Hey, look a feature every mammal may need to evolve in the near future!
this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2025
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Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop fucking cats.
When was the right week?
Same week they started or ideally the one before that? 🤷
We need you back in the fight soldier, we need to make cat girls (and boys) a reality.
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I've been fucking the dog for decades.
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
The issue is not more/less salt in the oceans, but fewer and less reliable sources of freshwater.
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Oceans getting less salt
Rivers and lakes in Canada getting more salt
But I think they were referring to running out of reliable fresh water due to drought
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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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.
Evolutionary household cats are damn near perfection.
Not a crab
Part tortoise on account of the tortoiseshell, which is an adjacent water animal
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Purrfection
Don’t cats often die from kidney disease? :(
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.)
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.
yep, usually the first organ to fail in old cats, so the superpower seems to come with a drawback. edit: removed inaccurate statements
That's why they don't like taking baths
Old age, in and of itself, doesn't kill any living thing. There's always a system failure eventually. Seems like in cats that's commonly kidneys or thyroid.
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?
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.
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
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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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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