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Elephant Poaching & Culling | 161 comments (161 topical, editorial, 1 hidden)
Re: Elephant Poaching & Culling (4.00 / 2)
What is a better bet: is it that elephants went this much "perverse" some times before, or is it an absolutely new fashion?

Here is my speculative model: animals are capable of numerous modes of behaviour, because they need to survive diverse individual and collective circumstances. Ancestors of present-day species "have seen it all": tough times, catastrophic times, mad times, quiet times, good times, overabundance times, invador competitors or predators, synergetic buddies - they had to survive each of that. In particular, they have been very violent, or very greedy, like us today. But that was not necessary for the survival, apparently. Or moreover, a more sure way to keep good times going was to switch off aggression and greed. (Who knows, evolution might have came up with solutions even against follies of newly successful species,  foolish "discoverers" of unbounded growth. Humanity might not have registered everything yet.)

Within this model, the elephants might have indeed went into an ancient "mad" mode, out of recognisable stress or something. Conceivably, strain signals might multiply across species...

by das monde on Wed Feb 28th, 2007 at 04:36:43 AM EST
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Bees (none / 1)
By the way, have you read about mysteriously dissapearing bees? That is not a joke: bees in the US are just dissapearing, agricultural industries may suffer dearly. They might even be contributing to the current stock market turmoil. Isn't this a way to bring our consumerist civilisation down?!
by das monde on Wed Feb 28th, 2007 at 04:55:19 AM EST
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Re: Bees (none / 0)
One problem: "A flood of imported honey from China and Argentina has depressed honey prices and put more pressure on beekeepers to take to the road in search of pollination contracts. Beekeepers are trucking tens of billions of bees around the country every year."


"It's the statue, man, The Statue."
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Feb 28th, 2007 at 05:06:33 AM EST
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Re: Bees (none / 1)
Of the considered difficulties and possible reasons, one aspect is missing: genetically modified crops. Were they good for bees? On the other hand, how is GM industry is affected?
by das monde on Wed Feb 28th, 2007 at 05:31:36 AM EST
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Re: Bees (none / 0)
I fail to see the connection with consumerism, though.

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Feb 28th, 2007 at 05:36:07 AM EST
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Re: Bees (none / 0)
Dennis van Engelsdorp, a bee specialist with the state of Pennsylvania who is part of the team studying the bee colony collapses, said the "strong immune suppression" investigators have observed "could be the AIDS of the bee industry," making bees more susceptible to other diseases that eventually kill them off.
Unexplained immune suppression...

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Feb 28th, 2007 at 05:42:26 AM EST
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Re: Bees (none / 1)
To give bees energy while they are pollinating, beekeepers now feed them protein supplements and a liquid mix of sucrose and corn syrup carried in tanker-sized trucks costing $12,000 per load.
Great, now we're feeding bees the same corn syrup crap that is giving children diabetes.

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Feb 28th, 2007 at 05:45:10 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Bees (4.00 / 2)
I wonder if dealing with monocultures is bad for bees. Probably.
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Wed Feb 28th, 2007 at 05:46:08 AM EST
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Re: Bees (none / 0)
OT: Hey, colman, I sent you a couple of e-mails about the ES site...

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Feb 28th, 2007 at 05:49:59 AM EST
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Re: Bees (none / 0)
I saw them ...
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Wed Feb 28th, 2007 at 05:51:02 AM EST
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Re: Bees (4.00 / 4)
That's ingenuity of the 21st century.
by das monde on Wed Feb 28th, 2007 at 05:55:28 AM EST
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Re: Bees (none / 0)
Do you mean that their disappearance is not linked to herbicides ????
We seem to have some other problems with a bee-killer, the "Vespa Velutina" hornet, imported species!

"What can I do, What can I write, Against the fall of Night". A.E. Housman
by margouillat (hemidactylus(dot)frenatus(at)wanadoo(dot)fr) on Wed Feb 28th, 2007 at 05:24:25 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Elephant Poaching & Culling | 161 comments (161 topical, 0 editorial, 1 hidden)
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