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Should we save the vaquita
Topic Started: Oct 18 2017, 09:21 PM (1,359 Views)
peashyjah
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HangingThief
Oct 20 2017, 09:26 PM
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.
That is true but after generation after generation their offspring would become very successful and then produce newer species containing the same traits and characteristics as them.
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All Expansions (my attempt at expanding the universe of All Tomorrows by Nemo Ramjet aka C.M. Kosemen, started June 6, 2018)
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Rodlox
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peashyjah
Oct 20 2017, 11:14 PM
HangingThief
Oct 20 2017, 09:26 PM
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.
That is true but after generation after generation their offspring would become very successful and then produce newer species containing the same traits and characteristics as them.
then they wouldn't be a new species.
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Victorbrine
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The thing is that we humans are the dominant species on this planet, and in nature "the strongest rules" so it is normal for some animals to go extinct because of us, since we are the strongest

The problem is that we developed a too sentient mind, which starts questioning mother nature herself. This leads to us thinking about the actions we make and how we should stop killing more and more animals, but in final all of this is just natural: the weak is killed by the strongest and it so happens that vaquitas are weaker than us.

The 6th extinction is eventually a natural mass extinction, caused this time by an animal species (usually extinctions caused by animals are not massive).

From a human standpoint, from our point of vue, as a moral and generous species unlike any other, this extinction is quite bad and should be cared of... but after all it's an extinction ad normal as any other in the past... and I don't think the 6th one would be as bad as the Devonian or Ordovician... and after all in millions of years new species would arise thanks to this extinction, leading to a diversification of animals and eventually a lot more interesting animals, much more interesting that thyllacines or vaquitas, only problem is that this would take millions of years and eventually none of us here will see this.

So I think we have to accept the fact that we are the dominant species and we have the right to kill of many animals... however we must save some species, not for nature... but for ourselves. It's better to have our kids know animals that lived at our time and that still lives instead of an extinct one that lived in our time.

Humans are curious animals so to promote that, we kinda have to save a little bit some animals that are dying, but for nature, that isn't really important
Edited by Victorbrine, Oct 21 2017, 03:42 AM.
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Archeoraptor
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I read somewhere that the fishing methods of that area plus poverty ans all that hadn´t help
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Vorsa
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Flisch
Oct 20 2017, 08:03 AM
Vorsa
Oct 19 2017, 01:14 PM
I absolutely think we should try our best to save the vaquita. We don't want to lose any more animals, especially not one as beautiful and fascinating as the vaquita so even though it may end up resulting in failure, we should at least try and take comfort in knowing that we tried and didn't just abandon the species to extinction.

So, if it was an ugly maggot looking thing, its extinction wouldn't be as bad? Mmh.
Not at all! It would be just as bad but the vaquita has been classified as one of the top 100 evolutionary distinct and globally endangered (EDGE) mammals in the world. It is an evolutionarily distinct animal and has no close relatives so it represents more, proportionally, of the tree of life than other species, making them a top priority for conservation campaigns.
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DINOCARID
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Quote:
 
Humans are curious animals so to promote that, we kinda have to save a little bit some animals that are dying, but for nature, that isn't really important


I agree with this point, but I have a lot of conflicting views... I'm kind of childish in my tendency to anthropomorphize anything, I default to believing anything can suffer, even though we don't really know anything about consciousness, or very much about animal psychology... Mass extinctions happen, and I've pondered the moral implications of the one people say we're heading for, and the only real reason comes down to the individual level: I wasn't suggesting we ignore ecosystem restoration, which is undoubtedly important, I was just saying preserving ecosystems for sentimental reasons is silly. Life changes and dies out, it's natural, so desperately preserving an ecosystem for the sake of some "natural biosphere" isn't really "helping" the planet, it's just changing it how we feel is just. We have irreversibly changed life on earth, which, in many cases, is exciting, and also means that being sentimental about ecosystems' natural states is ineffective. So, in conclusion, we should save ecosystems because: 1, Humans are sentimental, and preserving many forms of life is just listening to who we are, and 2, a lot of life might be able to suffer, so we should try to get over our superiority complex and keep global suffering as low as possible. This doesn't mean I don't care about invertebrates, I feel bad for hurting even plants out in the woods, but there are a lot of intelligent species that are dying out rapidly, and it currently seems to most that they have more of a capacity to suffer than, say, an endangered hairstreak butterfly, so most invertebrates fall under the "save because we want to" category.
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peashyjah
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Victorbrine
Oct 21 2017, 03:41 AM
Humans are curious animals so to promote that, we kinda have to save a little bit some animals that are dying, but for nature, that isn't really important
True but we humans can't save ourselves too. This problem would most likely result in a variety of things from overpopulation to spreading diseases.
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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IIGSY
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You make a good point. However, we technically have no obligation is save other animals even if they do suffer. We have an obligation to save other humans because it over all betters society. Helping other humans improves our development as a civilization. The same cannot be said of other species. We aren't even completely sure that a lot of vertebrates can suffer.


For me, a species intellectual or suffering capacity is no reason for it to have priority. To put it bluntly, the extinction of some random rodent or bird is just as insignificant as the extinction of a random insect or annelid.
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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.

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DINOCARID
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Right, I don't put more value in charismatic megafauna than the invertebrates that are far more vital to life, ours or otherwise, but I do believe we are obligated to reduce suffering, ours or otherwise. It just so happens that the animals most likely able to suffer are charismatic megafauna.
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Setaceous Cetacean
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This is a fascinating topic, and, in my opinion, one with no clear answers. What is right or wrong for the planet? Those words are subjective human constructs. I used to lose sleep worrying about the environmental damage that we as a species are causing, how we're destroying billions of years of progress. The worst part is that we're completely aware of it.

My personal opinion is that, while feeling bad for animals that can suffer and having sentimental feelings for charismatic creatures can motivate people to change, that alone isn't going to cut it. Convincing people that a biosphere collapse will directly mess with their lives, and that it will probably cost governments and corporations a ton, will. We need to keep ecosystems functional enough to sustain our population (e.g., have enough fish in the sea to feed ourselves, have enough trees to purify the air), but it's a harsh reality that we will probably end up killing off many of the less adaptable species.

As for the vaqita itself, I'm not really sure. I mean, I don't want to sound like an asshole for saying that we should let it die, but I don't want to contradict some of my previous points by saying we should do everything we can to let it live.

Ugh, there really is no right answer here.
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Victorbrine
Oct 21 2017, 03:41 AM
blah blah blah blah ideology blah blah blah
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Did I not get the memo where we are all transported to the 1910s?
"You shall perish, whatever you do! If you are taken with arms in your hands, death! If you beg for mercy, death! Whichever way you turn, right, left, back, forward, up, down, death! You are not merely outside the law, you are outside humanity. Neither age nor sex shall save you and yours. You shall die, but first you shall taste the agony of your wife, your sister, your sons and daughters, even those in the cradle! Before your eyes the wounded man shall be taken out of the ambulance and hacked with bayonets or knocked down with the butt end of a rifle. He shall be dragged living by his broken leg or bleeding arm and flung like a suffering, groaning bundle of refuse into the gutter. Death! Death! Death!"



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Tartarus
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Victorbrine
Oct 21 2017, 03:41 AM
The thing is that we humans are the dominant species on this planet, and in nature "the strongest rules" so it is normal for some animals to go extinct because of us, since we are the strongest

The problem is that we developed a too sentient mind, which starts questioning mother nature herself. This leads to us thinking about the actions we make and how we should stop killing more and more animals, but in final all of this is just natural: the weak is killed by the strongest and it so happens that vaquitas are weaker than us.

The 6th extinction is eventually a natural mass extinction, caused this time by an animal species (usually extinctions caused by animals are not massive).

From a human standpoint, from our point of vue, as a moral and generous species unlike any other, this extinction is quite bad and should be cared of... but after all it's an extinction ad normal as any other in the past... and I don't think the 6th one would be as bad as the Devonian or Ordovician... and after all in millions of years new species would arise thanks to this extinction, leading to a diversification of animals and eventually a lot more interesting animals, much more interesting that thyllacines or vaquitas, only problem is that this would take millions of years and eventually none of us here will see this.

So I think we have to accept the fact that we are the dominant species and we have the right to kill of many animals... however we must save some species, not for nature... but for ourselves. It's better to have our kids know animals that lived at our time and that still lives instead of an extinct one that lived in our time.

Humans are curious animals so to promote that, we kinda have to save a little bit some animals that are dying, but for nature, that isn't really important
Ugh, there are so many things wrong with this post.

Firstly, the whole concept of "dominant species" is a ridiculously outdated notion derived from old misunderstandings of evolution as some sort of march of progress where different species occupy different heights of some "evolutionary ladder". In reality, no species is any more or less "evolved" than any other but are all merely different outcomes of a continuously branching process going all the way down to the earliest common ancestor. As such it makes zero sense to speak of things like "higher organisms" or "dominant species" or any other similar nonsense.

Secondly, the wiping out of various species at human hands has generally had far more to do with human stupidity than with human strength. It is well within humanity's capabilities to develop our cultures and societies without any massively damaging environmental impact but the damage happens anyway, not due to any inevitability but rather due to the greed of a small, but unfortunately influential, portion of our species.
I've yet to hear of any endangered species that is a species competing with humans so one cannot compare our wiping them out with situations where some species is outcompeted by another out in the wild. Additionally, some species are threatened by reasons that make no logical sense whatsoever (e.g. rhinos being hunted for their horns due to completely false notions that a mass of compressed hair can somehow work as an aphrodisiac).

Thirdly, I would hardly call the "6th extinction" a "natural mass extinction". At least not unless one extends the definition of the term "natural" so much as to essentially render the term meaningless.
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IIGSY
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Tartarus
Oct 22 2017, 07:45 PM
Thirdly, I would hardly call the "6th extinction" a "natural mass extinction". At least not unless one extends the definition of the term "natural" so much as to essentially render the term meaningless.
For what's its worth, the term "natural" is pretty artificial in of itself
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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Niedfaru
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Conservation is not about saving the planet, it's about helping us. We evolved in a glacial/post-glacial world, with a biosphere that's been more or less stable for a few thousand years. We've then gone on to change that world into something that isn't quite like that any more. If we keep going, we're going to end up with a world that isn't the one we are adapted for.

Our food crops won't be adapted to the new climate, for starters. As more and more wild habitat disappears, the processes that renew the soil quality near farms without us needing to do too much to assist will decline. Large coastal wetlands will no longer help absorb the force of large storms, some of which are already to much for our best artificial defences - which poorer nations can't even afford anyway. And the list goes on.

Yes, we can probably find technological solutions to the new problems, but a lot of people are going to suffer while we do, and it doesn't make much sense to create problems for ourselves rather than just try to sustain the systems that have supported us for so long already.

Yes, we eventually want to leave Earth and go on to colonise other places in the solar system, and at that point we'll need to be able to manage ecologies with far grander scope than we do now, but we should first learn to exercise restraint and to use our resources responsibly and sustainably. Those are going to be vital lessons when we do go out there.

It's not humans vs the planet. It's always humans vs humans.
Edited by Niedfaru, Oct 22 2017, 11:36 PM.
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Flisch
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What Niedfaru said. Personally I like to say that conservation is a humanitarian issue. Global warming, extinction of the bees, collapse of coral reefs, humanity will survive these, but a lot of people will suffer from the consequences. This is also why I consider it more important to focus on keystone species over pretty species and to get stable ecosystems over "natural" ones. Invasive species are only bad if they destabilize the ecosystem they arrive in. They're not inherently evil.

Tartarus
Oct 22 2017, 07:45 PM
Secondly, the wiping out of various species at human hands has generally had far more to do with human stupidity than with human strength.

Ignorance, not stupidity. For the utmost part of human history, people didn't even think it was possible for species to go extinct, because the origin of life and evolution was unknown. Animals and plants simply were.

Tartarus
Oct 22 2017, 07:45 PM
It is well within humanity's capabilities to develop our cultures and societies without any massively damaging environmental impact but the damage happens anyway, not due to any inevitability but rather due to the greed of a small, but unfortunately influential, portion of our species.
I've yet to hear of any endangered species that is a species competing with humans so one cannot compare our wiping them out with situations where some species is outcompeted by another out in the wild. Additionally, some species are threatened by reasons that make no logical sense whatsoever (e.g. rhinos being hunted for their horns due to completely false notions that a mass of compressed hair can somehow work as an aphrodisiac).

The topic is a lot more complex than you make it sound. In most societies that are more destructive to their ecologies, the people are simply trying to survive. If you're doing well, you don't have reasons to cut down forests for arable land or hunt rhinos for extra money. It's usually the poorer segments of humanity that are pushed into this due to circumstance. Also, as I said above, ignorance played a huge part in this too. Take the extinction of the passenger pigeon or the near extinction of the american bison.

Still, it's a highly complex issue and I don't think placing blame on anyone is helpful or fair. Almost every extinction can be traced back to various events that are not directly linked to greed or stupidity.
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