SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
An article in the LA Times discusses a publication in the journal Science (abstract) on why humans as predators have a much greater ecological impact than other predators.
From the LA Times article, it is because:
... humans have a very different, and problematic, hunting strategy from nature's other successful hunters. Humans tend to pick out adults rather than younger, smaller, weaker members of a species.
The article goes on to use an analogy:
Think of it from a business perspective, the researchers said. An adult female, for example, is like your capital; the young that she produces are the interest generated by that capital. If you kill an adult animal today, it will take years for another to grow up and take her place. But if you kill a young animal, it will (theoretically) take only until the next breeding season to produce another. In other words, it's better to use the up [sic] interest rather than to draw down the capital, because the capital is much more difficult to build back. Once it's gone, it's gone -- and so is the interest.
This has several consequences, including for the evolution of the prey species. For example, killing the biggest or strongest animals (as might be done with trophy hunting) potentially leads to smaller or weaker future generations.
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday August 22 2015, @01:47PM
You're not kidding. There is very little about the natural world that city people are actually comfortable with, beyond the mere idea of "nature=good." A couple years ago there was a freakout in Brooklyn about reports that racoons had come into the area. "OMG!!! They could have rabies!!! Think of the children OH NOESSS." So the city ran around exterminating them. Pity. Racoons might have helped keep the huge population of rats in check a bit.
Another anecdote: A couple months ago there was a mulberry tree heavy with fruit next to one of the playground in Prospect Park. My kids were going to town, picking the berries by the handful and stuffing them in their faces. (I teach them basic foraging because I grew up in the Rockies and that's how my grandfather taught me). Then a nosy Park Slope mother came up to me with her tween girls and very seriously, very firmly asserted I must stop them because the berries could be poisonous.
Washington DC delenda est.