# evolution question

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolution-question/3525>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [September 24, 1999, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolution-question/3525 "1999-09-24T14:52:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![NanoByte](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecc23a/32.png) [@NanoByte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NanoByte)\
**Post date:** [September 26, 1999, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolution-question/3525/21 "1999-09-26T22:32:00Z")

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Hurry up, “Jurassic Park” is already on set.

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**Author:** ![Poto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7ab992/32.png) [@Poto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Poto)\
**Post date:** [September 26, 1999, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolution-question/3525/22 "1999-09-26T22:50:00Z")

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We need some carnivores, so that a few people can wear fancy furs. The minks or foxes are fed fish or animal feed, butchered, the furs collected, and the mink bodies ground up with other scraps to make animal feed.They could be feeding (part)mink to dogs, cats AND mink.

Sorry, nothing to add to carnivores/herbivores. But it did take man a very long time to invent farming, so we must have eaten just about anything before that.

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**Author:** ![NanoByte](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecc23a/32.png) [@NanoByte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NanoByte)\
**Post date:** [September 26, 1999, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolution-question/3525/23 "1999-09-26T23:03:00Z")

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Can’t let that Energizer Bunny multiply faster. (Almost lost Australia there.)

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**Author:** ![NanoByte](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecc23a/32.png) [@NanoByte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NanoByte)\
**Post date:** [September 26, 1999, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolution-question/3525/24 "1999-09-26T23:08:00Z")

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> [@](#):
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> But it did take man a very long time to invent farming, so we must have eaten just about anything before that.

. . .except farmers. Don’t need 'em now. Grind 'em up and feed 'em to. . . We can get everything now from synthetics in a vat.

Ray (not a genetic engineer)

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**Author:** ![Undead\_Dude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e19adc/32.png) [@Undead\_Dude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Undead_Dude)\
**Post date:** [September 27, 1999, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolution-question/3525/25 "1999-09-27T01:05:00Z")

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In DiffEqu, a popular exercise was to make a simple model of an ecosystem. Depending on the initial conditions (reproduction rates, initial numbers), you could get some pretty suprising results. One of the possibilities was for the herbivore population to explode, eat all of the food, and then die off completely. That possibility would increase substantially if you accounted for the seasonal nature of vegatation.

Winters and dry seasons are much kinder to carnivores.

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**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\
**Post date:** [September 28, 1999, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolution-question/3525/26 "1999-09-28T01:43:00Z")

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And don’t forget that housecats will munch on grass from time to time, and dogs will eat just about anything.

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**Author:** ![Foghorn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b5a626/32.png) [@Foghorn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Foghorn)\
**Post date:** [September 28, 1999, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evolution-question/3525/27 "1999-09-28T16:11:00Z")

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Nanobyte… huh? Weird mood, bad pot or what? sheesh!

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