Badasses

[forsythferret]

Humans are odd.

I've never gone hunting, and not in favor of humans wiping out species. I mean, obviously. My entire career I'm working toward involves trying to rejigger science and technology to work in partnership, or at least not against, nature.

And yet, when I was involved in a discussion about the Pleistocene megafauna extinctions today

Comments

[amazingadrian]

I don't know. I think it was a combination of factors really.

For example, the Wooly Mammoth. It was on it's way out anyways because the Ice Age, which it had evolved to live through, was ending.

And most of the prey that the predator megafauna went after were going through similar changes. Maybe it simply became disadvantageous to be so large when the creatures you ate got smaller and faster?

Humans played a part, to be sure, but there were a lot less of us around back then. Later extinctions, such as that of the Dodo Bird, were less excusable; we should have known better then.

What gets me is that there are still poachers and legislaters who will go after the endangered animals. I know legislators don't care; they're just trying to get ahead politically by making laws that satisfy people, even if they disregard the natural order of things. But poachers...you'd think they'd realize that they'd be out of a job once whatever it is they're hunting is gone.

[forsythferret]

Like any other mass extinction, more than one factor probably played a role, yes. Mammoths are hardly the only example, either. And even they survived on islands and North America until about the same time humans arrived. Many of the large animals that went extinct were herbivores, not carnivores, too

yeah... bad asses...

[vanmojo]

"then get back to making sure we don't have to live like that again.

But we seem to enjoy it so...

Sorry... not hatin', just sayin'...

mojo sends

Re: yeah... bad asses...

[forsythferret]

Well, I meant the whole "living in rude huts, wandering the tundra, living from mammoth to mammoth" part. Most people don't live that way, and I doubt many would enjoy it, either.

There are quite a few who seem to enjoy the killing stuff aspect, but that's not really comparable to going up against a mammoth or whatever with a stick with a sharp rock on it.

Re: yeah... bad asses...

[vanmojo]

See... that's what gets me; when you see a guy in his camouflage tree stand with a .416 magnum caliber high power rifle with a 4x9 ACOG lowlight red dot reticle scope and an infrared laser and "smart ammo" and he shoots a deer at 300 yards and the only thing he takes are the antlers...
... and calls it "hunting."

mojo sends