The deer are actually the ones doing much of the deforestation.
But I agree with your point that the overpopulation is impossible to miss. I’m also in the suburbs of a major Midwestern city and the deer are everywhere. My city tags them so, oddly, you kind of get to know them.
Last year #100 and #161 both had fawns in my back yard (for a total of 3 babies). This year, #161 dropped 2 more back there. I still see #100 around, but I don’t think she had offspring this year. She might have been sterilized, but I heard that the city stopped doing that because some of our tagged deer were tracked to 2 states away. Now we just cull them.
Two days ago I saw a buck (rare for the 'burbs) chasing a few of this year’s fawns around. I thought “you dummy, those girls are too young to breed,” but then I looked it up, and apparently sexual maturity in deer is determined by weight, not age. Does can participate in their first-year rut if they’ve had enough to eat. And those little shits have had plenty of expensive flowers out of my garden.
Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
People are acting like drivers don’t hit deers at full speed while they’re in control of the car. Unless we get numbers comparing self driving vs human driven cars then this is just a non story with the only goal being discrediting Musk when there’s so many other shit that can be used to discredit him.
T156@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I should be very surprised if people don’t generally try to brake or avoid hitting an animal (with some exceptions), if only so that they don’t break the car. Whether they succeed at that is another question entirely.
Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
People drive drunk, people drive while checking their phone, people panic and freeze, deers often just jump in front of you from out of nowhere.
pyre@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
… and that’s the kind of driving Tesla of trying to emulate? awesome.
jj4211@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
And those people are breaking the law.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone panic so much they just act as if they didn’t even hit a deer.
In this case, the deer was just sitting there, so not applicable.
If it was this much negligence, they’d be facing vehicular manslaughter charges.
It’s scandalous when a human does it too. We should do better than human anyway, and we can identify a number of deliberate decisions that exacerbate this problem that could be addressed, e.g. mitigation through LIDAR, which Tesla has famously rejected.
pyre@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
oh my fucking god