- Obi Wan Stevobi
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- Exalted Mythic Member
Posted by: Wyzilla
Posted by: Obi Wan Stevobi
Posted by: Wyzilla
We owe nothing but to our species and anything that descends from it. And we should and must protect the Earth, only so long as we do not possess the technology to find and travel to a better one. All that matters is the survival of mankind and anything that descends from it. Other animals are owed nothing and are lucky to be alive. While we should not outwardly destroy them, it would not be a shame if something so poorly evolved as the Panda died out.
Would you agree that humans need a diverse ecosystem supporting them in order to continue survival? Or do you labor under the delusion that indiscriminate eradication of fit species will have no adverse effects on our own livelihood?
We can survive without a majority of them, only few nations would be willing to undertake the tasks needed to ensure the entire planetary ecosystem didn't collapse. Ironically, nobody is willing to undertake the tasks required to protect them either, so we end up with a crapshoot hoping that the -blam!-storm ahead isn't as bad as it's believed to be.
Hey, at least we can expect the Singularity soon, right?
On of the neatest passages in Origin of Species is where Darwin demonstrates how the number of domestic cats determines the number of flowers in in an area. I find it a fascinating, and well supported assertion. It demonstrates the importance of each species co-existing in an area and how throwing an ecosystem out of balance in one area can have devastating effects on a seemingly unrelated area. SO in reality, the desire to maintain a healthy ecosystem is not only an altruistic desire, but there is a certain amount of selfishness in it as well, because we thrive at the top of a food chain. Remove too many links between us and the bottom, and we are going to suffer from it as well.
I am tempted to give one more instance showing how plants and animals, remote in the scale of nature, are bound together by a web of complex relations. I shall hereafter have occasion to show that the exotic Lobelia fulgens is never visited in my garden by insects, and consequently, from its peculiar structure, never sets a seed. Nearly all our orchidaceous plants absolutely require the visits of insects to remove their pollen-masses and thus to fertilise them. I find from experiments that humble-bees are almost indispensable to the fertilisation of the heartsease (Viola tricolor), for other bees do not visit this flower. I have also found that the visits of bees are necessary for the fertilisation of some kinds of clover; for instance twenty heads of Dutch clover (Trifolium repens) yielded 2,290 seeds, but twenty other heads, protected from bees, produced not one. Again, 100 heads of red clover (T. pratense) produced 2,700 seeds, but the same number of protected heads produced not a single seed. Humble bees alone visit red clover, as other bees cannot reach the nectar. It has been suggested that moths may fertilise the clovers; but I doubt whether they could do so in the case of the red clover, from their weight not being sufficient to depress the wing petals. Hence we may infer as highly probable that, if the whole genus of humble-bees became extinct or very rare in England, the heartsease and red clover would become very rare, or wholly disappear. The number of humble-bees in any district depends in a great measure upon the number of field-mice, which destroy their combs and nests; and Colonel Newman, who has long attended to the habits of humble-bees, believes that "more than two-thirds of them are thus destroyed all over England." Now the number of mice is largely dependent, as every one knows, on the number of cats; and Colonel Newman says, "Near villages and small towns I have found the nests of humble-bees more numerous than elsewhere, which I attribute to the number of cats that destroy the mice." Hence it is quite credible that the presence of a feline animal in large numbers in a district might determine, through the intervention first of mice and then of bees, the frequency of certain flowers in that district!