#for example: flamingo flocks have a very large variation in height and weight. some males barely reach my chin and others look my in the eye

[thegreatfluffmuffin]

It is also important to note that many other animals also have large amounts of body size variation! Individual variation is not unique to humans. In husbandry with wild animals, keeping the animal at a constant weight, while giving them ample opportunity to express natural behaviors(exercise), is far more important than trying to keep them close to an average weight for their species.

if ur confused about why animal people advocate for keeping your pets at a "healthy weight" but sometimes also in the same breath will advocate against human diet culture, its because we know what body condition a cat is supposed to be at optimally. but literally there is not one for humans as far as we can tell.

humans are a weird, opportunistic, hyper-adaptable and variable primate and we have evolved to have a LOT of variety in size, shape, metabolism, and weight retention. this has been essential to survival in hard times and easy times. you know the thing people talk about sometimes how about half the population are night people and about half are morning people so we'd be better able to watch at night as a group? yeah, weight variation is like that: there's a lot of latent variation in human populations because as a community we survive significantly better if some of us are fuckin ready to not die during the longass winter of death and some of us can eat their weight in fish and then run a mile immediately after. this is also why some people gain muscle crazy fast and some people don't: muscle requires a lot of energy, so some people are built to gain a lot during a plentiful season and be really efficient then and some people are built to use less energy over time and be more useful during a long hungry period. cats and almost all other vertebrates simply don't have this kind of complex community variation built in, and tend to be much more uniform in build and weight. humans tend to be really variable in body and brain, and that's one of the biggest factors that's made us so successful! there are just a LOT of ways to be a human being.

all of the "science" on "ideal human body condition" we have at the moment is almost entirely bullshit and was done by white supremacists for eugenics purposes. it's just not something we know, and right now there's significantly more evidence that there is no ideal body type for everyone to reach. recent research indicates that humans are healthiest at a variety of weights and builds, and dieting is almost universally bad for you. even if the culture hasn't caught up yet.