forgetting the people who absolutely were not fine. If those people die in childhood often enough, that eventually gets removed from or significantly reduced in the gene pool, but people have to die first. It's like asthma. Those kids used to just die. Now we have inhalers, so it appears like asthma is on the rise when it's more that less people die from it. It looks like adults who grow up drinking that water are fine, but you're ignoring the toddlers who died from drinking that water.

There's even a whole Wikipedia page on waterborne diseases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterborne_disease

I have to respond here with "WTF are you talking about". You are engaging in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy without use of your critical thinking facilities. Any water source that has rotting plant material, or is exposed to the feces of animals puts you at high risk of serious illness. Some water sources will have natural bacterial contamination and/or mineral contamination (think arsenic).

Absolutely huge portions of the human population died to water quality issues before the 20th century.

He is also saying that animals are fine. Animals are not fine. Many animals that consume water out of the river only live for five years or so. Diseases still get them.

What are you talking about, almost all animals in wild live longer dan in captivity in Western Zoos. That's def. due to stress, but it means purified human water isn't a bigger factor then stress & movement. Animals and humans aren't stupid, we have an idea what water is safer then others.

You can remove the captivity factor by looking at feral vs. domestic animal lifespans of the same species.

Personally I have no idea what water is safer unless it smells, but maybe that’s my genes.

Most dogs & cats, even cattle, drink rainwater all the time.

Not only drink, but all animals always prefer rainwater in puddles, or other random "unclean" (by modern human standards) containers vs. pumped ground water. There is a lesson there for humans, if only we would pay attention.

>almost all animals in wild live longer

I seriously have to ask if you're an LLM trained to spout BS?

I would like you to drop the source of your 'wild vs zoo' statistics? If need be, expand that into wild vs general captivity. Here, let me do it for you...

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep36361

>We found that mammals from zoo populations generally lived longer than their wild counterparts (84% of species). The effect was most notable in species with a faster pace of life (i.e. a short life span, high reproductive rate and high mortality in the wild) because zoos evidently offer protection against a number of relevant conditions like predation, intraspecific competition and diseases.

I generally don't go out of my way to call out peoples BS, except in this case you're spouting things that are potentially dangerous to others. Don't go drinking out of puddles your dog does. I've seen dogs eat out of hot trash cans and be fine. Also I've seen dogs eat small chocolate bars and die. Trying to guess the quality of your water on the longevity of your dog is a great way to end up with brain cysts.

Calm down homie. If you've never drank rain water out of random "containers" in nature, have you even lived? Ever stay out in nature, alone for 3-4 months without a clean mountain stream nearby?

How do you know that animals are fine?

Because you only see the ones who are doing fine.

This.

Animals in nature are incredibly healthy. You won't see any with even a deep cut.

Isn't that because the ones who aren't healthy die? That sounds like saying we shouldn't bother having modern medicine because it causes us to have a lot more sick people. The problem is we wouldn't have a lot more healthy people that way; we'd have a lot more dead people.

That's exactly what the comment I was replying to said.

An alternative explanation is that nature is some peaceful place where no animal ever gets hurt, for any reason... What would be a purely comedic exercise if people weren't believing this one all over the thread.

It is. This subthread is clearly ironic.

All my cats, dogs, horses & chickens have all been drinking rain & groundwater.

They've never died of any infectious disease, nor needed treatment.

Have they ever had the runs? Giardia can be fatal to puppies and sick dogs.

The danger isn't rainwater. It is stagnant water and running water that has been contaminated. Both are more of a problem in rural and wilderness where there are animals that have been contaminated.

Hmmm, most of my friends' animals (pets) kept at home, medicated, fed "pet food" and "clean" water, tend to be significantly sicker than my outside-kept animals, and always seem to have a short lifespan. They have certainly had the runs more often than my outside-only-"kept" animals. My cats literally drink stagnant water every single day, algae, bacteria, various protozoa and all. The safety'ism in HN is out of control.

"If you ignore the worms it's all good!"

And you should, as they're largely beneficial.

? Because we raise them, live with them, watch them live a long and healthy life?

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