Posted on 06/04/2024 5:30:47 PM PDT by DallasBiff
Which Animals Are Killed Most Frequently
The numbers are staggering. In 1993, a study completed by 25 schools through New England found 1,923 animal deaths, and the data was then extrapolated by the Animal People Newspaper to reveal the following annual number of kills on the 4.1 million miles of roadways in the United States : 41 million squirrels, 26 million cats, 22 million rats, 19 million opossums, 15 million raccoons, six million dogs, and 350,000 deer. However, there is no clear data on the precise number of animals that are victims of vehicles each year.
Accidents involving larger animals are the most commonly reported, mainly because they typically result in injury or death of vehicle passengers and drivers, damage to cars, and insurance claims. It is estimated anywhere from 80 to 340 million birds also die in the U.S. each year, close to one million animals like like woodchucks, frogs, turtles, snakes, and rabbits, and hundreds of thousands of insects - but these animals are less frequently reported due to their size and the fact they do not cause as much damage.
Squirrels
(Excerpt) Read more at worldatlas.com ...
Moose are the big killers, here in AK. Worse than a cow owing to their long legs.
https://mythresults.com/alaska-special
Me too! Where I live it’s mainly skunks and armadillos.
Coyotes also. I see one or more dead on the side of the road almost every time I'm on the highway.
Regional. I see more skunks snd porcupines than I’ll ever see armadillos. More bears, for that matter.
The Angel William was a good angel, but...not talented in any way, and had no experience in wildlife creation workflows except for designing rats and cockroaches, but...when you need a body, you need a body. The Angel William might get it right this time. So God contracted Angel William to design and implement The Squirrel. And by and large, Angel William did a pretty good job of it.
Squirrels were fast. They had enough intelligence to improvise. They were athletic and durable. The reproduced prodigiously. But the six-day deadline was fast approaching, and when The Angel William wrote the algorithm to avoid cars, well, he was more interested in getting the code installed to meet the deadline than he was in doing it right. Besides, he knew the schedule for the appearance of cars was long off in the future, so squirrels could learn what they needed to know in that time frame.
As we know, it didn't work out that way, and when squirrels began dying in great numbers on roadways, it came to the attention of God. He focused on this deficiency, and time and time again, he would see squirrels blindly rush out into oncoming traffic, only to have them appear at his feet a second or two later. This was not good. Then, as he watched, he saw another squirrel dash right between the wheels of a car and improbably appear safely on the other side, and as God's eyebrows rose in astonishment, the squirrel reversed course and ran right back under the wheels of the trailing car, and suddenly appeared at his feet, where it scurried away to the nearest heavenly tree.
God didn't explode in anger, as that was not his style, but he did ask calmly "Okay. Who designed The Squirrel?"
An Angel with a clipboard says "It was Angel William, my Lord."
I have often wondered if, when observing this earth in action, that God delivered unto himself a facepalm. If he ever did, it must have been then.
Also, do Mormon Crickets count?
The only armadillos I’ve ever seen outside a zoo were roadkill.
So they extrapolated fewer than 2,000 animal deaths into more than 129 million. Sounds like extremely rigorous science. I’m sure they considered all of the various factors that could affect the accuracy of their extrapolation.
Well at least armadillo roadkill, doesn’t stink like skunks.
Of that list the only ones that I feel bad about are the opossums. Squirrels are just rats with cute fluffy tails. Deer reproduce faster than they die. Rats who cares? They eat the wires in your car. F the rats. Raccoons are not nice. When I see a dead squirrel or dead rat or dead raccoon, I rejoice. Dead cats? Cars are the only predator for cats.
6 million dogs—really?
No wild hogs?
Squirrels? Not according to the Geico commercial. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z6ixrfKgO0
Australia-Sydney to Broken hill. 800 miles. Lots of dead kangaroos. They’re pretty big.
Who’s paying for such top-notch (/s) research and why?
I don’t understand why animals insist on running in front of cars all the time. Especially squirrels. They see you coming but they run out in front of your car anyhow.
Squirrels, possums and coons, in that order where I live.
Aren’t alligators a predator to cats in Florida?
I’m very surprised by the Rats in the list. I have NEVER seen a rat that has been run over by a car in my entire 60 year life. And I’ve lived in five distict geographical areas in the USA (northwest - Oregon, midwest - Iowa, far south - Florida, southeast - North Carolina, and southwest- New Mexico).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.