Showing posts with label species extinction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label species extinction. Show all posts

25 Mar 2018

On Biodiversity in the Anthropocene

The London Underground Mosquito (Culex molestus)


When you read reports about global warming, the destruction of the natural world and accelerated rates of extinction, it's easy to think that there are no winners other than ever-proliferating humanity and that even our malignant success as a species is unsustainable and will thus be relatively shortlived.

But, actually, there are other animals who are doing OK and might even be said to be thriving in this age that some term the Anthropocene ...

Mosquitos, for example, are well-adapted to life in cities; illegally dumped waste and poor sanitation means lots of stagnant water in which to breed; whilst millions of people and their pets all conveniently packed into one place means a constant supply of warm blood on which to feed.  

Other insects doing just fine thanks to human expansion and activity, include bedbugs and cockroaches. But it's not just creepy-crawlies that will enter the evolutionary future alongside man. Larger animals also find shelter, warmth and plentiful food in urban environments. It has been pointed out that if a rat was to design its own ideal home, it would pretty much resemble the system of sewers we've built for them.

And in the UK, thanks to current forestry practices and the eradication of natural predators, the number of deer is at its highest for a thousand years, with some one-and-a-half million frolicking in the woodlands and suburban gardens (just ask my sister about her plants).

Even when we poison the lakes and pollute the rivers, the cyanobacteria (or blue-green algae as they are commonly known) come up smiling; eagerly exploiting the increased nitrogen levels that result when fertilisers applied to farmland are washed into the waters. 

Finally, it's worth giving a big shout to the cephalopods; for species of squid, cuttlefish, and octopus are also making the most of present conditions. Whilst not entirely sure why their numbers are rising, scientists think it's likely due to the fact that the oceans are warming - thanks to human activity - and because we're significantly depleting the numbers of those animals that usually prey on the above.

In addition, celaphopods are natural suvivors; highly intelligent and extremely adaptable creatures who have been around for approximately 480 million years (cf. the pitiful 200,000 years chalked up by modern humans).  

In brief: although some like to imagine an apocalyptic future in which the earth is devoid of all life apart from human beings and their parasites, there is evidence to suggest that things won't be so grim; that large scale and drastic changes to the environment can, in fact, give evolution a real kick up the arse, resulting in new and more resilient species (often as the result of hybridization).

Of course, there probably aren't going to be any charismatic megafauna outside of zoos and conservation areas, but the process of natural selection will almost certainly ensure the survival of life at some level and in some form. Indeed, to return to our friend the mosquito, a sub-species has been discovered living in the London Underground of all places; while you mind the gap and worry about saving the whale, she pierces your skin and drinks ...    


Notes 

Those interested in this topic might like to see the recently published book by Professor Chris D. Thomas; Inheritors of the Earth: How Nature is Thriving in an Age of Extinction, (Allen Lane, 2017). 

For a fascinating interview with Prof. Thomas on the Vox news site (Dec 15, 2017) click here.


2 Jun 2014

The Museum of Failed Products

 The Museum of Failed Products: Photo by Kelly K. Jones 
The Guardian, 15 June 2012

According to Oliver Burkeman, the vast majority of new consumer products - like new lifeforms - are destined to fail; to quickly and somewhat mysteriously be withdrawn from sale and so to vanish forever from the supermarket shelves back into the capitalist void.    

Or, more accurately, these thousands upon thousands of things - ranging from non-perishable food items and household goods to toiletries and innovations in pet care - find themselves stored for all eternity on the grey metal shelves of what has become known as the Museum of Failed Products

Operated by GfK and based in a business park outside the city of Ann Arbor in Michigan, the Museum of Failed Products is a place which at first makes you want to laugh and then, as the full horror of so much waste and failure hits home, makes you want to cry.

The Japanese have a phrase - mono no aware - which captures this bittersweet feeling, referring as it does to the pathos of things; i.e. to what we experience when confronted by the transient and tragicomic nature of existence and the futility of all human effort in the face of this.      

We can keep inventing, keep producing, and keep marketing new goods, but, ultimately, we too will end up being assigned a place on the shelves of the Museum of Failed Species. For just as the marketplace can do without yoghurt shampoo or breakfast cola, so too can the universe do without us.


Link: Oliver Burkeman's article in The Guardian that inspired this post can be found at: 
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/jun/15/happiness-is-being-a-loser-burkeman

My thanks to Simon Thomas for initially bringing this article to my attention.