[PLUG-TALK] Re: [PLUG] Sounds good to me ;)
Russell Senior
seniorr at aracnet.com
Sun Jun 23 03:56:06 UTC 2002
>>>>> "Jeremy" == Miller, Jeremy <JMILLER at ci.albany.or.us> writes:
Russell> Human hunters, armed with rifles and grocery-store backup,
Russell> are more likely to want to shoot the strongest, healthiest
Russell> individual prey animal first, which has the opposite bias.
Jeremy> Hmm. I can see this being true in many cases.
Jeremy> [...]
Jeremy> As for the young, I don't see taking them as neccessarily
Jeremy> helping the prey population the same way weeding out the old
Jeremy> and weak does.
Right, I'd agree with that. A young animal with some "non-adaptive"
characteristics probably isn't any more likely to be eaten by
predators than a better adapted one. Probably no (or at least much
smaller, e.g. due to "smarter" parents) bias on that one.
Jeremy> I'm not saying we're a good substitute or even a real
Jeremy> substitute for natural predators. :) (Or even that we even
Jeremy> should be in a position where we need to try to fill in for
Jeremy> them.) I'm just finding the effects that we might have on a
Jeremy> population and how they differ from natural ones pretty
Jeremy> interesting.
If you like to read about other unintended effects of human management
of all sorts of things, see the fascinating book by Edward Tenner,
_Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended
Consequences_.
--
Russell Senior ``The two chiefs turned to each other.
seniorr at aracnet.com Bellison uncorked a flood of horrible
profanity, which, translated meant, `This is
extremely unusual.' ''
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