8 million...

As I crawled the Virtual Dumpster I call the Internet....
I came across some archaeology news hot off the press:

"Catacomb of secret tunnels packed with mummified remains of EIGHT MILLION dogs is excavated in Egypt"![link]

NatGeo Online has an interesting feature article on animal mummies and slide show. [link]




 But knowing the Dumpster Diver I am, I had to pick into this further!
8 million to me seems like an outstanding number of dogs! I Googled first the population of the most popular city in Egypt and got 17+ million. I thought Holy Cleopatra that's a lot of Egyptians!
So, I Googled the population of NYC and got 19+ million OMG!!!
I went smaller with just Manhattan and got 1.6 million. Oh then I could envision the popular tour scenario...Central park just packed with doggies. OK but I still needed more familiar population so I Googled SF bay area population. I remember the traffic when I commuted there and so let me see how close it comes to 8 million? almost 7 million. Wow!

I didn't stop there I googled "8 million pets" Then "8 million animals" and here is what I picked out to share:

• the total cat population of UK was 8 million in 2008[link]

• 8 million sick days have been taken for grieving pet deaths in the uk in 2004 [link]

•  in the US 8 million pets are homeless in 2011[link]

•  About.com says 6-8 million pets are euthanized each year (did not say if a country or world)[link]

•  Feb 2011 news states because of hoof and mouth disease South Korea buried 8 million animals alive (too many to use drugs on would cost them a fortune they said)[link]

Seems to me that 8 million is a common number in animal stats.....

 Sam, the ugliest dog is not a mummy! [link]