[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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