Comment by b112 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by b112 | Hacker News Reader

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It's a well established fact that animal populations are cyclictic, booming then starving, then booming again.

Predator finds prey aplenty, and so is fruitful and multiplies. Then prey becomes so numerous, it eats prey until there are few left. Predator then has a population crash, and the prey rebound without predation.

Over and over this happens.

Is that what is happening here? Perhaps, as carrion eaters are susceptible too, when this happens to other populations. After all, during this cycle prey and predator both crash... leaving less carrion. And then of course carrion eaters can overpopulate too..

So I wonder, is this just another clickbait headline?

Nah it’s probably rat poison here

No it's not a click bait headline. Birds that eat carcasses have been in steep decline in many places because of very specific human generated pollutants in the dead animals (in India's case a pain reliever, in California it was lead, etc).

> So I wonder, is this just another clickbait headline?

No. As the article makes abundantly clear there’s plenty of carrion, it’s just poisoned. Nothing natural about it.

I see that's not even traditional poison, but instead something meant to help the cattle. Unfortunate.

It’s not meant to help the cattle, it’s meant to preserve profits by treating the cattle for a disease they only have because they’re kept in unsanitary and overcrowded conditions.

The loss of the towers of silence is a turducken of human incompetence.

that is probably true in the absence of humans, but modern humans ruin all these cycles when they become part of them, often kill apex predators just because they're bored or their activities inadvertently kill them (poisoning everything in site because you don't like mice/rats)

That's interesting, I wonder if this accelerates evolution from environmental pressure massively.

Nice try Mr. Rat Poison Salesman.

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