This article in the LA TIMES
highlights Hawaii's attempts to preserve its endemic species and fight "exotics" that are invading the
ecosystem. Laudable, but I found some of the attempts rather bizarre. Children are being encouraged to
destroy ant-hills. The fact is, what are the chances that social insects will now be extirpated from the
islands? It seems resources should be concetrated on mammals-we have a good track record
exterminating them.
On a whimsical note-if the human race goes extinct because of some super-plague, and millions of years
from now another sentient species attempts to develop biological paradigms, Creationism might not seem
that implausible because of "exotic species." The presence of Red Deer in New Zealand, Camels in
Australia, Gray Squirrels in Europe and Starlings would be difficult to explain via a naturalistic process
and would no doubt confound attempts by the E. O. Wilson's of the day to publish an Island
Biogeography.
Well, fortunately the future paleontologist would no doubt find ample evidence of humans and human
migration and would likely surmise that humans are the cause of the odd dispersal of animals.
they would find well-preserved remains of missile silos deep in the desert, no doubt. Maybe even the spent
nuclear fuel dump in the Yucca mountains
you mean the work of the gods of yore? :)
Posted by: razib at January 2, 2003 03:46 PMaddendum-my cryptic phrase above indicates that yes, i think they WOULD FIGURE IT OUT, but the
agassiz of their day would have much more tangible proof of their "Flood Geology"-and probably slow
down evolutianary science.
anyway, this is starting to become a science fiction scenario :)
Posted by: razib at January 2, 2003 04:10 PMOf course, all this is just wild speculation, but I would think that we would play a central role in the
mythology of any intelligent animals that evolved after us. Yes, "the gods of yore."
Congrats on a mostly problem free move. In Netscape 7.0 there is an awful lot of grey space between the
sidebar on the left and the text, so much that it's only half on screen @ 1024x768. Is this intentional?