Adorable! It's always neat when a thought-to-be-extinct animal resurfaces. Maybe I shouldn't have written that post way back when about how I didn't really think we need things like the Endangered Species Act. Of course, much like your typical person, I'm a lot more interested in conservation of cute animals than gross snails and so forth though, obviously, I don't have a rational defense of the cuteness preference.
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Friday Dolphin Blogging
31 Aug 2007 04:25 pm
Comments (19)
Hah, well, when I made my own views on this blog phenom known on your Realisticat thread, I specifically referenced mammalian pets for a reason.
There was a fascinating article several years back in the NYT Science section which reported some studies of such things as a possibly evolutionary reason for the aw-how-cute-big-eyes-Tweety-Bird effect in humans, and on which types of people had the reaction and which types didn't.
It's when people breed mammals for this use and then take it further and dress them up in clown costumes and put beer bottles and TV remotes in their hand and snap their picture and proudly put it on the net and expect me to think it means they have kind hearts that I go: ewwww.
Well, Matt. Actually there is a defense of "The Cute Factor." Natalie Angier; NY Times; 01/03/06. Money quote:
Cute cues are those that indicate extreme youth, vulnerability, harmlessness and need, scientists say, and attending to them closely makes good Darwinian sense. As a species whose youngest members are so pathetically helpless they can't lift their heads to suckle without adult supervision, human beings must be wired to respond quickly and gamely to any and all signs of infantile desire.
oops my pot-kettle-black moment: not putting quotes around "hand." :-)
That thing looks hideous.
And those snails look pretty awesome, actually. Not "cute," per se, but pretty nonetheless.
The baiji is great. Lightfoot is wrong on this one.
I was rather grimly amused at all the gloom and doom associated with this exceedingly obscure extinction, or near-extinction, seeing that a little more than a century ago we wiped out the passenger pigeon, which existed in truly gargantuan numbers. Two hundred years ago, apparently, one out of every three birds in North America was a passenger pigeon. By the early 20th century, every one of them was gone. Has anyone noticed any environmental effects at all from that much more significant disappearance? I've never seen any cited. Certainly, the sky didn't fall.
Ecosystems are just that, systems. Systems we depend on for food, water and air. If you remove a piece from an ecosystem it may or may not have a serious "sky is falling effect". It's like taking the pieces out of your car when you aren't sure how it runs. Sure you can take a lot of bolts out and "nothing happens". Pull the wrong one and you engine is sitting on the freeway.
I like women.. beautiful women! if it were up to me there would be laws that prohibit ugly people from reproducing... I can envision a race of humans so pure, so useful to humanity... we would have finally eredicated all the weeds (and also all animals that are not cute). in fact - there should be laws that prohibit businesses from producing ugly looking things..
That dolphin is cute, but these "I didn't know they were endangered but according to the first commenter they are" hedgehogs have the smiling dolphin beat by a long shot.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=478026
"Adorable!"
Is that Kay Steiger or the fish?
Surprised adoring the dolphin doesn't feel more bittersweet to you. I mean, it's pretty likely they soon will go extinct.
Another thought-to-be-extinct-animal: a Democratic office holder with guts.
There are many environmental challenges facing the world today. How significant is species extinction in the face of these other issues?
E.O. Wilson: The answer to that depends on the scale. It depends on whether you are George Bush or John Muir. In other words, if you’re thinking ten years into the future, then clearly climate warming is more urgent, even though President Bush doesn’t think so yet. Climate warming, and the depletion of fossil water reserves, are critical for the next decade or so. If you’re thinking for 50 years, 100 years, and for all time species extinction is, like I like to say, " the folly our descendents will least forgive us." That’s irreparable. Climate warming can be reversed by 70 percent reduction in the effluent output from fossil fuel use. It can be halted and reversed. Virtually every other environmental change can be reversed. You just can’t reverse mass extinction. In the short term, it’s not pressing in terms of our survival and immediate comfort. In the long term, it’s the most important.
The environmental damage we’re doing, such as the climate change and water shortage we can feel right now, also happens to have collateral effects on species. Unless we’re wise enough to look a little into the future, that’s not going to have an immediate impact. You won’t see it if you just live from presidential election to presidential election.
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PS: concerned catholic's post was excellent in this respect.
i seem to remember someone using the term "charismatic megafauna" to refer, essentially, to cute animals that can be used to gain public support for saving a given ecosystem.
Edward O. Wilson loves bugs, always has, always will, the more bugs the better. I want him to be happy, so I'm all in favor of lots of bugs, as long as they stay in the Amazonian rain forest and out of my house.
i seem to remember someone using the term "charismatic megafauna" to refer, essentially, to cute animals that can be used to gain public support for saving a given ecosystem.
Well, sure. I love the baiji, and was heartbroken when they declared it extinct last winter, but I realize that its main ecological importance is probably in trying to pressure China to stop fucking with the Yangtze. Nobody likes gross bugs and snails, but holy shit would we be in for it if they all went away.
"...extreme youth, vulnerability, harmlessness and need..."
Check the mirror, Matty.
Comments closed September 14, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
So, how is it that your leftward tack on foreign policy also included a leftward tack on environmental policy? They seem rather orthoganal.
Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | August 31, 2007 4:35 PM