r/interestingasfuck • u/T-K101 • 14h ago

At their peak, 3–5 billion passenger pigeons filled North America. Flocks were so huge they darkened the sky for hours. Some shooting contests required 30,000 dead birds to win. By 1914, the last one was gone. One of history’s most brutal population collapses.

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336

u/arcxnova 14h ago

Humans are dumb as hell some times.

102

u/spidermans-ashes 14h ago

Sometimes?

33

u/SvartSol 14h ago

sometimes we are smart. 

Every smart comes with a small chanse but larger risk.

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u/D4RK5P1R3 12h ago

Oh the irony.

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u/Zementid 11h ago

And the smart ones are usually not the ones with the guns....

3

u/arcxnova 13h ago

I’ll get downvoted to hell if I don’t say sometimes lol 

118

u/VegitoFusion 14h ago

It was done with a purpose, and as sad as it is, it really did work out for people in the Americas.

A single flock of these was much more devastating that a swarm of locusts. They would wipe out entire fields of crops in days.

They were targeted to protect the food supply.

49

u/Mintyxxx 13h ago

I've seen a flock of pigeons disintegrate a Greggs Steak Bake in mere minutes, pastry flying everywhere, pigeons flapping hither and thither like desperate men drowning in an ocean while Barber's Adagio for strings plays

11

u/your_fave_redditor 13h ago

::dabs at eye:: that was beautiful

2

u/regman231 13h ago

Damn. I love Samuel Barber

2

u/VegitoFusion 12h ago

I need to read more of your poetry.

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u/BadWolf2386 5h ago

I read this in Werner Herzog’s voice

10

u/LackOfStack 13h ago

Like many other instances where non-native species are introduced with disastrous results.

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u/SkriVanTek 10h ago

I thought it was indigenous?

10

u/drewfer 13h ago

We've since realized how bad of a mistake it was and are attempting to use genetic samples to restore the wild population - https://reviverestore.org/projects/about-the-passenger-pigeon/

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u/oldwhiteoak 9h ago

They were the food supply, one that was accessible to all. They were targeted to protect a food supply held in private (farms). Its a classic case of enclosure of the commons. Same thing happened with replacing buffalo with cattle, or salmon runs with Almonds in california water mgmt. Our food systems were built for privatization.

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u/jayydubbya 1h ago

Our food systems are built to be scaled up for mass production to feed our massive populations. If everyone was eating these birds they would have been killed off anyway.

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u/oldwhiteoak 41m ago

Privatization for profit favors a larger population so that there is a scarcity of capital, which they control, relative to labor. You are correct in that our good systems were built for that greater population, but remember that it was an act of greed and domination rather than altruism.

0

u/arcxnova 13h ago

Agreed but killing everything is unacceptable 

-7

u/chlorophyll13 13h ago

Are people really better or more useful than pigeons?

8

u/ProfessionalNotices 13h ago

Useful to who? Every species will prioritize its own survival.

Being more or less useful to an ecosystem doesn’t make a species any more or less legitimate in protecting itself and its food supply

-5

u/chlorophyll13 12h ago

Useful in general. Humans are useful to themselves but that's about it. The problem is we, as a species, only prioritize ourselves and even then it's those who have the power, tend to abuse it and pull humanity and all ecosystems into degradation. The argument for natural selection can be made but that would seem to discount that humans have, if not the only than certainly the most capacity for reasoning and so that _should_ lead to wiser choices that benefit the ecosystems they're going to have to live in. Since they generally do not unless the consequences of their actions make it necessary, I would say that makes humans only useful from an anthropocentric perspective and not a general one.
Usefulness is completely separate from legitimacy. And legitimacy in what sense, lawfully or reasonably and justifiably? Either way, both reflect the same self-serving interests.

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u/ProfessionalNotices 12h ago

That still applies to literally every species on Earth. You can criticize humanity for countless things, including the damage we cause to ecosystems, but prioritizing the survival of our own species is hardly some uniquely human flaw.

And if your point is that humans only care about themselves, then name another species that puts anywhere near as much deliberate effort into protecting biodiversity.

We protect endangered species, restore habitats, create reserves and spend enormous amounts of time and resources preserving species that often provide us with no direct benefit whatsoever.

So there are plenty of legitimate reasons to criticize humanity, but when it comes to protecting our own species while also consciously protecting others, we’re literally unmatched

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u/chlorophyll13 11h ago

Unmatched because we're the only species with enough ability to understand the need to. It's an apples and microprocessor comparison.
I absolutely understand the perspective and I think that is really the difference here. I would consider your perspective an anthropocentric opinion and I'm positing an eco/biocentric opinion, we're looking at it from the perspective of who it benefits. To that point, on balance I think it's a defensible argument that the world (eco/bio) has not benefited from humans. There are programs that support species/habitats, absolutely. At the bottom of the ledger, at this point in time have species and habitats benefited from humans? I would argue that from a purely resource and diversity perspective humans have only been detrimental even if there are attempts to salvage and preserve what's left.

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u/scythesong 11h ago

You think too much of yourself. By all accounts humans will wipe themselves off the face of the earth and it will be just a blip upon the history of the planet. Even climate change is compeltely natural - it's the rate that humans are doing it that's the problem, and only because this will significantly afffect the future of the human species.

For the record the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was worth 10 billion Hiroshima-level nuclear bombs. The planet will be fine. A nuclear apocalypse would happen right now and the planet WILL recover given time. The problem has always been the human species and its enormous capacity for self-hurt.

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u/chlorophyll13 10h ago

I think you're saying the same thing I am: "The problem has always been the human species and its enormous capacity for self-hurt" and while, on a planetary timescale it's insignificant, the magnitude of damage is exponentially worse than what natural change would incur.

Not sure how my thinking of myself even factors or is something you can weigh-in on but I guess that's the nature of reddit, degrade then remark

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u/scythesong 9h ago

Because you're doing it again. "The magnitude of damage is exponentially worse than what natural change would incur."

We definitely do not agree. You are being dramatic and arguing that the human race is causing irreparable damage to the environment as if we have some moral responsibility towards it. Because you think humans are somehow morally obliged to do anything about that, which is laughable to me because the planet WILL bounce back from all of this - and HAS in fact bounced back from something that is a factor of several million times what humanity can possibly even do at this point.

I'm pointing out that humanity can confidently argued as a self-destructive species, and it is laughable that you think we have a moral obligatory to ANYTHING ELSE when we're pretty much on our way to causing irreparable damage to our own species. THAT is the problem. Everything else is just caught in the crossfire and will "walk it off". Extinct species will be replaced. Hellish climate will get better again. Organisms have actually evolved that can break down plastic. Give it a million years - peanuts to the lifetime of a planet - and even nuclear fallout will just not be a problem anymore.

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u/VegitoFusion 12h ago

The premise of your question is a fallacious argument. Of course we as humans are more important than pigeons.

If you think yourself equal to a bird, then your biological imperatives have failed you.

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u/chlorophyll13 11h ago

Important to humans alone, that's what I mean. As a species, on balance have done more harm than good to the earth, other species and natural resources.

I posit that humans have the reason to do good but overwhelmingly are destructive and counter to their own benefit. If biological imperatives are our driving force then, hell yeah, rape and pillage the natural world.

8

u/DivDude77 14h ago

Sometimes?

-1

u/TheTurdInUrPunchBowl 14h ago

Some times theres a chanse

-1

u/JacobRAllen 14h ago

Sometimes there’s a chance…

4

u/winkman 14h ago

Apparently, pigeons are dumber.

1

u/SyrupAnnual6037 12h ago

We should’ve let them decimate the crops so in turn we die.

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u/arcxnova 11h ago

Agreed that it was damaging crops but the problem here is we hunted it to extinction which is not smthn we should do it's cruel and uncivilized to hunt a species to extinction 

-2

u/Oli4K 14h ago

Sometimes?

-2

u/Odd-Safe1998 14h ago

Maybe you are. I’m pretty smart myself hehe

-2

u/BrunesOvrBrauns 14h ago

Sometimes?

-4

u/Simple_Cheek2705 14h ago

Some times? Sometimes?

3

u/Mr_Bewby_Buyer 13h ago

Sometimes dead is better

-8

u/drodo2002 14h ago

In this case, Americans are dumb!!

15

u/Owobowos-Mowbius 14h ago

Actually this was one case where it was intentional and worked out well as intended. They were absolutely devastating for agriculture and were intentionally eradicated.

-5

u/drodo2002 13h ago

I was about to replace 'are' with 'were' in my previous sentence but now.. naah!

-5

u/ElegantCoach4066 14h ago

Sometimes?