What species is the perfect farm animal?

Surprisingly enough, you can definitely make oysters the winner of that title. They are not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of livestock, but - because they are animals that are raised to produce commodities. They qualify.

Oyster farming is a practice that has been going on since ancient Roman times, as their shells, meat and pearls were all valuables. But what makes them so special? Well, they are space and resource efficient as one might expect to be an animal.

They can be raised in vertical "gardens" hanging from sea level, with the potential for hundreds of tiers. Therefore, one can store a thousand oysters in a place where the sole of the foot fits inside a hula hoop. Now imagine the entire underwater forest from this pile.

In addition, the maintenance is as low as that of the animals. Obviously, you don't have to provide them with drinking water - they soak them in it - and you don't even have to feed them. Oysters are filter feeders, so they only filter the water for plankton.  Because of this, they can actually be used to clean dirty water:

So, not only are they extremely space efficient and require no food or water to be provided, but they can actually benefit the environmental ecosystems in which they are farmed. Today, our inefficient agriculture is a huge contributor to climate change and biodiversity loss, so farming like this is more important than ever.

Of course, I'm not suggesting that we replace all livestock raising and such with oyster farming. I doubt you'll be eating clam burgers anytime soon. However, there is no denying that in terms of efficiency, very few farm animals can compare to the oyster and its relatives.