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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: 5, Insightful) by gman003 on Friday August 21 2015, @01:31PM
There's this thing, humans invented it a couple dozen thousand years ago. It's called "animal husbandry" or in layman's terms, "farming".
Most food species we rely on are not "wild" species. Beef comes from domesticated cattle, chicken and eggs from domesticated chickens, pork and bacon from domesticated pigs. We feed them with our mastery of agriculture. Those species that are beneficial to us, by virtue of being tasty, have been quite prosperous as species. There are far more cattle today than there would be had homo erectus gone extinct.
When we raise animals from birth for food, it really doesn't matter when we slaughter them. All that matters is that the birth rate exceeds the death rate. Given how carefully we manage animal feed production in the name of stability, I don't think we'll have problems with that.
Yes, humans are unsustainable in the current environment, because we are changing the current environment, and have been since Babylonian times. Give it a couple more centuries, and there won't be any "wild" species left, except maybe in reserves or zoos. At least on land - the seas might take longer, but we're already farming fish, it won't be long before entire tracts of sea are set aside as farms.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @01:45PM
What a bunch of arrogant, selfish garbage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @02:19PM
What a well-thought-out, elaborate argument. </sarcasm>
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @02:26PM
I thought someone would say so, but I'm under no obligation to satisfy your curiosity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @04:08PM
And I'm under no obligation to consider your comment valuable in any way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @05:12PM
I agree, and the same applies to yours.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tibman on Friday August 21 2015, @02:34PM
Nah, he's not far from the mark. Animals that aren't domesticated are either ignored, vermin (shot when they become a nuisance), or hunted (to keep their population down). Sustainable fishing and husbandry has been around for a long time. The typical unsustainable issue arises when dealing with wild caught animals that an organization is not tracking and managing. People take as much as they can as fast as they can before someone else gets some. Ocean/sea hunting is often uncontrolled because of the huge expanse. Outright banning seems to be the only answer sometimes. Even Japan has skirted banning issues by saying "oh, we're just whaling for scientific reasons!"
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Friday August 21 2015, @10:16PM
No. Things *called* sustainable hunting, fishing, etc. have been around for a long time, but the sustainability usually fails. Often within a couple of centuries, sometimes sooner.
Farming we can manage reasonably well, but sustainable harvesting of wild animals we don't have a good record at. It's basically a "tragedy of the commons" kind of problem, with poachers being an added extra that isn't accounted for, or, usually, even measured.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Saturday August 22 2015, @03:13AM
If your argument is that it is sustainable until people break the law then i think that is a weak argument against scientists saying humans are unsustainable. Obviously humans can be. Except when they break the law. The law breaking is the exception, not the normal state of things. But you are right that sustainable harvesting of wild animals is incredibly hard. It outright fails in many areas. But i need to point out that even if humans kill off every wild animal on the planet it wouldn't make humans unsustainable. Humans would still have domesticated livestock and grow the herd/flock to meet demands. Which is super sad to even think about : (
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(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday August 22 2015, @07:40PM
OK, now we get the the problem of reduced genetic diversity leading to single-point-of-failure managed ecosystems. Unless you think that humans are going to manage bacterial, viral, and fungal evolution.
P.S.: That humans "break the law" (or remain outside the agreements) is something that needs to be factored into the harvest calculations if you want to have a sustainable wild-life harvest. To say they shouldn't is equivalent to closing your eyes and going la-la-la. I'll agree they (usually) shouldn't. But consider different countries that make claims over the same area. Consider insurgent governments, which have different "laws" than the ones they are attempting to overthrow. If those aren't factored in, then you'r "suatainable harvest" isn't going to be sustainable. And often destroying the food supply is an intentional act of aggression. I.e., it's lawful for those who are doing it, even though it "breaks the law" where they are doing it.
For that matter, people even have trouble managing wild plants. Consider the rate of disappearance of the Amazon rain forest, when it is going to create an economic disaster for EVERYONE in the area when it's disappearance destroys the rainfall. And most, or possibly even all, governments in the area are officially against the destruction of the rainforest. (What they do about it is politics, and a part of what makes humans unsustainable.) Or consider all the people who just close their eyes to global warming when there's new evidence confirming it, it seems, weekly, and any contradictory evidence is weak and poorly understood. (Once it is understood it has, in every case I've followed, turned out to confirm the trend.) But acknowledging it would be economically disadvantageous in the short term. (Well, that's my estimate of the underpinnings, based mainly on who denies it.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Sunday August 23 2015, @01:20AM
I agree with your second paragraph. But what do you mean by "reduced genetic diversity leading to single-point-of-failure managed ecosystems"? Wild animal genetic pool size doesn't factor in to cow, chicken, and other farm raised animals. Look at dogs, for example. The majority of dogs are domesticated and the rare wild ones are often caught (and killed, unfortunately). People have been breeding dogs for so long that they have created even more variety than there was before domestication. Wild animals simply don't matter for dogs anymore.
Also, i am certain that poaching IS taken into account because most wildlife managers track population size. They don't just issue permits because they saw a few wild animals out there somewhere. They issue enough permits to prevent over-population of a given area, that is all. Often there are further restrictions on gender, or size, or weight.
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(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday August 23 2015, @02:45AM
Domesticated animals generally have a reduced genetic diversity. Frequently sharply reduced. The Potato is a possible exception, but this is due to its intractable reproductive system. An extreme example is the bananna. I'd include the naval orange except that sexually reproducing oranges still exist. Animals and plants that evolve asexual reproduction generally go extinct rather quickly. (An exception is the bdelloid rotifers, and nobody understands why.)
Farmers like genetically standardized crops, because they're easy to manage and predict. Unfortunately, if (when?) a disease evolves that kills any of them, it's likely to kill all of them. The ancestral corn plants can no longer be interbred with domestic corn, and domestic corn has a grossly reduced genetic variation WRT maize. Maize (or things called "indian corn") still exist, but:
a) they are quite rare, so their own genetic diversity has been strongly reduced, and
b) I'm not sure to what extent current maize even retains the basic characteristics of the ancestral stock. (I.e., you could plant it in a place where it could get enough water, and with a fish buried under it, and wouldn't need to care for it until harvest.) Do note, however, that even maize had been so reduced in diversity that it was genetically dependant on humans to survive. It couldn't disperse its own seeds.
So. Single point of failure: If a large population is dependant on a single food crop, say corn, rice, or wheat, and something happens that destroys that plant, then the population will starve. This is likely to destroy to social system that said population lives within.
P.S.: Have you heard that wild triticale, from which we derived wheat, is going extinct? Last I heard efforts were being made to save it, but I haven't heard how effective those efforts have been, and civil war has broken out in that area (the Middle East). When I last heard, a few years ago, the war wasn't in the same area, but is seems to have been spreading wildly, so it's quite likely the project had to be abandoned. That is a single point of failure for additional genes to add back into wheat. Triticale was resistent to many rusts (i.e. fungi) that can destroy all wheat crops.. So far fungicides have sufficed to control them, most of the time.
And that's another "single point of failure". There are *many* of them. (Perhaps ancestral wheat stocks were transplanted to somewhere safer. If so, I haven't heard.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Funny) by nyder on Friday August 21 2015, @02:33PM
Ya, The Civilization games shows you this, dang scientist should just learn to play video games.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ledow on Friday August 21 2015, @02:55PM
Humans are one of the few animals that do modify their environment as a matter of course. A cat will not drag its bed to somewhere more comfortable, it'll either sit in it or not. A beaver, however, will dam a river deliberately to give itself a home free from predators. But similarly other animals farm other animals - ants farm aphids quite commonly, for instance. (P.S. Every time you think we're "unique", we're not... our uniqueness only comes from being able to do combinations of things that others don't, not from doing those things themselves, and that's easy and cheating!).
Farming is our saviour, but at the cost of environment. There's only so much environment to modify, adjust or take account of in order to continue living forever. Not saying we're anywhere near that, but we aren't really looking at the bigger picture if we ignore that. The cow, certainly, is entirely unrecognisable today. It's just a grass-beef machine, basically. Even carrot - that used to be purple and tiny, and we bred it to become more useful to us.
But the problem with humanity is not farming or the environment they use up - it's that they do stuff that's unnecessary for survival. There is no need to go hunting elephants - they aren't a significant threat to us. And wiping them out is probably more damaging than keeping them around. But we still continue to do it, even with rules against doing that. But we aren't doing this to feed. You would never have taken on a full-size lion before guns (or possibly bows and arrows). You'd be insane to try. Even a wolf would likely have you. The fact is that we only really started to hunt those for sport, and when weapons evolved to the point they could kill anything. You also don't "eat" lion, or elephant etc. but we still hunt them. None of this has anything to do with food. You could argue that we historically did it for defence - removing predators that might affect our survival and there it MAKES SENSE to take out the adults to stop them producing children, put any offspring at a disadvantage (no daddy lion to help feed them), while removing the largest threat first. There you DO take out the animals in a super-predator way, adults-first.
But I'm fairly sure that we won't be the only species to operate in the way of taking out the adults-first. However, we are probably the only animal that kills things for sport, and not for defence, food or other sensible reasons.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @03:19PM
However, we are probably the only animal that kills things for sport, and not for defence, food or other sensible reasons.
I've seen cats slowly torture and murder small insects, and they definitely didn't want to eat them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @09:03PM
Predator animals have to be taught to hunt and kill, and this has been obseverd in multiple species, including cats. What you are likely observing is extinctual behavior where the cat does not know it should kill. It is just "playing" and since adult cat (experienced at hunting for food and survival) was around to show how to go beyond the play stage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 22 2015, @06:11AM
Even old cats do this. It's not just training.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @04:05PM
"P.S. Every time you think we're "unique", we're not... our uniqueness only comes from being able to do combinations of things that others don't, not from doing those things themselves, and that's easy and cheating!"
I think one thing we are unique about is that we have the ability to ask how we, life, the planet, the solar system, the galaxy, the universe originated. We have an innate ability and perhaps curiosity to ask the question about God or origin and to inquiry and research the matter and attempt to find answers. As far as we can tell animals lack this ability and do not ask this question about origin. If you have a pet bird or dog that doesn't remember its mother it won't 'miss' its mother or parents or family or ask how it got to be where it is or if it has relatives it will just accept the current environment as is.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @04:11PM
We have an innate ability to ask about ultimate causality and to ask about causality that relates to before our proximal birth. Where were my parents born. Where were their parents born. Where did it all begin. Questions about our history both as individuals and as a species. That's why we have ancestry websites for instance. It's why we have history classes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @04:13PM
Actually those who do the hunting are doing it for feed. They don't eat the elephants, but they eat the food they can buy with the money they get from selling the elephants' teeth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @09:10PM
No, it is the ivory, which is sold to fund warlord and terror groups. Ivory sales are banned in many countries, but there are loopholes, including the USA for pre-existing items made of ivory, which is exploited by profiteers to sneak in new items, but claim they are old.
http://ecowatch.com/2015/03/24/elephants-killed-illegal-ivory-trade/ [ecowatch.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mcgrew on Friday August 21 2015, @04:15PM
Every time you think we're "unique", we're not
Of course we are. Every species is unique, although all species have attributes shared by other species.
we are probably the only animal that kills things for sport, and not for defence, food or other sensible reasons.
Cats do it. They don't chase mice for food, especially if they're well fed, they do it for fun. I had a cat that trophy hunted. We'd moved into a house infested by mice, and every day there was a dead mouse laying next to my chair.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by sudo rm -rf on Friday August 21 2015, @05:11PM
I recently read somewhere that wild dogs are more dangerous than wolves because over the centuries they learned from their masters to kill without them being hungry. Maybe this is also true for cats?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday August 22 2015, @03:10PM
I don't think so. Watch a video of big cats and their prey sometime, they act just like house cats when hunting. I saw one video of a gazelle that wouldn't run away from a couple of tigers, who didn't know what to do with a docile gazelle.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Friday August 21 2015, @07:12PM
You misunderstand cats while also anthropomorphizing them.
They don't do it for *fun*. It's called *training*. Much like I might reverse engineer a piece of software, a cat is constantly reverse engineering its prey. It's a very human like trait to say they do it for sport, while it makes more sense that they simply do it to better understand their prey and thereby becoming more proficient hunters. I'm also hard pressed to call it a sport when instinct is compelling them so strongly to chase down prey that runs away from them. They're really just little killing machines that always want to learn how to kill better, and beyond their immediate needs for food.
It laid the dead mouse down by your chair everyday as a statement that it found you to be a wholly unreliable hunter, and that you would die without it feeding you. It was taking care of you. Awwwwwwwwwww :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1) by Murdoc on Sunday August 23 2015, @03:55PM
Why can't it be both? Why do you think humans have "fun", from an evolutionary perspective that is? Most children's games are getting them exercise, or developing their reasoning and imagination, socialization, even preparing them for future "adult" roles by pretending to be them. It even has benefits for adults. It's all "training", if you want to reduce it evolutionary biology terms, but from an emotional perspective, it's called "fun". And since cats are far less capable of sentient reasoning than humans are, emotions --coming from "instincts" as you point out-- is the only real motivator for them to do it. Do you think that cat's are incapable of experiencing any pleasure at all? Not with the way they love to be petted I think. So why can't they enjoy their games, including hunting ones? I don't think that the GP was anthropomorphizing cats so much as you calling them "machines", implying that they have no feelings.
Oh, and cats giving you a dead mouse is a gift, not an admonishment. They do it for for each other all the time, to those they like anyway. It's a social thing. A cat "custom" if you will.
(Score: 1) by eof on Friday August 21 2015, @07:08PM
A world without wild species sounds unappealing to me. According to one site [chgeharvard.org]
Beyond leading to a limited world, there is the potential for trouble. There have already been problems with the reliance on monocultures when it comes to plants (the Cavendish banana comes to mind as one example). Do humans believe they can protect domesticated animals from all potential dangers?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @09:43PM
the Cavendish banana comes to mind as one example
Pedant here! Perhaps you meant the Gros Michel banana [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday August 21 2015, @09:20PM
Give it a couple more centuries, and there won't be any "wild" species left,
That theory has been predicted for the last 300 years. It was wrong then, its wrong today, and its not getting right any time soon.
There are far more white tail deer alive today than there was before the white man settled the continent and cleared the land.
True some dangerous (or perceived as dangerous) species were driven away, some to localized extinction. Buffalo are mostly semi domesticated these days, and you never see the entire herds the plains indians use to drive over cliffs [ning.com] just to harvest their tongues.
Animal husbandry extends to wild animals too. Bag limits, limted seasons, total closures are all part of this.
And So is the taking of big mature animals instead of immature individuals. Hundreds of years of game management has proven this is healthier for the herd than hunting the babies. Babies grow up, and have babies. Old cow and bulls become less productive. Hunting the young has been known for 200 years to be the way to ruin your wild population.
TFA speaks from a wealth of ignorance. Probably by someone who only gets their meat from the corner market.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Saturday August 22 2015, @05:46AM
It's called "animal husbandry" or in layman's terms, "farming".
that's bullshit! i tried "animal wifery" and all i got was ridicule and then charged with animal abuse! double standard much?! ;P