You’ll have to have a referendum, consulting each bacterium and asking if they identify as part of the collective known as “you” or as an independent organism
The takeaway message: to maximize your number of potential friends, focus on making invertebrate friends and don’t bother with the few billion humans ;)
Pedantry is always important! I would argue that ants would be selected over humans by both mass and population
Ah, I was thinking of this xkcd but it’s land mammals only!
I’m considering the hovertext and I consider the pounds of bacteria in me to be Me. How are we dividing this out?
You’ll have to have a referendum, consulting each bacterium and asking if they identify as part of the collective known as “you” or as an independent organism
I am no anarcho-syndicalist commune a watery bint lobbed a scimitar at me
Do the bacteria in you consider you to be one of them (so to speak), or are you just a cruise ship?
I did some low-effort Googling and now I’m seeing that maybe some sea critters like krill have the highest non-bacteria biomass.
Either way, none of these are beetles!
The world truly belongs to bacteria, and we’re just along for the ride.
But biomass shouldn’t be relevant here, right? Individual numbers determine how many friends you might potentially have.
Keep arguing folks, i’m learning so much that i never knew i needed to learn. Quickly turning into my favourite community here <3
The takeaway message: to maximize your number of potential friends, focus on making invertebrate friends and don’t bother with the few billion humans ;)