On an Alaskan island, wolves adapted to hunt an unexpected aquatic prey:
People love otters, wolves, and deer. Respectively, they're crafty, intelligent, and majestic. Put them all together on an island, though, and things get unpleasant pretty quickly. These are the findings of a new paper analyzing how a wolf population came to Pleasant Island in Alaska, learned to hunt otters, and, using this unexpected food source, thrived to the point of wiping out the native Sitka black-tailed deer population.
"To the best of our knowledge, the deer population is decimated. We haven't found evidence of deer recolonizing the islands," Gretchen Roffler, wildlife research biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and an author of the paper, told Ars.
[...]
The team studied the wolves on the island by testing DNA found in 689 wolf scats and performing stable isotope analysis on hair and muscle material, which they got from local hunters. The team tracked the wolves between 2015 and 2021.
[...]
From the samples, the researchers saw a diet that consisted primarily of deer shift to one that was made up primarily of sea otters. The research also found that the added and unexpected food source allowed the wolves to reproduce even after the deer population shrank. Ultimately, the wolves killed off the deer population on the island.
In all, though, the deer are the biggest losers in this equation. The wolves appear to still be on the island, and, Roffler said, none of them appear to have died from starvation—though the team intends to keep an eye on them. Considering the sea otters can swim to other parts of the coastal waters, they're also doing fine.
The big takeaway is that wolves can exploit a diversity of prey and learn to do so very quickly—like learning to hunt and kill sea otters in a matter of years. It also suggests that species restoration can bring some surprising sources of nutrients into an ecosystem. Finally, the work "really just confirms something that we already knew, which is that wolves are incredibly adaptable," she said.
(Score: 4, Funny) by maxwell demon on Saturday January 28 2023, @03:39PM (19 children)
Ah, good, that means only 10% of the population is dead, 90% are still there.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Funny) by helel on Saturday January 28 2023, @04:17PM
You're thinking old school decimation. Now days we're much more efficient ;)
(Score: 4, Informative) by Immerman on Saturday January 28 2023, @05:57PM (2 children)
I've had that wrong all this time - I could have sworn decimating a population meant only every tenth individual was *left*. But the dictionary backs you up.
It certainly sounds a lot worse - a decimated population sounds like it should have at least some trouble recovering.
It does seem the meaning of the word has crept upward since the original meaning was established.
I guess 10% feels like a pretty large part when it's your friends and colleagues, but perhaps our scale of destruction has increased a bit since then.
(Score: 4, Touché) by janrinok on Saturday January 28 2023, @08:19PM (1 child)
We did include the word Annihilate to counter the very points you are discussing.... :)
(Score: 0, Funny) by billbellum on Tuesday January 31 2023, @11:10PM
Counterpoint? Or antithesis? I believe you were using the "literally decimated" meaning of the term, which mean figuratively annihilated, or not at all completely exterminated. Has Dalek weighed in on this, yet?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday January 28 2023, @11:20PM (10 children)
I believe the traditional definition of "decimated" is more or less 90% removed.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Touché) by Reziac on Sunday January 29 2023, @02:41AM (9 children)
Depends how traditional you want to be. The original Roman punishment was to kill every tenth man, ie. 10% removed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation_%28punishment%29 [wikipedia.org]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2, Funny) by BlueCoffee on Sunday January 29 2023, @12:59PM (2 children)
Has applying antiquated 2000yo meanings to current words become the latest fad?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Reziac on Sunday January 29 2023, @03:50PM
I'm an old fart. I like old fads. :)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 29 2023, @05:32PM
Of course! If it suits our purpose. See also Originalism [wikipedia.org]. Plus ça change... etc.
(Score: 3, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 29 2023, @03:40PM (5 children)
I stand corrected... this is one of those where common usage just goes right on and ignores original meanings.
Maybe that's why Thanos went for "the Snap": https://screenrant.com/mcu-thanos-snap-blip-decimation-explained/ [screenrant.com]
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Sunday January 29 2023, @04:52PM (4 children)
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
--James D. Nicoll
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Monday January 30 2023, @05:36AM (3 children)
We could however just stop doing that.
I'm so tired of descriptivists saying "well meaning wanders over time therefore WORDS DON'T MEAN ANYTHING IT'S ALL CHAOS!!"
The whole point of language is to understand each other! Meaning can be fudged somewhat, but come on. Over half the population of young people using a word wrong doesn't instantly invalidate that word; that's just dumb. Because of that, we have to sacrifice "literally" so that we just don't have any antonym to "figuratively"?
(Yes, I'm slightly defensive about this because of idiots online thinking "prescriptivism is a disproved theory": they're two ways of looking at the problem; neither of them is provably *wrong*)
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 4, Informative) by Reziac on Monday January 30 2023, @05:50AM
Actually, I completely agree with you. English may hoover up every word it ever sees, but each word still has meaning, or should have. Otherwise it degrades into amorphous mush.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday January 30 2023, @02:47PM (1 child)
The original title did not include the word "Annihilate". We added that word in parentheses due to the entire argument you're making and the incorrect usage of decimate. As they believe the entire population of deer was wiped out.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Thursday February 02 2023, @12:16AM
No worries... I found the juxtaposition of "decimate" and "annihilate" rather funny.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1) by BlueCoffee on Sunday January 29 2023, @12:47PM (3 children)
You're alive in 2023, not 20AD or whenever decimate literally meant to kill 1 in 10. In my lifetime and long before it decimate always meant to "significantly reduce" or 'almost exterminate'
Your head is going to explode when you learn that:
- Centipedes and Millipedes don't have exactly 100 and 1000 legs, respectively.
- a Combine separates the grain from the chaff & straw
- a hot girl doesn't mean she has a fever
- a Barn Swallow doesn't gulp down barns
- a Killdeer doesn't kill deer
- a Blow Job...well you get the idea
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday January 29 2023, @03:54PM (1 child)
...and that baby oil is not made from real babies...
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 01 2023, @12:27PM
Take it back and get a refund then. Demand real baby oil.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday January 30 2023, @05:30AM
Yes, however we live in an age of clickbait where "decimate" and "annihilate" are often clickbait...
Are these some actual scientists declaring it "decimated", or some rando blogger? Well, it's Ars that published the article, so probably a bit more trustworthy...but just the fact that we have "decimate" and "annihilate" both in the headline makes me raise an eyebrow about what the actual statistic is.
Or are we using a term like "Oracle unique" in that "annihilate" means something other than "destroy utterly; obliterate"? I'm so fucking tired of people taking these absolute words and making them wishy-washy.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Saturday January 28 2023, @04:12PM (7 children)
What do the deer eat? I bet that will grow pretty fast without any deer, until the island becomes a deer paradise if some ever show up.
Meanwhile eventually the otters will swim away or all get eaten, and the wolves will have to walk away over the ice or I suppose starve to death, until the cycle repeats and deer arrive again and eat the heck out of whatever's there until their predator wolves return.
I guess my point is this is likely a circular cyclical story not linear as portrayed.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by HiThere on Saturday January 28 2023, @05:50PM (3 children)
Not really. Deer really prefer young trees. Shrubs aren't as good. Climax forests don't support many deer. They like the edges of the forest, where they can move inside to hide, and move outside to eat.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 28 2023, @09:12PM (1 child)
> Deer really prefer young trees
Might be true for deer in more normal circumstances. The suburban deer around here eat just about everything, trying to keep some nice plantings in our backyard has cost a small fortune in fencing of various kinds. If they really liked young trees, then we wouldn't have to keep yanking volunteer maples out of the ground (a few big maple trees generate millions of helicopter seeds).
One of the few things deer don't eat is boxwood, so that has become a very popular planting around the neighborhood.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Saturday January 28 2023, @11:23PM
>suburban deer
That's the "horse of a different color, as they say." Suburban environments have an abundance of freshly planted exotic (and expensive!) foilage to browse. There may be some "climax trees" preserved here and there, but nowhere near enough to close the canopy and prevent light from reaching the ground like an old growth forest does.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 01 2023, @12:31PM
How do you know a forest has reached Climax?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday January 29 2023, @01:29AM (1 child)
If there are no predators, the deer usually end up eating everything in reach, exploding in population and eventually becoming stunted in growth until numbers of them start starving. There is a park in NJ, Jockey Hollow State Park, that if you visited at night you would see deer all over the place. Almost entirely small to tiny deer, most I doubt reached 50 lbs. Except for grass, there was no green vegetation showing below 4 feet or so.
If there are too many predators, the opposite effect occurs. The deer can be considered "plant predators", and without them the vegetation runs rampant until a climax plant ecosystem is reached, in which neither deer nor predators live in any abundance.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 29 2023, @03:43PM
There's the classic "Bring Back the Wolves to prevent over-browse by deer" which seems to be both obvious and true:
https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/wildlife/wolf-reintroduction-changes-ecosystem/ [yellowstonepark.com]
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday January 30 2023, @05:23AM
Deer are herbivores and wolves are carnivores, aren't they? This doesn't overlap.
Without having done any further research, I assume that the picture we've been given here is incomplete. Wolves can eat deer and otters...and probably other things like rabbits, rats, possums..whatever else that lives around there?
Yeah, that too. That's usually the case...assuming the wolves aren't like cane toads and can survive on basically anything.
So they weren't native the area?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"