My go is for the Buzzard, it would sure as hell make desert trips and heat waves seem a lot less worrying and paranoiac.

    • njordomir@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      30 days ago

      Here’s the answer I was looking for! I’m surprised I had to scroll so far to reach it. We are the source of most of what’s wrong with the world so I’m pretty sure the rest of the animals would vote us off the island too.

    • jdr@lemmy.ml
      0·
      1 month ago

      Not as dangerous as mosquitos! Similarly dangerous to freshwater snails.

      • Starya67@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 month ago

        I said one of the. Anyhoo, Lyme Borreliose is untreatable and there is no vaccine because the company that made it couldn’t make enough profits on it. TBE is also untreatable. As is Alpha Gal.

  • NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de
    0·
    1 month ago

    “One animal” could easily mean an individual animal. This makes things tricky. Ruling out humans (because that’s no fun), how can a single animal’s disappearance affect anything?

    Well, I don’t think it can. The biggest effects would happen if you remove an individual from a critically endangered species, but I don’t see anything good coming from that. For just about all other species, it would be like a drop in the ocean.

    So, given that I probably can’t make the world meaningfully better, I’ll aim smaller. I’ll remove a dog that shits in the street without its owner picking it up, causing innocent people to step in it.

    • NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de
      0·
      1 month ago

      Mathematically, assuming perfect knowledge about the future (if we can remove an animal, we might as well see the future):

      Define S_0 = the number of piles of dog shit I will step on in the rest of my life assuming no dog has been removed.

      Given dog d, define S(d) = the number of piles of dog shit I will step on in the rest of my life assuming dog d is removed right now.

      Select d_1 = argmin{S(d}}. (If there’s a tie, just pick one arbitrarily or use a tie-breaking metric)

      If S(d_1) < S_0, then remove d_1.

      If S(d_1) = S_0, then there is no improvement over baseline - maybe whichever dog I could remove just gets replaced with another dog. In this case, I could still remove d_1 if the tie-breaking metric did find an improvement, otherwise see next case.

      If S(d_1) > S_0, then no matter what dog I try to remove, somehow I end up stepping on more piles of shit in my life?! Ugh. Remove the nearest ant or something.

    • jdr@lemmy.ml
      0·
      1 month ago

      As a rotting corpse I live in constant fear of buzzards.

      But ya the only buzzards I know chill on dumpsters and fly in lazy circles. I blame Disney for and negative portrayals.

        • jdr@lemmy.ml
          0·
          1 month ago

          This is a very good point. I was thinking of Cathartes but you are talking about Buteo. That’s a a mal-Americanism on my part.

        • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          0·
          1 month ago

          Ok, I googled it really quick because I was almost certain that’s a photo of a hawk.

          Apparently, in the US, we use “hawk” to refer to hawks and buzzards, but use “buzzard” to refer to vultures.

          So not confusing at all.

    • NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de
      0·
      1 month ago

      Can you do it in a very public way that gets a lot of attention? Would make for an interesting news cycle. Or if you happen to be a magician, it could make you legendary!

      Joking aside

      if you are depressed, or have thoughts of suicide, you are not alone. Help is available.

  • SuiXi3D@fedia.io
    0·
    1 month ago

    Mosquitos. Dad died from a bite, got West Nile virus as a result of it. I’d give anything to have him back.

  • gasgiant@lemmy.ml
    0·
    1 month ago

    Don’t want to get rid of a good scavenger like the buzzard. They really help the ecosystem. Particularly with population and disease control.