Domestic cats usually have no natural predators, so yeah they are.
you're using two different definitions here, but it doesn't matter because neither of them work
cats have plenty of natural predators (coyotes, certain large birds of prey), they just nearly always have a safe place to run to, or their predators' range doesn't overlap with theirs, because they're domesticated
"most profligate killer" isn't something I've ever heard of when evaluating something as an apex predator, but in pretty much every area that cats live, that's going to be humans
basically, classifying any domesticated animal as an apex predator is silly, they're not interacting with the food chain in the same way as any wild animal
their closest wild relative, the African Wildcat, is not an apex predator
Domestic cats usually have no natural predators, so yeah they are.
you're using two different definitions here, but it doesn't matter because neither of them work
cats have plenty of natural predators (coyotes, certain large birds of prey), they just nearly always have a safe place to run to, or their predators' range doesn't overlap with theirs, because they're domesticated
"most profligate killer" isn't something I've ever heard of when evaluating something as an apex predator, but in pretty much every area that cats live, that's going to be humans
basically, classifying any domesticated animal as an apex predator is silly, they're not interacting with the food chain in the same way as any wild animal
their closest wild relative, the African Wildcat, is not an apex predator
Apex predator is not a universal Y/N thing for an animal -- its based on the ecosystem and food chain involved, and can change over time. A type of animal can be an apex predator in one ecosystem and not in another. For example, bats are generally not apex predators in most situations, but on certain islands or within cave systems, they can be. Coyotes are apex predators in areas where wolves and bears have been extirpated. House cats, in their typical urban ecosystem (which is definitely a thing) are, in fact, apex predators.
There are like 3 definitions for apex predator, depending on what you're trying to use to define it.
Non sciency people use the "how bad ass is the predator" while biological ones use the trophic level method (where humans range anywhere from basically barely above cows/pigs to essentially top of the food chain) and the third one just goes by "does this animal have a natural predator in most cases?"
So if you use the real statistics/science heavy method for determining apex, a lot of the top end species (like humans) are essentially not apex predators. It's all about where you exist in the food chain and the lack of efficiency away from plants. The more species in the way, the more "apex" you are. An animal with good defenses that is 8 times removed from the plant trophic level (let's say we had a porcupine like species that was eating massive amounts of fish) could essentially be "more apex" than a lion.
Humans are special because our efficiency with food has essentially removed us from the apex predator calculation even though we are the apex predator of apex predators. So much so we've actually domesticated several other apex predators. I had this discussion in another thread earlier, but, in a survival situation with the gloves off, humans would destroy everything. Hell we've done it in the past, we outcompeted the North American lion and pushed them to extinction because we were better hunters than they were. We also outcompete wolves. And Also bears.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
I know because I spent a few minutes researching that number before I made that post
pilots of large jetliners make over 100k, but that isn't what most commercial pilots fly, despite dealing with essentially the same risks
e: ALSO they have a huge amount of responsibility placed on them, have a ridiculously hyperfocused and advanced skillset, have to meet rigorous licensing standards, and generally don't have careers that last to 65
Also, the training costs are extensive and unless you were an Air Force pilot, you'll probably have to pay for it out of pocket. To even get hired at a regional, you need somewhere around 800 hours of flying. Getting an Airline Transport Pilot certificate is the culmination of five levels of certificates (private pilot, instrument, complex, commercial, ATP) that essentially wind up costing somewhere around a college education at a good school. Getting hired at a regional will pay somewhere around $20k-$40k a year. After you get to 1500-2000 hours at a regional, you may be able to move up to one of the big airlines. Starting salary at the big airlines is pretty livable as long as you're not on a coast, and as you advance in your career you can kind of decide what to make it of it. Pilot pay depends on your seniority, types of planes you can fly, and if you're a captain or first officer. A captain of a big jetliner (747, 777, A380) flying international routes easily makes north of 6-figures. If you look up average salary for pilots, these are the guys driving the average up. A newly minted first officer flying domestic routes still makes somewhere around $60k-$80k. Again, though, this is after years of training and flying for the regionals.
Flying for a regional is the pits, in addition to the terrible pay. All the airline hubs you'll fly out of are located in major cities, but you won't get paid enough to afford to live there. What some people do is either have a "crash pad" for when they're flying, or you can deadhead on a flight from where you live that's affordable to your duty station.
This is all provided the airlines don't go bankrupt or merge. If the former happens, they'll furlough pilots and you'll have to decide if you want to get a different job, where you'll be back on the bottom of the pay scales, or hold out and hope you can go back to work. If your airline merges with another, a fight will play out if the pilot unions at the two airlines are different. If you work for the airline that gets acquired, hopefully your union can preserve your position in the seniority list in the combined airline.
Right now is a relatively good time to be a pilot, though. The airlines are actually making money these days*. Even with the mergers, there's not enough pilots to go around, so some of the regionals are offering slight pay increases and offering to offset training costs. Note that this isn't the cost of all the training you went through to get your ATP, this just means the cost of learning how to fly regional jets (which you otherwise would've had to pay for even after you started working for the regional). Since the big airlines need to replace guys who are reaching the mandatory retirement age, the hours needed to get hired at a major airline are also slightly down.
*: Of course, all it takes is another recession to reverse this.
It costs more to become a commercial heavy airline pilot than it does to become a doctor, at least here in Australia. If you want to be aiming 737s at the ground you're gonna be at least a quarter of a million dollars in the hole easily before your first pax-full flight in a big jet.
EDIT: Welp, Shorty and ASimPerson said it earlier and better than me.
I would be 100% okay for someone to make a law that gives pilots a base wage (like 100k tied to inflation), plus something like commission for however many seats are filled, plus risk pay for flying above 8 hours a day.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
It costs more to become a commercial heavy airline pilot than it does to become a doctor, at least here in Australia. If you want to be aiming 737s at the ground you're gonna be at least a quarter of a million dollars in the hole easily before your first pax-full flight in a big jet.
EDIT: Welp, Shorty and ASimPerson said it earlier and better than me.
Should note that most US pilots get their training and flight hours in the military. Doing it privately is not really a viable path economically here.
Not aiming to diminish the cost of going that route though.
I know because I spent a few minutes researching that number before I made that post
pilots of large jetliners make over 100k, but that isn't what most commercial pilots fly, despite dealing with essentially the same risks
e: ALSO they have a huge amount of responsibility placed on them, have a ridiculously hyperfocused and advanced skillset, have to meet rigorous licensing standards, and generally don't have careers that last to 65
I very much believe they are worth more
I found out that astronauts make about the same median
I jockey a desk making websites pretty and I make more than an astronaut
Something is wrong here
+7
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Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
I know because I spent a few minutes researching that number before I made that post
pilots of large jetliners make over 100k, but that isn't what most commercial pilots fly, despite dealing with essentially the same risks
e: ALSO they have a huge amount of responsibility placed on them, have a ridiculously hyperfocused and advanced skillset, have to meet rigorous licensing standards, and generally don't have careers that last to 65
I very much believe they are worth more
I found out that astronauts make about the same median
I jockey a desk making websites pretty and I make more than an astronaut
Something is wrong here
Aspirational jobs like pilot and astronaut pay for shit because they're things people desperately want to do, but there's no celebrity that goes along with it. If we as a society revered astronauts the way we revere rock stars, then they'd all earn tens of millions of dollars per year.
0
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Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
I think it was David Graeber who pointed out that right now, the component of any job that carries the obvious social worth is considered to be part of the compensation--"oh, you get to do something that matters? you're so fortunate!"
the result is that the people doing the most important work are also some of the most unfairly compensated
I think it was David Graeber who pointed out that right now, the component of any job that carries the obvious social worth is considered to be part of the compensation--"oh, you get to do something that matters? you're so fortunate!"
the result is that the people doing the most important work are also some of the most unfairly compensated
see: teachers
+14
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Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
Posts
I was expecting this but then I might be broken
https://gifsound.com/?gif=https://i.redd.it/nccx9xc04ut01.gif&v=mzDVaKRApcg&s=15
you're using two different definitions here, but it doesn't matter because neither of them work
cats have plenty of natural predators (coyotes, certain large birds of prey), they just nearly always have a safe place to run to, or their predators' range doesn't overlap with theirs, because they're domesticated
"most profligate killer" isn't something I've ever heard of when evaluating something as an apex predator, but in pretty much every area that cats live, that's going to be humans
basically, classifying any domesticated animal as an apex predator is silly, they're not interacting with the food chain in the same way as any wild animal
their closest wild relative, the African Wildcat, is not an apex predator
Who thought this was a good idea?!
I loved MIB3. Boris was a fantastic villain
Apex predator is not a universal Y/N thing for an animal -- its based on the ecosystem and food chain involved, and can change over time. A type of animal can be an apex predator in one ecosystem and not in another. For example, bats are generally not apex predators in most situations, but on certain islands or within cave systems, they can be. Coyotes are apex predators in areas where wolves and bears have been extirpated. House cats, in their typical urban ecosystem (which is definitely a thing) are, in fact, apex predators.
Non sciency people use the "how bad ass is the predator" while biological ones use the trophic level method (where humans range anywhere from basically barely above cows/pigs to essentially top of the food chain) and the third one just goes by "does this animal have a natural predator in most cases?"
So if you use the real statistics/science heavy method for determining apex, a lot of the top end species (like humans) are essentially not apex predators. It's all about where you exist in the food chain and the lack of efficiency away from plants. The more species in the way, the more "apex" you are. An animal with good defenses that is 8 times removed from the plant trophic level (let's say we had a porcupine like species that was eating massive amounts of fish) could essentially be "more apex" than a lion.
Humans are special because our efficiency with food has essentially removed us from the apex predator calculation even though we are the apex predator of apex predators. So much so we've actually domesticated several other apex predators. I had this discussion in another thread earlier, but, in a survival situation with the gloves off, humans would destroy everything. Hell we've done it in the past, we outcompeted the North American lion and pushed them to extinction because we were better hunters than they were. We also outcompete wolves. And Also bears.
Need some stuff designed or printed? I can help with that.
I'm not sure any profession has quite a gap between the perception of how much they make versus how much they actually make as pilots.
Also he's using every appendage he has there. Off-camera his right arm is on the throttle, and his feet are on the rudder pedals.
commercial pilots make well over 100k
that is a lot of money
no, median pay for commercial pilots is about 70k
I know because I spent a few minutes researching that number before I made that post
pilots of large jetliners make over 100k, but that isn't what most commercial pilots fly, despite dealing with essentially the same risks
e: ALSO they have a huge amount of responsibility placed on them, have a ridiculously hyperfocused and advanced skillset, have to meet rigorous licensing standards, and generally don't have careers that last to 65
I very much believe they are worth more
Flying for a regional is the pits, in addition to the terrible pay. All the airline hubs you'll fly out of are located in major cities, but you won't get paid enough to afford to live there. What some people do is either have a "crash pad" for when they're flying, or you can deadhead on a flight from where you live that's affordable to your duty station.
This is all provided the airlines don't go bankrupt or merge. If the former happens, they'll furlough pilots and you'll have to decide if you want to get a different job, where you'll be back on the bottom of the pay scales, or hold out and hope you can go back to work. If your airline merges with another, a fight will play out if the pilot unions at the two airlines are different. If you work for the airline that gets acquired, hopefully your union can preserve your position in the seniority list in the combined airline.
Right now is a relatively good time to be a pilot, though. The airlines are actually making money these days*. Even with the mergers, there's not enough pilots to go around, so some of the regionals are offering slight pay increases and offering to offset training costs. Note that this isn't the cost of all the training you went through to get your ATP, this just means the cost of learning how to fly regional jets (which you otherwise would've had to pay for even after you started working for the regional). Since the big airlines need to replace guys who are reaching the mandatory retirement age, the hours needed to get hired at a major airline are also slightly down.
*: Of course, all it takes is another recession to reverse this.
It costs more to become a commercial heavy airline pilot than it does to become a doctor, at least here in Australia. If you want to be aiming 737s at the ground you're gonna be at least a quarter of a million dollars in the hole easily before your first pax-full flight in a big jet.
EDIT: Welp, Shorty and ASimPerson said it earlier and better than me.
I want that box.
Should note that most US pilots get their training and flight hours in the military. Doing it privately is not really a viable path economically here.
Not aiming to diminish the cost of going that route though.
I found out that astronauts make about the same median
I jockey a desk making websites pretty and I make more than an astronaut
Something is wrong here
Aspirational jobs like pilot and astronaut pay for shit because they're things people desperately want to do, but there's no celebrity that goes along with it. If we as a society revered astronauts the way we revere rock stars, then they'd all earn tens of millions of dollars per year.
the result is that the people doing the most important work are also some of the most unfairly compensated
see: teachers
yes, most people do bullshit work, because that's currently the kind of work that gets paid
Nah I think we'd just see a whole lot more people who were willing to clean toilets and fewer people who wanted to do shit like, be a lobbyist.
I should have known that g00d_b0y_360 was too good to be human.