Wyoming resident here. We actually do have a “zombie moose” problem and its persistence is in part due to a lack of wolves. No, I am not kidding.
Actuallyyy…
Goose comes from Old English, where they pluralized [go:s] (think “goes” with a soft S) by adding [iz] (like “ease”).
When saying [go:siz], it was kinda hard for the mouth to switch the vowels from the [o] to the [i] quickly, so to save themselves the trouble, they’d change the first vowel to make it a little more similar to the second, so [go:siz] became [ge:siz].
Then, that was too long, so they dropped the [z]. [ge:si] (think “guessy” but the “e” lasts a bit longer than usual).
Then, that was too long, so they dropped the [i]. [ge:s] (“guess” with that same drawn out “e”).
📯It’s the Great Vowel Shift!📯 Now, [go:s] and [ge:s] become [gu:s] and [gi:s]. Almost there!
The vowels become a tad short over time, and now, you have [gus] and [gis] which are written “goose” and “geese”.
But “MOOSE”? That’s Algonquin. It has nothing to do with all that noise. “But they sound the same and are written the same?!” So? Haven’t you heard? English orthography is a dumpster fire. Nobody knows what they’re doing. Not even the words.
What’s this Great Shift of Vowels?
One wolf killing a moose is a very difficult feat. But when that wolf succeeds he gets more than half of the meat still.
Six wolves will have a much easier time killing a single moose. They will have almost all meat for themselves, but now have to divide it among them. If that would be done fairly every wolf would only get a third of what they would get if they killed a moose alone.
I don’t think what’s said in the screenshot is as straightforward as they think it is. I’d be more convinced hunting in packs has a lot more to do with being able to tackle stronger prey. A moose isn’t defenseless.
Also can a single wolf even eat a whole moose?
They can eat out the innards and use the carcass as a shelter like a tauntaun…
Then when the meat is all gone, they make an epic robot out of their bones.
When the outside is a freezer, yeah. Given the usual range of moose that’s true for like half the year.
It only needs to eat 53% according to the discussion above.
One lab or one beagle sure could!
I like the thought that just like goose and geese the plural of moose should respectively be meese.
Meesen.
Analogy is one of the strongest factors in language change
I die on this hill, people look at me weird when I say meese but it seems dum dum to have them different.
A Møøse once bit my sister…
No realli! She was Karving her initials on the møøse with the sharpened end of an interspace tøøthbrush
Cat: I have 9 lives!
That moose: PatheticOn the other hand: one wolf gets half a moose, six wolves each get 14% of a moose.
If it had to kill the moose 11 times it didn’t do a very good job the first 10 times. That’s why they hunt in packs.
Im glad somebody was thinking of the unkillable moose in that thread.
But wait, if a lone wolf gets 53% of the moose, but a pack of six gets 83% of the moose, then per-wolf that’s 13.8% of the moose. Why would an individual opt to hunt in a pack then?
They each expend less energy per kill, and face less risk, when hunting in a pack. That means that they can make more kills and get more sustinance. A pack of six wolves only needs to make four kills to get more sustinsnce each than six wolves each making an independent kill. Working as a pack also increases the reliability of hunting as they’re more likely to make a kill each time they expend the considerable amount of energy it takes.
this is meaningless since we dont know how often they try and how often they succeed. it’s the monthly moose ration that matters, not how much they can eat from a single kill.
Which would conversely strengthen the idea that wolves hunt in packs due to the difficulty of hunting.
Family groups. Kids old enough to hunt but not old enough to strike off on their own.
A single wolf may be able to kill a moose but a pack can definitely kill a moose. A single wolf might have to limit themselves to smaller moose while a pack can successfully take on a larger moose. A pack might have an easier time separating a single moose from the rest of the …
mooses?…meece?…moose herd.Maybe the real moose is the friends you make along the way?
Zombie moose scary…
How is one wolf killing a moose solo? I feel like the wolf would need to catch the moose sleeping to do that.
Bite. Run away. Chill. Bite Run away. Chill.
Repeat
Agreed.
Following the same logic: if the plural of ox is oxen, the plural of fox is foxen.
Two words on completely different paths, probably headed in completely different directions, but then they smashed together and because they sound similar, one could end up inheriting the evolution of the other.
Yup. That phenomenon is called “analogical change”. The opposite happens too though! For example, “person” and “parson”.
So the single wolf is eating multiple times its bodysize before giving up?
Maybe it returns to the carcass over a period of time?