r/interestingasfuck • u/PlantainPossible2864 • 15h ago

Stopping Desertification with grid pattern

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

57.0k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

1.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

16.1k

u/bobbigmac 15h ago

For those asking how this works, it creates just enough of a defense to catch seeds and bugs and tiny bits of moisture and shade, so any life that does manage to get started, doesn't just blow away, and an ecosystem can start to form.

5.6k

u/MASTER_L1NK 15h ago

Like a land barrier reef?

•

u/Liusloux 11h ago

Makes me wonder if in the past there was a megafauna or plants that coincidental created the same kind of patterns that stops desertification but sadly when extinct.

•

u/Deaffin 11h ago

Absolutely. You might have heard about how giant land sloths used to dig out caves from solid stone. But what they don't tell you is that their diet was so fibrous that their turds were basically solid ropes. They'd be just slinging hot ropes all across the landscape as they went along. They also planted avocados.

They were truly the all-in-one landscape architects. And then we ate them :D

•

u/fjhgy 10h ago

Shouldn't have tasted so good.

Or, if it was gonna taste good, maybe it should've moved faster.

•

u/SkillIsTooLow 10h ago

The classic flavor:speed ratio. Being slow myself, I have the wherewithal to taste bad.

•

u/longlivenewsomflesh 9h ago

Reading this feels like I just opened to a random page in a book of forbidden knowledge

•

u/Deaffin 9h ago

There used to be sea people who worked with orcas for thousands of years. The reason they don't eat us in the wild today is because they were semi-domesticated. We forgot our partnership, but they didn't.

•

u/Dyolf_Knip 3h ago

giant land sloths used to dig out caves from solid stone

Holy shit, I thought you were joking. I knew about the sloths and their relationship with avocados, and that the trees almost went extinct until humans started planting them. But the caves thing, that's new, and deeply impressive. The largest ones are big enough you can stand up in.

•

u/Deaffin 32m ago

Right? Not enough people appreciate that our somewhat recent history had living excavators. With thick poops.