Extinct

Its a shame they making it a lottery to protect one out of 10 endangered species, they should be trying to protect all ten, not making money by just making people ring to save their favourite.

H

[northwind]

Originally Posted by Stu

In total contrast to Ulster's point I just think it's a shame that the number voting in Extinct must have been a tiny fraction (I imagine) of that voting in X factor before & after it, which is hardly as worthy a cause.

Ah, but combine the two... "Here are 10 talentless wastes of space. All but one will become extinct!"

I'd watch.

Originally Posted by northwind

Ah, but combine the two... "Here are 10 talentless wastes of space. All but one will become extinct!"

I'd watch.

And at least the one that did survive had talent (and looks)... Oh, yeah, back to the proper subject... Well I think that we should al only have 1 child per couple for 20 years, that'll sort the problem out....

.

[Stu]

Originally Posted by the_runt69

Its a shame they making it a lottery to protect one out of 10 endangered species, they should be trying to protect all ten, not making money by just making people ring to save their favourite.

H

Half the funds went to the winner. Half went to the other 7 equally
Tiger won quelle surprise

Originally Posted by Stu

In total contrast to Ulster's point I just think it's a shame that the number voting in Extinct must have been a tiny fraction (I imagine) of that voting in X factor before & after it, which is hardly as worthy a cause.

I think more people voted in American Idol, than the US presidential election.

Originally Posted by Ping

These species are dying out because of us. There's nothing natural about us taking away their natural habitat.

Isn't it our right though, as the dominant species, to use all means and measures to continue our existence? Surely the same right that allows us to clear away an animal's habitat is the same right that allows us to put a saddle on a horse or hitch a sled to a dog? If using an animal, or its habitat, is beneficial to us then why shouldn't we do it? Isn't a stronger species subduing and subjugating a weaker species one of the cornerstones of the natural world?

Originally Posted by phillipMac

They weren't killed the way that say the American Cheetah was killed, a "normal" extinction, habitat changes, the species goes into crisis, bottlenecks, and fails. It was basically a massive bomb going off, and blowing everything up. That doesn't really count. Shooting someone in the face and taking their money, and selling them something and letting them die of old age is not the same thing, you know what I mean?

What killed the dinosaurs wasn't the asteroid itself, but the change in habitat. If the asteroid came down and instantly wiped the dinosaurs out then ok I'd see your point. But wouldn't you agree that it wasn't the impact itself that killed them off, but the resultant climate/habitat change? It wasn't like bits of rock cracked every dinosaur on the head, killing them instantly. Wasn't the asteroid just Mother Nature picking up the biggest ****ing spanner she could find and throwing it in the works? Wasn't it Nature basically saying "ok big boys, you've been here long enough, time to see what you can really do"? And doesn't Man at least have the potential - if not yet the capabilities - to overcome what beat the dinosaurs?

Originally Posted by phillipMac

And the word superior is a risky one. Biologists would not really use this word, because it has a different meaning than you might think.

Edit: scrap what I wrote earlier. What meaning do biologists give to the word 'superior'?

A couple of people have addressed the fact that we are going to overcrowd the planet anyway, and so that we should always try and preserve other species and their habitats, but this viewpoint is restricting Man's existence to this planet. But who says we have to stay here? Shouldn't we try to make the best of the earth until such times as it can no longer sustain our existence, and then perhaps move on to pastures new? This is what the dinosaurs were unable to do. I don't want to get into the whys and wherefores of space colonisation or living on other planets or forging an existence somewhere other than earth. The basic point that I'm trying to make is that all Nature requires is that we exist. Does it really matter where or how, or what gets in our way? Shouldn't the only species we should be concentrated on preserving be our own? Is it not futile to try and preserve a handful of species which would be by no means the first species to die out, and would most certainly not be the last? It just seems silly to me to try hold the earth in some sort of suspended animation. Things have lived and died since time began, who are we to try and stop this simple fact of life?

[northwind]

Originally Posted by UlsterSV

What killed the dinosaurs wasn't the asteroid itself, but the change in habitat. If the asteroid came down and instantly wiped the dinosaurs out then ok I'd see your point. But wouldn't you agree that it wasn't the impact itself that killed them off, but the resultant climate/habitat change? It wasn't like bits of rock cracked every dinosaur on the head, killing them instantly. Wasn't the asteroid just Mother Nature picking up the biggest f*cking spanner she could find and throwing it in the works? Wasn't it Nature basically saying "ok big boys, you've been here long enough, time to see what you can really do"?

Eh... What's the difference between being hit on the head, or killed by the climate change? It's like saying "No, he didn't die of a stab wound, he died of blood loss". Or "He didn't die of AIDS, he died of herpes simplex"

UlsterSV; you are right, but since our species is thriving so well, we can assign some people to look after us (i.e. chemists who make drugs to cure our illnesses) and some people to look after other speices in the world which our survival probably depends upon anyway, since it all effects the overall ecosystem (so thats vets and other people).

When we start to die out because of whatever rwason, im sure humans everywhere will neglect looking after animals to survive themselves.

Matt

Originally Posted by UlsterSV

Isn't it our right though, as the dominant species, to use all means and measures to continue our existence? Surely the same right that allows us to clear away an animal's habitat is the same right that allows us to put a saddle on a horse or hitch a sled to a dog? If using an animal, or its habitat, is beneficial to us then why shouldn't we do it? Isn't a stronger species subduing and subjugating a weaker species one of the cornerstones of the natural world?

So, in my opinion, no. It is not our right as the dominant sp. to kill everything else because "we can". Any more than it is Israel's right to fly fighter jets over Palestine and blow the shop up, I could beat up loads of people, old ladies, kids, most woman in fact. (There are a couple of Kick boxer chicks that look a bit hard, other than them I reckon it would be handy enough.)
Just because we can do something doesnt make it ok to do it.

Originally Posted by UlsterSV

What killed the dinosaurs wasn't the asteroid itself, but the change in habitat. If the asteroid came down and instantly wiped the dinosaurs out then ok I'd see your point. But wouldn't you agree that it wasn't the impact itself that killed them off, but the resultant climate/habitat change? It wasn't like bits of rock cracked every dinosaur on the head, killing them instantly. Wasn't the asteroid just Mother Nature picking up the biggest f*cking spanner she could find and throwing it in the works? Wasn't it Nature basically saying "ok big boys, you've been here long enough, time to see what you can really do"? And doesn't Man at least have the potential - if not yet the capabilities - to overcome what beat the dinosaurs?

Well... I mean "not the asteroid itself, but the habitat changes"? Ehh. Like, the temperature of the air became so hot that it turned everything to glass. I suppose its a habitat change, from 25C to a couple of thousand C, but, its sort of much the same thing. The asteroid killed pretty well everything that wasn't down a hole. And then the darkness killed off most of the plants. Right now if the same thing happened, we would be dead too.

No, mother nature was not calling time on the dinos. The amount of time Dinos were about is hundreds of millions of years. This is forever. Mother nature had climbed its mountain. It was on the top more or less, and things were stable. Humans have been around ~250 thousand years, and havnt a hope of lasting another 250 thousand years. (IMO). Compared to the dinos we are barely here at all.
Could we overcome what beat the dinos? Like fly off to space and life there? Not now. Not for a while at least. Potentially, who knows.

Originally Posted by UlsterSV

Edit: scrap what I wrote earlier. What meaning do biologists give to the word 'superior'?

Emm. its not really used in evolutionary science to describe species. The word fitter is. It could be used to describe a small part of a species, ie dogs have a superior sense of smell to us. Superior implies universally better, on all fronts. Species are too complex to be superior to one and other. I am probably a superior Perl programmer than you, and you are probably a superior weight lifter to me (I bench 70k max ). But, I am not a superior person to you any more than you are superior person to me. It doesn't make any sense to talk about superior species, biologists don't.
Nature doesnt care about superiority, it just cares about being alive. And it gets it Malcolm X on whenever any choices are made. By any means necessary. Alga is fine. Humans are fine. Doesn't care.

Originally Posted by UlsterSV

The basic point that I'm trying to make is that all Nature requires is that we exist. Does it really matter where or how, or what gets in our way? Shouldn't the only species we should be concentrated on preserving be our own? Is it not futile to try and preserve a handful of species which would be by no means the first species to die out, and would most certainly not be the last? It just seems silly to me to try hold the earth in some sort of suspended animation. Things have lived and died since time began, who are we to try and stop this simple fact of life?

Nature doesnt require that we exist. Nature doesnt give a sh!t.
We are alive because the planet as a whole is alive. We rely on the plankton in the pacific as much as the baleen whales that eat it. We are not above any of it. We are still part of it. We are trying to play with understanding how we are part of it, and replicate these systems, but now we cant. We are miles away from being able to.
If we cherry picked a few species to live on, and "let" everything else die (ie killed everything else) we would be dead ourselves within a generation or two.

(Good post by the way.)

So much of human output is devoted to finding ways to make us live longer. Has anyone really stopped to consider whether we - ie, individuals rather then governments and biotechnologists - really want this? Challenging the assumption that living longer is a good thing is very difficult. I occasionally visit a residential home for the elderly and TBH the sort of thing that I see there is not what I would want. What is the point in prolonging a life, consuming limited resources, if that life is not, in essence, capable of much more than life itself? Is our sense of self-preservation so critical that we can't see beyond this? How superior are we if we can breathe - but can't do basic functions? It would not be for me.