Friday, December 19, 2008

Gaia weeps.

The Tasmanian Devil is going extinct because that's what species do sometimes white male capitalists have been driving around in SUVs, injecting them with face tumor viruses.
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9 comments:

Anonymous said...

if we did not have extinct species, we would be dealing with TRex and Trilobites instead of Bambi and Bear.

Non-Geologist types seem to forget that extinction is a normal process and as a planet far more have gone away then have survived.

Just pull out a good paleo book and look at all of the fossils. I had to memorize thousands of familys of species that are gone now, let alone the individual species.

As Darwin would have said "such is the order of nature".

8:46 AM, December 19, 2008
BobG said...

Extinction is just Mother Nature's version of "Shit happens".

9:13 AM, December 19, 2008
Anonymous said...

That's too bad. To paraphrase, the more people I meet, the more I like Tasmanian Devils. :)

10:41 AM, December 19, 2008
Arcadia Iris said...

What jumps out at me is that the species is liable to spend 20 years in pain, wandering around blind, and starving to death. I guess nobody is going to get a plan together to trap and kill them out of mercy. That would make someone the "bad guy" who sped up the extinction. Could just be me, but I think that's the really sad part.

1:08 PM, December 19, 2008
Anonymous said...

Unfortunately, the Australian ecosystem in general is highly vulnerable by nature, and island species like the devil, even moreso. To be an island species is essentially to resign from leaving an evolutionary legacy.

There's been plenty of human-caused environmental asshattery in Oz, but this one doesn't seem to be our fault.

A pity. The devils are interesting little bastards.

2:05 PM, December 19, 2008
Weer'd Beard said...

Also I wonder how valid this story is. I remember about 10 years ago reading journal articles about how acid rain would wipe out all the amphibians in North America.

Don't hear much of that anymore, you'd think it would be big news, as according to those old reports the last frog should be croaking *har!* about now.

3:54 PM, December 19, 2008
phlegmfatale said...

Well, if they sound like the Tasmanian Devil on the cartoon, anyone who misses them can come listen to my puppies' floorshow at bedtime. They look and sound just like the chaotic whirl in the cartoons.

11:24 PM, December 19, 2008
Neutrino Cannon said...

It's a cancer that's contagious.

Now that's just darned peculiar.

1:30 AM, December 20, 2008
wrm said...

Extinction happens, but can't it rather happen to cockroaches? Or politicians? I kinda have a soft spot for the devils...

3:14 AM, December 22, 2008

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