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0 pointsforesterre8mo ago0 comments

In his book Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari called the farming of animals by humans "Nature's biggest fraud", which I always found to be an apt description.

It makes me wonder if humans are the only animals who "farm" other animals in some way (not on the same scale as humans do of course).

At the same time, it makes me wonder, "is being a parasitic animal socially better or worse than animals who farm fellow animals" ;).

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4 comments · 3 top-level

chongli8mo ago· 1 in thread

Ants farm aphids and another species of ant farms fungus.

Parasites are ubiquitous in nature and they range from the infamous cuckoo who lays eggs in other birds’ nests to tiny worms that infest the eyes of children to the horrifying tarantula hawk wasp that paralyses a spider and leads it to a burrow and then lays an egg which soon hatches and devours the still-living spider from the inside out!

jhbadger8mo ago

There are many parasitoid wasps, of which the tarantula hawk wasp is only one. It's an sound evolutionary strategy even if their existence even horrified Charles Darwin (and these wasps were obviously the inspiration for the Xenomorph in the Alien movies)

RobotToaster8mo ago

There are ants that farm and "milk" aphids https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/did-you-know/farmer-ants-a...

ethanpailes8mo ago

Sperm whales arguably farm by always dedicating at the top of the water column and measurably increasing the fertility of the seas they swim in. It seems possible that is deliberate given how much of their time they spend in the depths.

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