What I read
In the BBC News article
"Mystery extinct ape found in ancient Chinese tomb," Helen Briggs (2018) reports that their analysis of part of a gibbon skull found in a tomb, perhaps that of the grandmother of the first Chinese emperor, Qin Shihuang, responsible for the Great Wall and Terracotta Warriors about 2,300 years ago, has led researchers to conclude that it came from a previously unknown species of gibbon, which likely become extinct a few hundred years ago as a result of increasing human destruction of its natural habitats, making it the first such primate known to have been eliminated by human activity. According to Briggs, gibbons were one type of "luxury pets," with the bones of lynx, leopards and a black bear also being found in the tomb.
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My response
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Getting ready to tour
my brother's home |
The first thing I thought when I read this story was that keeping luxury pets is still fashionable. I remember that the boxer Mike Tyson kept a tiger, and I've seen photographs of other celebrities with other exotic pets, from kangaroos to giant pythons, which I believe are now commonly kept in the US, to wolves and tortoises. And in the first Terminator movie many years ago, there was a pet iguana. I'm not sure how affectionate, or even safe, some of these pets are, but they seem to fit the definition of luxury. I guess that humans like to both keep pets and to show off, which seems to me the likely motivation for keeping such pets. Now that I think of it, the Roman Emperors were also fond of pets, having very large collections imported from all over the empire. My own family has always been content to stick with the more traditional dogs, of which there has never been a shortage. When I visit at Songkran and my brothers and sisters come along for a meal at my brother's home, where I stay, they bring not only their kids but also their dogs. who enjoy the food and fun as much as we do.
The other issue that the article raises is the typically harmful effect of humans on other species. Except where an animal is easily farmed and is tasty or otherwise useful to us, we tend to be harmful to them. Pigs and cows have done very well as a result of human activity, as have dogs and cats, but the animals we classify as "wild" have not tended to thrive under our increasing domination of the planet, with a long list having been pushed to extinction over the last few thousand years, from mammoths, to dodos, and many more along the way. I'm in two minds about this. On the one hand, we humans are a natural part of the environment, like every other living thing we are related to, from chimpanzees to roses and bacteria, all of which are our relatives, so I'm not sure that its any worse if a species becomes extinct because of us than if it becomes extinct for any other natural reason, such as a meteor hitting the Earth or a new predator moving into an area. On the other hand, we are significantly different in our ability to form and act on moral considerations, so perhaps we should behave differently to the animals, plants and bacteria that are our less capable relatives in the tree of life on Earth.
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My question
How much should we worry about other species of animals becoming extinct because of human activity?
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Reference
What I read
It took me some time and effort to get my summary paragraph here down to the 130 word maximum that is allowed: I almost had to give myself a zero grade for that part of this blog post.
ReplyDeleteI think it is imperative to conserve other species of animals because every species of animals always affect the others commensally or antagonistically. So, If some of them extinct, the biodiversity will be corrupted. It would certainly impact on others' life cycles because diversity of living creatures controls the number of species of animals and even affects change of climate around the world. Moreover, it is our responsibilities to preserve all of the species of animals for our next generations to have opportunities to see all creatures that we see not just know them through books.
ReplyDeleteTo answer this question would be easy, if we can predict the exact consequence when animals become extinct. But our ecosystem is far too complex, consisting of many interactions between organisms. So, it is impossible to determine what and how much we should worry. All we know is there must be some impacts occurred somewhere in ecological webs. Because of lacking knowledge, it would not be wise if we are careless about human activity that might affect other animals. One thing that makes human different from other animals is that we can make decision about the way we live, so we always have power to decide whether to continue or to stop such activity.
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