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 650108.162.215.46 (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 ~~~~)
Contents
Layout of the blocks
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)
- 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 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)
Identifying the groups
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) Update: I hadn't seen the 1 billion kg == 1 million tons notation which has since appeared. I therefore added camels (and also donkeys) to the table below. Mwiser (talk)
Non SI units should just die already. 108.162.241.8 20:39, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
- Is Randall's ton the metric tonne or the US short ton? -- 108.162.219.65 22:06, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
Stab at the numbers
Land Mammal | population in Billions | Average Kilograms | Total Kilograms in Billions | xkcd value | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Humans | 7.2 | 70 | 504 | 556 | as of 2013 |
Cattle | 1 | 1740 | 1740 | 1918 | as of 2012 |
Pigs | 1 | 350 | 350 | 386 | |
Chickens | 19 | 1 | 19 | 21 | not mammals |
Goats | 0.865 | 46 | 39.7 | as of 2008... src | |
Sheep | 1 | 80 | 80 | 88 | |
Elephants | 0.000105670 | 5000 | 0.5 | as of 2012 src | |
Horses | 0.058372106 | 500 | 29 | as of 2006 src | |
Rats | 10 | 0.35 | 3.5 | 4 | 10B is a guess |
Cats | 0.6 | 5 | 3 | 3 | |
Dogs | 0.4 | 40 | 16 | ||
Seal | 0.022 | 200 | 4.4 | 5 | not a land mammal |
Mole | 6×1014 | 0.075 | 4.5×1013 | Numbers are slightly exaggerated, but it would be nice to have those quantities | |
Krill | ? | ? | 175-725 | Wild species with largest biomass (not a land mammal)src | |
Camel | 0.014 | 465 | 6.51 | As of 2010 src | |
Donkey | 0.04 | 160 | 6.4 | As of 206 src mass src |
- 1 billion kg == 1 million tons src
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_heaviest_land_mammals
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_mammals_by_population
108.162.241.8 16:19, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
Talk about the table
uhh.... chickens aren't... mammals? (?) Brettpeirce (talk) 17:22, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
- Apparently not. http://www.ask.com/question/are-chickens-mammals
- --RenniePet (talk) 03:23, 6 March 2014 (UTC)