Are We All Parasites?
Saturday. I and Debbie went to her friend Shannon's home in Brooklyn borough of New York City. After showing us around her new home which is decorated to the finest taste she took us to her backyard where I was fascinated to see a beautiful garden. While we were sitting and talking in the garden Shannon brought out her small Terrarium. It had many thick small plants growing in the alluvial soil along with few bugs Shannon is feeding as her pets. My mind drifted to Aquarium I had in India and there is also paludarium which has both the combination of Terrarium and Aquarium as in the bottom picture.But Picture 2 is just Terrarium.
This got my mind around the book I read 2 years back named "The Future of Life" Written by the Harvard Biologist Edward O Wilson. Wilson stated in this book about the life on this Biosphere (earth) of us will become harder by losing each species to our destruction. I came to know through this book about the Biosphere 2 project (Biological research) built in Arizona, USA for measuring the effects of atmospheric drop in oxygen and rise of carbondoxide's effect on miniature models built for acres replicating Savannah, Tropics.... This projects will help possibilties of future space colonization if earth is completely destroyed by our stupidity and greed. Eventhough Shannon's Terrarium is far from quality and size of Biosphere 2 I felt happy to see a live miniature. Wilson said a handful of healthy soil from the garden has millions of microbes. So I her Terrarium had more life than I could see.
Wilson gave an impassioned call to stop destroying flora and fauna around the world. He understands that some of them are done for money in poor countries. So in this book he estimated the economical worth of replacing of flora and fauna we are destroying to be $33 trillion a year. He said in this rate by 2050 1/5 of current creatures on earth will be extinct. He suggested ways to make profits by protecting flora and fauna. One example is the poisnous skin frogs in Amazon forests could be saved and used (without killing- taking just their skin poison alone) for pharmaceutical companies to make a pain killer which is 100 times more powerful than morphine (Pain killer). So there are ways to protect it for much more economical incentive including tourism.......
Talking of morphine drug reminded me of Morpheus character of the movie "Matrix 1". In it when Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburne) is caught by the the villain- top agent (Shown in above picture) tells him "You humans are parasites, you move to a place and multiply in number by using all the available resources." Isn't that very true or we are smart to heed to biologist like Wilson to prevent a big catastrophe and rejunevate the biosphere for us and our descendents.
This got my mind around the book I read 2 years back named "The Future of Life" Written by the Harvard Biologist Edward O Wilson. Wilson stated in this book about the life on this Biosphere (earth) of us will become harder by losing each species to our destruction. I came to know through this book about the Biosphere 2 project (Biological research) built in Arizona, USA for measuring the effects of atmospheric drop in oxygen and rise of carbondoxide's effect on miniature models built for acres replicating Savannah, Tropics.... This projects will help possibilties of future space colonization if earth is completely destroyed by our stupidity and greed. Eventhough Shannon's Terrarium is far from quality and size of Biosphere 2 I felt happy to see a live miniature. Wilson said a handful of healthy soil from the garden has millions of microbes. So I her Terrarium had more life than I could see.
Wilson gave an impassioned call to stop destroying flora and fauna around the world. He understands that some of them are done for money in poor countries. So in this book he estimated the economical worth of replacing of flora and fauna we are destroying to be $33 trillion a year. He said in this rate by 2050 1/5 of current creatures on earth will be extinct. He suggested ways to make profits by protecting flora and fauna. One example is the poisnous skin frogs in Amazon forests could be saved and used (without killing- taking just their skin poison alone) for pharmaceutical companies to make a pain killer which is 100 times more powerful than morphine (Pain killer). So there are ways to protect it for much more economical incentive including tourism.......
Talking of morphine drug reminded me of Morpheus character of the movie "Matrix 1". In it when Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburne) is caught by the the villain- top agent (Shown in above picture) tells him "You humans are parasites, you move to a place and multiply in number by using all the available resources." Isn't that very true or we are smart to heed to biologist like Wilson to prevent a big catastrophe and rejunevate the biosphere for us and our descendents.