Is there anybody out there?

[pdelmontel]

This whole forum is definitely awesome. One can find the latest (informal and formal) news concerning extinctions all around the world, which represents a rather valuable, interacting, plural and constantly updating information network.
I have noticed, however, that there are some topics that may lead to unnecessarily situations. Currently, nobody can deny that there is an important global biodiversity problem (crisis, if you will) and this alone is itself an incentive to find more cases of extinction, eventually resulting in a frenetic race to see who find more cases. I feel that, although in the forum there is a special section for new described and rediscovered species, that situation may be biasing some of the conclusions. In this kind of debates, it is crucial to have someone who actually and seriously confront the information (I know that there are some but maybe too few).

Cheers,

Pablo

[Bowhead Whale]

What do you mean by an "incentive race to find more cases of extinctions(...) biasing some of the conclusions? Please explain.

[Peter]

I think he mean that some of the conclusions made in some topics may not be the real truth. The answer is that no source on (especially) the internet or anywhere else must never be taken for truth without questioning. Everybody here can confront the information. New information that will lead to a change in the previous made conclusion can and will result in a move of the particular thread/topic. It is a dynamic forum, but there are too many threads/topics to be up-to-date with all the existing new information. So Pablo, please point out the topics that may lead to unnecessarily situations.

[amongthylacines]

There are only three reasons why creatures go extinct in the past 100.000 years.
Egoism, desinterest and the main cause the grasshoper-like urge to multiply.
Man is the only creature who destroys other life just for the fun of it.
They even annihilate each other.
So hope is forlorn.
It went wrong went the first Homo sapien took up a stone (and exterminated the 'stupid' neanderthaler of course).
Of course the scientific community denies this fact (no evidence blablabla) but face it Homo Sapien is a very very willing and enthousiastic Life Destroyer.

[dantheman9758]

What do you mean man is the only creature that destroys life for the fun of it??? Dolphins and their relatives destroy life for fun (playing with food, and playing with animals that they don't even eat, hell... they've even been well documented "murdering" and "kidnapping" other dolphin). I assume many other animals do it as well. (Felines of all shapes and sizes kill animals even when they aren't hungry, and they seem to enjoy it and play when they are doing it.... I've seen dogs that love to cut their teeth on helpless unsuspecting ground squirrels and chipmunks, and I guarantee that some members of the chimpanzee species have had fun ruthlessly killing other monkeys or other chimpanzees... ). I bet this list would honestly be huge If I really wanted to sit down and make a comprehensive list of all the times I've seen/witnessed/heard of an animal "having fun" while killing another animal, with no apparent "need" to kill it.

Also, even MORE animals can, and do "destroy eachother" in daily competition, and survival... (Living in the wild is a dangerous place, animals will readily kill members of the same species for various reasons, mostly competition/territory/mating reasons (hmm.... same reasons as humans)... so you might as well get rid of these notions that "only humans do it")

I don't think a homo sapiens EVER picked up a big rock and bonked a "stupid" neanderthal in the head to kill him... Only our modern, and recent culture has a tendancey to call them stupid, because when their fossils were first discovered, they falsely seemed hunchbacked and ape-like, therefore it was attacked as a "primitive cave-man" in a media frenzy.
40,000 years ago, I doubt any member of H. sapiens would say "haha that is just a caveman, look how stupid he looks... lets kill it!".... That idea is just plain silly, especially when you consider that H. neanderthalensis were probably built like NFL linebackers, while H. sapiens are naturally built very skinny. If you ask me, I think neanderthals (and most all other animals) went extinct by INDIRECT cause of H. sapiens.

We did not decide to force them into extinction, it just kinda happened on its own. Their habitat shrank, ours grew, our population grew, theirs shrank, its a vicious cycle but it is NOT intentional.... IF we did/do have conflict with any animals or other hominids (such as neanderthal), you can't say that it was "our human selfishness" that caused it.... EVERY ANIMAL in the animal kingdom wants to survive, and all animals have a brain that instinctively says "better that you die, than me". Thats just how life works, we (speaking collectively for ALL animals) are pre-programed to pass on our genetics and to survive. It isn't strictly human, and it isn't selfish, it's just the key ingredient to survival in life. And our brains go into a mode that tries to destroy things that are a perceived threat to our existence (individual or collective), that is the "animal" in all of us and you cannot expect us to get rid of it, nor can you accuse us of being the only creature on this planet that behaves this way. Excuse us for acting like animals...

Humans never sit down and TRY to make animals go extinct, (which you make it sound like we do). We simply become ignorant or unaware of the severity of things such as extinction, and in our modern societies we often loose touch with nature, and we forget how important it is.... Our modern way of living offers us one great thing that our ancestors (who probably killed off many more "large" animals than we are killing off today) NEVER had... global awareness. And because of that, we now have at least some hope in preserving as much of mother nature as we can...

So please amongthylacines, try to get rid of your ideas that humans is just a horrible creature, and that we do nothing more than destroy beautiful and perfect nature... because none of those things are true. We are not horrible, we are just a species that has become abnormally successful and other plants/animals are unintentionally suffering because of it (and nature isn't perfect either, everything "destructive" that humans do, can also be seen in other forms of nature... and remember, WE are a product of nature as well). I must say that it irritates me a lot that your so ready to just "give up" on humanity, and insult our existence because you think our path of destruction is hopelessly out of control or inevitable. Our present day industries, media, and governments of developed countries are trying hard to promote conservation and your "words of wisdom" are some of the most counter-productive words anybody could make, and I truly believe your spreading the wrong messages to the greater public when u just talk badly about your own species.

[Bowhead Whale]

I agree a little with Dantheman. Why? Simply because extinction is not due to a "bad will", but due to the consequence of our "success". Just look at rats: this species really is overpopulated, just like rock pigeons in our cities. Since our cities reproduced well their respective natural habitats (hide places for rats, anfractuosities and open skies for pigeons) they became overpopulated as well.
The only detail I agree with Amingthylacines on, is the "urge to multiply like grasshoppers". Why? Simply because I think (and I'm not the only one) the main reason of our overpopulation is domination on women by men. You see, women, like all females, do the whole hard work of reproduction; that's why we are recalcitrant towards copulation, and that's why we seek for protection. On the other hand, men, like all males, produce a lot of reproductive cells, which they need to spread. However, the fact that women muscles are 20% smaller than me's litterally "killed" us: so, in all societies, men's needs overcame women's needs and, still today, many societies claim women's only purposes are to seduce men and produce "sons"; how many women, today, still suffer from excision, rape, crazy fashions (like being as skinny as possible as a model)? To prove what I'm saying, look at the countries considered "rich" compared to countries considered "poor": the "rich countries" are the ones where the woman's status is the highest; by consequence, where the birth numbers are the lowest. By contrast, the "poor countries" are, most of them ,those where the woman's status is the lowest, and where the birth numbers are the highest. See what I mean?
So, to me, the first thing to do to decrease extinction would be to introduce Feminism to other countries: give women the right to control their own fertility and the right to express themselves as people. Make excision disappear and give them the right to go to school. That would restrein overpopulation and restrain, by the same fact, extinction. Don't you agree?

[amongthylacines]

I will comment on Bowhead and Dantheman in a few days (a few days ago my soccorclub PSV won the Cup so it's wicked party time ever since and tonight shall be no difference (and I'm not even a diehard fan).

But about the proliferous grasshoppers; there's no creation (except man) which shall destroy itself in the end.
The lion devours it's children for a reason.
And indeed sometimes it seems that an orca plays with a sea lion for no reason.
But an orca or a lion will always reach some kind of equilibrium with it's surroundings.
Man doesn't.
It's a creature which is simply insatiable and it will destroy itself in the end.
Not because it will lose some kind of survival of the fittest with a better equiped monster but because it will lose it's holistic battle against itself.
No life form has achieved this unique quality before.

But like I said more later
Slainte var (on thee health)
Amongthylacines
(a happy misanthrophe)


O yes Dantheman
So you try to tell me that we didn't destroy intentionally animals like the Tasmanian Wolf, the Passenger Pigeon or the Bali Tiger.
Come on man.
And yes I believe we deliberately wiped out the Neanderthals, like we finished of the Tasmanian natives, the Katharen and the North American Indian tribes.
And that's makes us special.

No Bowhead, feminism is the plague of the 20 and 21 century. I don't know whether my female friends will agree but I think they will. It's proven the brain case is just a tiny little bit smaller than their hyper intelligent male coutnerparts.
But when you extrapolate your feminism to Africa and South America I'm afraid I have to agree with you.

So again Ad fundum
Write to you later concerning this subject.

(Start cooking Bowie)

[sordes]

Many creatures have the potential to erase other species. Many animals became extinct because introduced species like rats killed them to the very last one, and there are many many other similar cases. And you can not just say "hey, they were introduced by humans", because those rats and other critters acted in a completely natural way. If this animals had found their way on floating trees to islands like New Zealand, they had acted in the same way, and there were surely many extinctions in the past, which occured because alien animals came into new ecosystems and destroyed them.

[dantheman9758]

Amongthylacines, why the heck do you think we are so "different"... sordes brings up a great point on invasive species, they are often the cause of many extinctions. Humans themselves are just an invasive species (humans did not evolve in Australia, Northern Eurasia, North America, and South America, in fact NO hominids EVER did, therefore we have just taken "natures course" and disturbed those ecosystems as an invasive species by shifting them to suite our needs... but your foolish if you think that our spread, or our methods were "unnatural" or that we are somehow "different" from any other animal.

Oh... and 6.6 billion of us, and rising.... we cover practically every corner of landmass on this planet... I don't think our species will destroy ourselves to extinction any time soon. Even under something as dreadful as nuclear war, or a meteor impact. There are so many of us that I really doubt EVERY SINGLE group of humans on the planet could ever be wiped out in even the longest chain of destructive events. I think your "humans will destroy themselves" idea's stem from the silly scare tactic methods of religions, and any other extremist form of agenda, including those made by many conservationists. Armageddon is a primitive and primal human fear that everybody likes to play off of.