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Post by Bluewolf on Jul 15, 2007 14:18:00 GMT -5
I have been thinking. Do we as humans have right to stop another speices of animal wipe out another through natural selection. Lets say chimps started to evolve drastically and become a bit like we were and start mass hunting and wiping out predators.
Would you let Natural Selection takes its course? Remember eventually the predetors being wiped out could easily be wolves.
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Fuzzy
Pup
MILK MIIIILK
Posts: 97
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Post by Fuzzy on Jul 15, 2007 15:15:47 GMT -5
Although we have no real right to 'play god' when it comes to the lives of other living things, i'd personally want to help the other species live even if it isn't really my place.
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Post by thealmightyq on Jul 15, 2007 23:35:13 GMT -5
I have been thinking. Do we as humans have right to stop another speices of animal wipe out another through natural selection. Lets say chimps started to evolve drastically and become a bit like we were and start mass hunting and wiping out predators. Would you let Natural Selection takes its course? Remember eventually the predetors being wiped out could easily be wolves. I'd so no, simply for practical reasons. The simple fact is that ninety-nine percent of the creatures that have lived on this planet are extinct. You won't find most creatures from the "Age of the Dinosaurs" (for those here who are pedantic, I say "Age of the Dinosaurs" because time period on Earth in which dinosaurs lived extended over multiple geologic periods, and I don't feel like saying "most creatures from the Jurassic, Cretaceous, blah blah blah periods") still around (with the exceptions of things like crocodiles and coelacanth, which are still very different from their earlier ancestors). Trying to keep animals from dying out over the eons would prove to most likely completely screw up entire ecosystems, and the sheer amount of effort that would have to be "put into" performing this sort of constant operation would be massive. Another thing I have to wonder about, is what is so valuable about having a specific species continue to exist on Earth? Millions of years from now when elephants have evolved into multiple creatures and ultimately died out as a species, should we have copies of elephant DNA so that we can keep replicating elephants? When we have the available DNA, is cloning extinct animals (such as woolly mammoths) the only ethical option? I don't think so. I think animal extinction caused by humans is wrong (I can see a very complex ethical debate coming up...), but I can't really see animal extinction perpetrated by nature to be "wrong" either. It's like trying to eliminate animal death. It just doesn't work... TheAlmightyQ |
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Post by Kai on Jul 17, 2007 21:23:43 GMT -5
Yes it is true that most of life that has walked this Earth is 'dead'. Of course are they really dead? There descandants have changed into a different form, and there genes still live on.
No, you cannot stop death. But the fact is we are LOSING our Earth. There is so little animal life left, because we have taken all of the space. How long until there is nothing left? We need to desperatly cling onto every life we can. If the animals change, then great that means they are evolving to better themselves. Oddly as this sounds, this is natural selection. Humans are a part of nature, and so it everything we create. Us killing life is natural selection. So it is my opinion that we should defy it.
As one of my favorite peoms state: Do not go gently into that good night, Rage, rage against the dying of light!
If we are such a powerful species, we need to learn to be humble. No we cannot keep animals th exact same way over millions of years. That is unnatural. We should however, make sure that predators are not all wiped out because there is not enough prey for them to hunt. I know I have gone a bit off topic. The original question is rather deep. Most likely humanity would not act kindly at another species trying to climb up the evolutionary ladder. That is natural of course. I wanted to make this point: If we don't stop things soon, the only animals we will have left will be our domesticated ones.
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