what other animals have we bred to have a huge variation in sizes like dogs?
why must we play god
let’s not forget cats
Pigs.
Fully grown healthy small breeds clock in between 70-150 lbs. Extreme situation pigs (AKA minimicro teacup etc, which btw teacup puppies are also extreme situations and are not healthy) show up sometimes at less than 50lbs. There are lab breeds (pigs are used in human medical research because of their similarity in organs and tissue composition) that are rumored to be bred “safely” down to 50 lbs but lab pig breeds are pretty tightly kept confidential.
gigantic commercial breeds can weigh 700+lbs when allowed to reach full size. extreme individuals have been recorded over 1500lbs.
here’s a farm pig and a potbelly, but that farm pig is just a regular farm pig. not even one of the huge ones.
And cattle too.
Chianina (an italian draught breed now raised for meat). this is the tallest and heaviest pure breed of cattle.
But holstein-friesians are ridiculously tall. They don’t weigh as much, but they’re suuuuuuuuper tall.
vs a wide variety of mini breeds.
mini zebus
mini texas longhorns
there’s a ton of miniature breeds. A TON. Some are traditional/natural breeds, IE the entire breed is that small. Some are miniaturized versions of full sized breeds (like the longhorns above. There’s also mini holsteins, mini angus, mini herefords, you name it)
Oh my??? MINI LONGHORNS
basically any time humans domesticated an animal they went “now let’s make a small one and a big one”
Love when my cat flings himself into the air after a toy, but he has no style. Straight up ragdoll physics.
One day i want to take a video of Yardstick straight-up hurling himself into the void. Cats have no conception that there is a future. There is just now and the jingly toy.
Feeding your animals (safe) but new-to-them foods is botha great source of enrichment for the and endless hilarity for you. I reccomend green beans because they’re unwieldly for them to eat so its an involved process.
“[There] are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any iniquity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathesomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don’t say no.”