John Carlos BaezJul 10

I'm not a "foodie". I like eating as much as the average mammal. But unlike most, I'm not on the brink of starvation, so eating is not a major focus of my life. So I'd never sail to a remote isle in the Inner Hebrides just to eat at a fancy restaurant like Café Canna. But the idea of sailing to a remote island *does* intrigue me - and I like the perverse idea of a restaurant that's really hard to reach.

It's probably enough to just read about it while I stay home and eat a banana for breakfast:

"The next morning we left the shelter of the bay and forged into a far less hospitable ocean – not quite bad tempered, but not far off. “Lumpy,” said Watson, who never seemed to run out of words to describe the sea: pitchy, squally, swirly. Passing the moleskin-grey volcanic peaks of Rum, one of the Small Isles, on our starboard side, the boat lolloped towards another, Canna, where we went ashore and hiked to its eastern tip to watch puffins before looping back to the bay for a beer at Café Canna, a tiny, remote restaurant that draws sailors from across the archipelago."

That's Alexander Barlow from his decadent tale of sailing the Inner Hebrides, eating and drinking:

https://www.cntraveller.com/article/sailing-through-inner-hebrides

Here is Café Canna's website:

https://www.cafecanna.co.uk/

Even better may be the most remote pub in the mainland of Scotland, or for that matter the UK. Read on, my friend....

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Show threadJohn Carlos BaezJul 10

The Old Forge Pub is the most remote pub in Scotland. The only ways to get to it are by taking an 11-kilometer trip by sea or a 27-kilometer hike across the Scottish Highlands.

There's a village there, called Inverie, not connected to the rest of the world by roads. The population was 120 when last recorded. The pub was very important in the life of this village. But in the 2010s, the owner started closing it down for 6 months every winter. Bad!

As a local explained, "When it's dark and windy and horrible, you need somewhere you can go and relax, meet up with your friends, celebrate stuff together."

Business kept getting worse. When the Old Forge was finally put on sale in February 2021, someone got the idea that the community could buy it. They raised over £320,000 with the help of crowdfunding, the Scottish Land Fund, and the Community Ownership Fund. The pub now has 90 shareholders - about 75% of the local population!

This is what I like: people with skin in the game who own their own business, not rich investors trying to squeeze money out of something until it dies.

For more read this:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/mar/29/locals-secure-buyout-mainland-britain-most-remote-pub-old-forge-inverie

By the way, I said most mammals in the world are constantly on the brink of starvation, but that's not true because nowadays most mammals are people and farm animals. I meant most mammals throughout the course of history. But even there I don't know if what I said is true. Sure they had to worry about eating, but maybe for some the food sources were so reliable they could focus attention on other things - reproduction of course, but also social dominance and even just play.

I want to know how hungry, on average, various species of mammals tend to be!

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Show threadma𝕏poolJul 10

@johncarlosbaez

Fact-checked ✅

Livestock make up 62% of the world’s mammal biomass; humans account for 34%; and wild mammals are just 4%.

Global poultry weighs more than twice that of wild birds. 71% of bird biomass is poultry.

https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass

Wild mammals make up only a few percent of the world’s mammals

Livestock make up 62% of the world’s mammal biomass; humans account for 34%; and wild mammals are just 4%.

Our World in Data
Show threadVictor Gijsbers
@maxpool @johncarlosbaez But that's biomass. I suspect that the *number* of mice, rats, and other small rodents might equal or surpass that of humans and livestock? Not sure, but it doesn't seem unlikely.
Jul 10 at 10:09amWeb
Show threadProf LutzJul 10
@victorgijsbers @maxpool @johncarlosbaez for biomass visualization, it's here 👉 https://www.behance.net/gallery/146949057/Visualizing-the-Biomass-of-Life/modules/830167501# (but it's in mass, not in numbers...)
Visualizing the Biomass of Life - Mark Belan | artsci studios

Infographic,Education,Illustration,Maxon Cinema 4D,Adobe Photoshop,Adobe Illustrator

Behance
Show threadJohn Carlos BaezJul 10

@victorgijsbers @maxpool - it's hard to estimate the number of small mammals in the world, but here is one data point:

"For a long time, the number of rats in New York City was unknown, and a common urban legend declared there were up to five times as many rats as people. However, a 2023 study estimates that there are approximately 3 million rats in New York, which is close to a third of New York's human population."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rats_in_New_York_City

Irene on Biology Stackexchange writes:

"The population of mice is often estimated per hectare - 0.25-60/ha in buildings and 1-200 in the field, over 1000/ha during outbreaks. 10^9-10^10 hectares of habitable land means that populations of mice and men are, probably, of the same order of magnitude."

https://biology.stackexchange.com/a/1346

Rats in New York City - Wikipedia