9 days ago
Short and sweet. An absolute masterpiece of scientific writing!
A family friend used to run a travel business with tours to the Okavango Delta. When I asked him how it was going, he replied "Great, we've only ever lost one honeymoon couple to hippos"! People don't realise they are one of the most dangerous animals to humans.
9 days ago
9 days ago
> hippos' stunning wound-healing abilities—perhaps related to the antibacterial properties of the creepy "red sweat" that coats their skin
sounds interesting and definitely something worth looking into as well
9 days ago
I mean, sensationalistic or "Why didn't you post on / This isn't reddit" or not, this is one of the more amazing opening sentences ever...
> Few things in this world are as elusive as a hippopotamus testicle
9 days ago
I was fond of “all the surviving animals were able to return to their feces-infested communal pools within hours of the surgery with no negative consequences”
9 days ago
1 out of 10 died though.
9 days ago
We have been taught in high school that the reason humans and "all mammals" had external testes was to cool them. But elephants have internal testicles, and, apparently, so do hippos. This seems a much better strategy than having such an important (and sensitive!) organ hanging out at the mercy of predators, foes, or even banal accidents. The evolution explanation for this appears to be lacking.
9 days ago
Evolution is a process of massively parallel multistart hill-climbing where the objective function is "did this creature successfully breed". It doesn't settle on a global optimum, just finds many many local optima that enable creatures to succeed in passing on their DNA.
Why in human males is the prostate such a troublesome thing? Because by the time the prostate becomes a problem, males have generally done any breeding they're going to do, so there is no advantage to natural selection to improving it further. Is it optimal? Definitely not.
Presumably it is (taking the wide view) probably a good thing that evolution doesn't find global optima or there would be far less ecological diversity.
9 days ago
Yeah I totally agree with this. We want to find explanations and justifications for everything, but it's largely possible that the location of testes actually doesn't matter -- internal, external, whatever.
9 days ago
> it's largely possible that the location of testes actually doesn't matter
It's not really that it doesn't matter, just that there are several different options to allow good enough fertility.
If sperm has to be stored/generated at a temperature lower than 36°C, then external testes are a solution to that, but a lower body temperature works as well. Developing enzymes that work good enough at a higher temperature also works (apparently what birds have done). And maybe just accepting a lower fitness of sperm cells works if the animal produces more of them.
Hippopotamuses have a low body temperature of about 35°C, so internal testes work for them.
9 days ago
Males are expendable. In humans, only about a half of males does reproduce. More 'experiments' are run on males by the nature, the phenotype variance is higher and includes more of excelent and more of detrimental variations, while females stick to the stable functional baseline.
9 days ago
Having them as an exposed 'weak spot' might accelerate the evolutionary process - those who can effectively protect that weak spot have a better chance of reproducing, those who can't get filtered out of the gene pool?
9 days ago
This is a valid point that often gets missed. What is good for an individual isn't necessarily good for species as a whole.
9 days ago
My guess is, mammals with very large body sizes have slower metabolism, so they don't run as hot as smaller creatures, and can have internal testicles without the downsides.
9 days ago
The evolutionary explanation is simple: enough males with external testes successfully reproduce regardless.
9 days ago
I learnt recently that primates will actively look to damage them during fights. Not sure if this is general knowledge that I missed but I found it interesting
9 days ago
Flashback to a Robin Williams bit, where Marlon Perkins of "Wild Kingdom" directs his assistant to circumcise a water buffalo.
9 days ago
Animal cruelty is immoral.
9 days ago
> The vets successfully castrated 10 out of 10 hippos with their method, losing only one of the animals to postsurgery complications
Yeah those are not good numbers.
9 days ago
According to a related article: https://www.discovermagazine.com/why-its-nearly-impossible-t...
The death was caused by an "unknown pre-existing condition" but doesn't elaborate further.
9 days ago
Vets castrating an animal under anesthesia pales in comparison to male calves castration by using tight rubber band (AMZN sells them too) to cut the blood supply to scrotum and thus causing necrosis and ultimately scrotum and testicles falling off. Without any anesthesia. A widespread, most popular, practice in US. The animal suffers tremendous pain for several weeks. The true cost of beef.
9 days ago
> The true cost of beef.
There's also the animal's death.
9 days ago
Personally, I'm more anti-suffering than anti-death.
8 days ago
Would the animal feel the same? Or if you were the animal and had reached your tastiest, would you be ok to die if you didn't suffer?
9 days ago
Does suffering matter if death follows eventually? The dead cares about nothing, because it remembers nothing, because... it no longer is (alive).
9 days ago
> Does suffering matter if death follows eventually? The dead cares about nothing, because it remembers nothing
Yes it matters. Causing suffering to a consciousness that can experience pain is inhumane.
Now, reasonable people can disagree how far to extend our circle of empathy. Some would exclude animals or even other humans (eg criminals or someone of a different ethnicity), while other people would go so far as to include ants, plants, or rocks. I think both extremes are wrong.
Perhaps more poignantly to you question, what if you ask yourself:
- does your answer change considering humans are also animals?
- regardless of target, what does it say to the character of a person who chooses to be cruel when they don’t have to
9 days ago
Reasonable people can also disagree as to the amount of pain and reasons for it.
If you have surgery that involves painful recovery, should the surgeon refuse to perform it? Only if it's elective? Or it's ok because you elect it? What about required surgery on a non-human animal? Is the painful recovery justified by the surgery's necessity [to achieve a human-desired goal]? What if it's necessary to extend the animal's life, or ameliorate other pain?
In the case of TFA the intervention is part of habitat management -- preserving the species in the face of human encroachment, or even just in the face of encroachment that occurred even if no further encroachment is allowed. That seems to me like a reasonable justification for the pain caused in that case, and this is also the case for cats and dogs even though the justification is slightly different there.
8 days ago
> In the case of TFA the intervention is part of habitat management -- preserving the species in the face of human encroachment, or even just in the face of encroachment that occurred even if no further encroachment is allowed. That seems to me like a reasonable justification for the pain caused in that case,
Agree. Similar story about elephants, who can wreck havoc on an ecosystem. Culling them is a good practice.
9 days ago
So it's not at all about the target of the suffering. It's all about the one(s) causing it. Which suggests to me that the suffering really doesn't matter, objectively speaking. And as such it also doesn't matter how far/near the circle is extended. It ultimately boils down to the others considering and judging any given situation, not the one(s) caused to suffer (to which applicability of definition is highly questionable in the first place if it includes plants and rocks).
Of course this changes greatly if the sufferer(s) survive the ordeal for a significant amount of time beyond, as there may be repercussions, depending on the degree of the effects caused and the capacity (physical, psychological, social, etc) of the sufferer(s).
9 days ago
Every living organism dies eventually. I don’t think that that is a useful argument to condone cruelty and causing suffering when it can be avoided.
9 days ago
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[dead]
9 days ago
So is sanctimony, good job nobody around here is being cruel or sanctimonious.
9 days ago
9 days ago
reading this i wonder how long some tech bros need for a starup that offers AI assisted hippo castration for executives as the next hype
9 days ago
Please don't give them any ideas. It's one small step from 'this works great on hippos!' to 'I hear there's a human population problem...'.
9 days ago
We do have a human population problem. It's aging out of existence.
9 days ago
Some tech bros can't bring themselves to say that it would be good for the human species to survive [for any length of time].
9 days ago
(2014)
9 days ago
I don't think much has changed in the state of the art of hippo castration in the last twelve years.
9 days ago
[flagged]
9 days ago
They're not saying it's not worth talking about. They're saying it should have a date tag, as is customary for old articles on Hacker News.
9 days ago
Please don't post snarky comments here.
That user is one of the most engaged, helpful users on HN and it's a long-standing convention that the year is appended to titles of articles that are not current.
9 days ago
[flagged]
14 days ago
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9 days ago
How long before this is included in an AI benchmark? Can't wait :-)