• DiarrheaSommelier@lemmy.caEnglish
      45·
      21 days ago

      Logarithmically scaled image. I’ll leave the determination of the base of the Log as an exercise for the viewer.

      • Log in | Sign up@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        20 days ago

        That’s what I thought, so I investigated.

        The base of the log can be accounted for by a constant scale factor, because, for example, if n is the number of bison,

        log10(n)
        = log10(e^ln(n))
        = ln(n) log10(e) and log10(e) is a constant.
        This change of base is a linear scale on the logs.

        Hence we can just take log 10 of the numbers of bison, and scale the answer by a constant factor which is log10(correct base), getting
        7.778, 2.477 and 4.477
        Scale that by about 2 = log10(100) to match the 5 bison in the middle pictogram, and there should be
        16, 5, 9 bison on a logarithmic scale.

        The diagram is also wrong if it’s logarithmic.

  • lectricleopard@lemmy.worldEnglish
    464·
    21 days ago

    The decision to stop was required, but a ton of work was done to help the population rebound. What kind of misguided message is this trying to send?

  • cddlhssy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    22·
    21 days ago

    Settlers killed buffalo to force indigenous people into the reservation system. It was a big part of the genocide here, worth looking into if you get the chance.

  • tinfoilhat@lemmy.mlEnglish
    17·
    20 days ago

    Each buffalo in the first picture represents 242,914 buffalo. Which means the last picture would be about 1/10th of a bison, and the middle one would be just the tip of a horn.

  • nexguy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    14·
    21 days ago

    TIL There are 30,000 free roaming bison but there are 500,000 total including privately owned and commercial herds.

  • OddMinus1@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    10·
    21 days ago

    I don’t know the history of bison population. From the image, I assume there used to be a ton of bison. But then a science experiment involving velociraptors went awry, and only a small group of bison were left alive. Then those bison made an uprising against the velociraptor-experiments and invaded their area, allowing their population to grow again.

    How far off am I?

  • megopie@beehaw.orgEnglish
    7·
    21 days ago

    Also, like, it wasn’t just a “decision to stop” it was the end of a coincidence of factors. The mid century climatic conditions that led to several years of poor grass growth, with the combined hunting efforts of European American settlers on rail roads supported by the army’s policies against the Great Plains Indians, south eastern Indians displaced in to the great planes, and Great Plains Indians intensifying hunting via sophisticated methods they’d developed using horseback and fire arms, all driven by a demand for buffalo hides for use in industrial machinery. The end of the bad climatic conditions and the collapse of the hide trade due to development of other industrial materials is what stoped the over hunting.

    With the pressures of hunting decreased and a historic climatic event over, the population was able to rebound somewhat, but, due to the encroachment of farms and ranching never really recover. Also the genetic bottleneck of the population probably hasn’t helped things but that’s not super well studied.

  • 5too@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    20 days ago

    So I’m not bothered by the inconsistent scale… but why is there a dinosaur peeking through the bottom of the 1889 column?!

  • neukenindekeuken@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    4·
    21 days ago

    Science/Biology question for someone. If the Bison that exist today are all sourced from those last 300 Bison, are there genetic bottlenecks/recessive traits and defects that we’ve just permanently given to the entire Bison species forever and ever?

  • Jaimesmith@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    20 days ago

    Not perfect recovery, but still a powerful reminder that “too late” isn’t always true. Stopping the damage is step one.