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| Should we save the vaquita | |
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| Topic Started: Oct 18 2017, 09:21 PM (1,360 Views) | |
| GlarnBoudin | Oct 19 2017, 08:50 PM Post #16 |
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Disgusting Skin Fetishist
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So? Bison breed pretty slowly, too, and didn't stop the Bronx Zoo from rescuing the shit out of those big shaggy fuckers. |
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| IIGSY | Oct 19 2017, 09:44 PM Post #17 |
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A huntsman spider that wastes time on the internet because it has nothing better to do
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Well, how many Bison where there when the breeding program started? |
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Projects Punga: A terraformed world with no vertebrates Last one crawling: The last arthropod ARTH-6810: A world without vertebrates (It's ded, but you can still read I guess) Potential ideas- Swamp world: A world covered in lakes, with the largest being caspian sized. Nematozoic: After a mass extinction of ultimate proportions, a single species of nematode is the only surviving animal. Tri-devonian: A devonian like ecosystem with holocene species on three different continents. Quotes Phylogeny of the arthropods and some related groups In honor of the greatest clade of all time More pictures Other cool things All African countries can fit into Brazil
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| Dragonthunders | Oct 19 2017, 11:12 PM Post #18 |
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The ethereal archosaur in blue
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14, but to be fair the population of bison was 1000 around the moment of the time the program was settled and small groups had been taken in other places, but the result was the increas of Bison populations from each group. I still see some little hope in the conservation of the vaquita, and even think of the possibility of some more small hidden groups somewhere although would be improbable. |
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| Sphenodon | Oct 19 2017, 11:42 PM Post #19 |
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Calcareous
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Of note is that a program attempting to relocate a portion of the remaining vaquita population to captive centers began just a few days ago - and in fact has successfully managed to successfully capture a vaquita for the first time in documented history (albeit only shortly, due to it becoming stressed and being rather young) as of yesterday. The fact that the specimen was only six months old shows some promise for aspiring conservation efforts - even with such a small population remaining in the wild, they're managing to reproduce successfully in some capacity. They are certainly in a far more precarious position to be saved from than any other species that has successfully been recovered, but there is still some hope. And if the current efforts are unsuccessful, at the very least we will have learned some things that can be put forth to use in future conservation campaigns - and be able to know that we did at least make an attempt.
Edited by Sphenodon, Oct 19 2017, 11:43 PM.
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We have a Discord server! If you would like to join, simply message myself, Flisch, or Icthyander. Some of my ideas (nothing real yet, but soon): Refugium: A last chance for collapsing ecosystems and their inhabitants. Pansauria: A terraforming project featuring the evolution of exactly one animal - the marine iguana. Mars Renewed: An insight into the life of Mars thirty million years after its terraforming by humankind. Microcosm: An exceedingly small environment. Alcyon: A planet colonized by species remodeled into new niches by genetic engineering. Oddballs: Aberrant representatives of various biological groups compete and coexist. ..and probably some other stuff at some point (perhaps a no K-T project). Stay tuned! | |
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| Chuditch | Oct 20 2017, 12:10 AM Post #20 |
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Dasyurid
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What about Californian Condors? There were only 27 of those and look how they went. Anyway, the main point of the Potoroo story was to never give up. You're not going to achieve anything unless you are determined to make a difference. |
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| Vorsa | Oct 20 2017, 02:49 AM Post #21 |
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Mysterious tundra-dwelling humanoid
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Out of interest, how would they avoid inbreeding depression? If there's only so many females, surely once the males start mating with those females' offspring that will lead to a genetic bottleneck? |
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My Deviantart: http://desorages.deviantart.com/ Birbs "you are about to try that on a species that clawed its way to the top of a 4 billion year deep corpse pile of evolution. one that has committed the genocide you are contemplating several times already. they are the pinnacle of intelligence-based survival techniques and outnumber you 7 billion to 1" - humans vs machine | |
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| Flisch | Oct 20 2017, 08:03 AM Post #22 |
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Superhuman
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Why not? Vaquitas are not a keystone species, so we don't have to try keeping them in the wild at all costs. Plus their numbers have been declining steadily despite conservation efforts. To say we should continue like this essentially means we should let them die out. (Not that I'd judge you. We can't save every species. We have to start prioritizing.) Really, the only reason to save the vaquita is because we want to. And in that case keeping them alive in captivity seems like a more sensible prospect. (Due to their small size they will also likely be able to be kept in captivity much better than other whales.)
So, if it was an ugly maggot looking thing, its extinction wouldn't be as bad? Mmh. |
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| Pangolin12 | Oct 20 2017, 08:44 AM Post #23 |
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Nerd
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I’d like to retract my previous statement on the vaquita. My new stance: start captive breeding programs in an attempt to help thgeir population. Vorsa brought up inbreeding though, which is probably one of the biggest issues here. I’m not sure how to deal with that. |
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| DINOCARID | Oct 20 2017, 10:18 AM Post #24 |
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The outlook is admittedly bleak, they are cetaceans, they are slow breeders, and they're porpoises, which have an infamously hard time adjusting to captive life. But, if we can save them, if it's possible, I don't think we should do it for the biosphere, or us, we should do it for them. People may argue just how intelligent cetaceans are, and even if vaquitas aren't near approaching our level of awareness, they are still very intelligent animals, and likely capable of suffering. And if you're forced to wander, surrounded by foreign objects of huge size, with no hope of ever seeing anyone of your kind again, and eventually dying alone when you're entangled and dragged out of the water, I think that might qualify as suffering. Empathy is key, we don't have to do it for the big picture, we can do it because we want to minimize suffering. |
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| Yiqi15 | Oct 20 2017, 10:30 AM Post #25 |
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Prime Specimen
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A few thoughts: I think we should save the vaquita, mostly because letting it go extinct would just make people feel bad, as well as be devastating in the long run. I also imagine on a more humorous note, that sapient cetaceans are debating whether or not we should continue to save a species of ape threatened by by-catch. |
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| IIGSY | Oct 20 2017, 07:21 PM Post #26 |
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A huntsman spider that wastes time on the internet because it has nothing better to do
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I can say the same thing for many endangered arthropods. Oh, but wait, they're not cute. If arthropods aren't sentient enough to you, how about fish? Here's my view. I believe that, most of the time, we should stop putting money into individual species and put money into ecosystems/habitats as a whole. For example, saving one endangered carabid beetle is kind of a waste of time. But conserving the entire grassland it lives in saves not only the beetle, but all the other insects, as well as the arachnids, gastropods, birds, fungi, plants, etc. Edited by IIGSY, Oct 20 2017, 07:22 PM.
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Projects Punga: A terraformed world with no vertebrates Last one crawling: The last arthropod ARTH-6810: A world without vertebrates (It's ded, but you can still read I guess) Potential ideas- Swamp world: A world covered in lakes, with the largest being caspian sized. Nematozoic: After a mass extinction of ultimate proportions, a single species of nematode is the only surviving animal. Tri-devonian: A devonian like ecosystem with holocene species on three different continents. Quotes Phylogeny of the arthropods and some related groups In honor of the greatest clade of all time More pictures Other cool things All African countries can fit into Brazil
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| Chuditch | Oct 20 2017, 07:32 PM Post #27 |
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I agree with this point, it's better to focus on entire ecosystems than a single species. It's begun in Australia, where people have put up predator-exclusion fences, destroyed any ferals inside the fenced area, and restored the environment by placing the original flora and fauna there. The results are dramatic. Endangered species, of which there are many in Australia, breed like crazy, and in turn re-stablise the ecosystem. I think things like this should be done all over the world. For more information on these restoration projects, visit Australian Wildlife Conservancy's website, they do great, science-based conservation work. |
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My wildlife YouTube channel Projects
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| peashyjah | Oct 20 2017, 07:37 PM Post #28 |
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Bydo
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Yeah and i read something at school about this but it's about dolphins instead of the vaquita. A person named Hardy Jones have been filming dolphins and making documentaries about them his whole life. There are also problems about how they were originally killed from overfishing to being taken away from their natural habitats. They have mostly been taken away to hotels and pools where people can swim with dolphins and some (not all)aquariums take good care of them thankfully. |
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Discontinued projects: The New Ostracoderms (i might continue with this project again someday) The Americas (where in 58 million years from now in the future North and South America has both become isolated island continents) All Expansions (my attempt at expanding the universe of All Tomorrows by Nemo Ramjet aka C.M. Kosemen, started June 6, 2018) Anthropozoic (my attempt at expanding the universe of Man After Man and also a re-imagining of it, coming 2019 or 2020) New Cenozoica (my attempt at expanding the universe of The New Dinosaurs and also a re-imagining of it, also coming 2019 or 2020) All Alternatives or All Changes (a re-telling of All Tomorrows but with some minor and major "changes", coming June 10, 2018) | |
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| Rodlox | Oct 20 2017, 08:17 PM Post #29 |
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Superhuman
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breeding them with farm cows helped |
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| HangingThief | Oct 20 2017, 09:26 PM Post #30 |
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ghoulish
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I find it disturbing that anyone would have an attitude that we should give up on a species that we know still exists with more than enough specimens to continue reproducing. Inbreeding shouldn't be a concern right now. As long as the species remains robust enough to increase its population, the effects can eventually be reversed. Did you know that virtually all syrian hamsters in captivity are descended from a single female? When lorde howe island stick insects were rediscovered, there were 24, and only a single pair was bred in captivity. Now there's tens of thousands of them descended from that one pair. Obviously vaquitas pose much larger challenges for building the population and strategic breeding, but a population bottleneck alone doesn't mean a species is doomed. |
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