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[–] 127 points 1 year ago (21 children)

Hey, look a feature every mammal may need to evolve in the near future!

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  • [–] 72 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop fucking cats.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I've been fucking the dog for decades.

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  • [–] 26 points 1 year ago* (10 children)

    Are oceans getting saltier? The glaciers that are melting are pure freshwater

    EDIT

    I'm not an expert but from a quick googling it seems the oceans are getting LESS salty

    https://www.llnl.gov/article/37921/atmospheric-warming-altering-ocean-salinity-and-water-cycle

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago

    I suppose that's only a short-term effect.
    Long-term prognosis should be the oceans getting saltier because of the rivers carrying salt into the oceans until the equilibrium between salt being carried into the oceans and salt being sedimented at the ocean bed has been restored.
    Well, in geological time frames 'short-term' can be quite a long timespan.

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  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

    You're halfway there! If the oceans are getting less salty, where else's the extra water coming from?

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    I literally already said the answer to that in my original comment.

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  • [–] 25 points 1 year ago*

    I think that what SpaceNoodle is trying to say is that the decrease in ocean salinity is correlated to a decrease in fresh water, so even though salinity is dropping, adaptations need to be made because we will run out of fresh water.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    I literally already said the answer to that in my original comment.

    Uhh, no you didn't? At least, not the way I interpret it.

    It looks like you were saying "oceans are getting less salty, and therefore this adaptation is less needed". But @SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world was saying "the reason they're getting less salty is because fresh water is becoming more scarce, and therefore the adaptations are more needed".

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  • [–] 254 points 1 year ago (15 children)
  • [–] 39 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    Still, that's pretty impressive. Cats are absolutely incredible animals. I'm thankful the "worst behaved cats" still love me for whatever reason because I've been able to see some of the crazy shit they do.

    My parents have an entirely blind 18 year old cat. She can navigate the entire house eats fine, plays a bit. Hops up and down furniture, finds the sunbathing spots, uses the litter just fine. You do have to keep an eye out for her if your moving around as she can't smell fast enough if you step in front of her path.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I'm trying to imagine the world from this cat's point of view. Relying on smells, sounds, touch and vibration. I bet she can hear and smell small critters just fine, but would she be able to successfully hunt them?

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  • [–] 87 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    The fact that you need to tell people not to intentionally give their cat salt water is telling of how far we've regressed as a society.

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  • [–] 32 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    Humans are naturally curious and lean towards the scientific method, that's why we always need a disclaimer, don't TRY this, they still will.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    “Scientific method”?

    Most people’s “method” is YOLO/HMB for lols. Thank goodness cats have nine lives.

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  • [–] 103 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    They can drink salt water when times are tough but it still wouldn't be good to drink it for a sustained amount of time.

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  • [–] 52 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Don’t cats often die from kidney disease? :(

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Yes, but often as a result of a long diet with chronic dehydration from a kibble based diet.

    The moisture cats consume is from their prey. The blood and juices of rodents and birds hydrate cats.

    Canned/wet food cats tend to wind up with thyroid issues instead of kidney. (Well, sorta: there's evidence the BPAs in cans and mercury from fish as a reason for that.)

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    Well this is partially true. I'm pretty sure even a cat on a perfect diet will still have very high chances of developing chronic kidney disease in old age because it is just common in cats.

    Could be wrong but my understanding is that It's partially because their kidneys are so efficient that they often get kidney disease in late age. They're always under a super high workload.

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  • [–] 48 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    They say the same thing about horses because of their kidney to body size ratio but it's simply not true. It might help them survive on saltwater longer than a human would but it's still a death march.

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  • [–] 51 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Evolutionary household cats are damn near perfection.

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  • [–] 41 points 1 year ago (4 children)
  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Not a great white either. Basically unchanged for hundreds of millions of years and absolute apex in every way.

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    [–] 16 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Penguins too but its in a supraorbital gland in their beak

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  • [+] 11 points 1 year ago (4 children)
  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    like birds, they will probably eat your eyes first, which is mostly freshwater

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I actually doubt it, they will probably stick to the cat food (not because it loves you or anything they are cold carnivorous predators but it is more familiar)they have left until the body is necessary and the eyes decay first so they would be gross by the time they got to them.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (11 children)

    Sort or related question, is that why their piss reeks like concentrated jenkem?

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    That’d be ammonia, a metabolic byproduct of their carnivorous diet.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    Not trying to be that guy, but it's urea, which breaks down to ammonia due to microbial action once it's out of the cat. If a cat is pissing ammonia, it has big problems and needs to see a vet.

    Other contributors to awful cat piss smell are mercaptans, the same compounds responsible for the scent of skunk spray, and pheromones and fatty acids released when the cat is spraying versus normal urination. It's all compounded by cats being adapted for arid environments so their urine is much more concentrated than human urine.

    I love cats but they're gross little fuckers sometimes.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Dehydration is a common cause for cats to be 'ill' and brought to the vet,* so it could be that their piss reeks because they are having to concentrate it so much in the first place.

    *source: a dimly remembered conversation with a vet friend when I asked her why she was adding water to the already wet food for her cat. She said her cat could never be encouraged to drink enough, so it was her way of staving off the annoyance of giving iv fluids to her own animal someday.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    It's absolutely a thing, I've had several cats in my life look nearly on the brink of death before basically forcing them to drink or eat turned them around completely. They can be very stubborn. Fountains help a lot because in nature moving water is typically cleaner than standing water, so if your cat always refuses to drink, get a $10 cat fountain on Amazon, it works!

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Isn't all Jenkem concentrated?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I'm under the impression that the basic product itself isn't a concentration, but more of a fermented brew.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    we're going to need to evolve this superpower if we want to avoid my grandkids and your grandkids killing each other in the global water wars.

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago (15 children)

    I could say that is an impressive evolutionary feat, but instead I'll say: Evolution, what the hell is wrong with you? You do know we all came from the sea, you should know 70% of the earth is covered in salt water, why did you think it was ok to devolve the ability to drink salt water but retain the requirement to drink water? Are you Ok? Do you need Jesus?

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Evolution is considered a success if the animal lives long enough to successfully mate and nothing else matters to mindless evolution. At least cats don't have curly tusks that borrow through the skull if they live long enough like that infamous boar species I can't remember the name of.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    Success is being better about producing offspring that can grow old enough to produce offspring better* than everything competing for your niech

    *Better is the more optimal rate. Overpopulation is sub optimal

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (12 children)

    kidney disease is one of the most common ways cats die of old age so super efficient kidneys dont come without a tradeoff. Cats have evolved to live in very arid enviorments where saltwater is all that is availible so the tradeoff might have been worth it. ability to drink saltwater only would work without kidneys being prematurely overstressed would be likely if animals had higher normal salt content but that would mean they would need a lot higher salt intake making living inland harder.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (11 children)

    IDK man, whales can live over 200 years.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    but whales like all sea creatures have high bodry salt content making the osmotic pressure difference small

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    Ok, so here's an Idea, have more salt in our fluids.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Great idea except we'd need another million years of evolution or more

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    No, you're missing the point again, when fish first went land diving they drank salt water because of that there body would have already had more salt and so would there kidneys, we evolved the ability to drink fresh water, that is what took a million years.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    I didn't comment elsewhere but from this incoherent comment it's clear you don't have the first clue what you're on about, or why I said a million years (evolving a major change like sea to land takes hundreds of millions or billions of years).

    Ideas are good, but people contributing ideas that show they don't know anything at all about the topic, while insisting they're right, gets tiresome.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    if humans would be adapted to that it could work but it would mean without modern technology it would be close to impossible to survive without access to saltwater (most of human habitable land area)

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Well we were already adapted for it or at least our ancient ancient fish ancestors were we lost the ability that's my core point, salt isn't exactly rare and other minerals can be used to reduce osmotic pressure, but besides that 40% of all people live near salt water and ~30% of all land animals live near salt water so I wouldn't think that would be enough to lose such a valuable resource as water, I am obviously wrong since we can't drink salt water but it still feels like a miss step.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    i guess in the case of humans we would have evolved for a long time to mainly eat fruit that has a high water content with low salt content possibly even being most of needed water intake. after starting to eat meat perhaps there hasnt been enough evolutionary pressure to be able to regain saltwater consumption ability

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