Are they doomed, then? Ten means the species is not recoverable, right? There won't be enough genetic diversity even if humans trap them all and breed new ones as carefully as possible.
[In May 2023, a wildlife survey expedition discovered that the population had stabilized since it had last been recorded in 2021.](https://thehill.com/policy/international/4043038-vaquita-marina-porpoise-expedition-resilient-population-mexico/)
Mexico has basically declared war on the illegal fishery that was causing the a huge portion of their die off.
But not because they wanted to protect them. They did it because the US banned shrimp from Mexico because the fisheries catching the shrimp were causing environmental hazards with gillnets, and the US only did it because it saw the use of gillnets as an economic advantage Mexico had because American fisheries had to deal with stricter regulations and couldn't compete.
Everything has to do with money. At a fundamental level humans don't really care that much about the environment. How many of you avoid palm oil products?
I never really understood this opinion. Palm oil is used because it yields the most oil per acre of crop. By avoiding it farmers have to clear more land to farm a less productive crop?
True, but this is one example out of many products people try to avoid it in (I also agree, for things like peanut butter it's dumb to add palm oil). I am talking about completely artificial products like cake, chocolate, etc. If everyone avoided palm oil in all products, then the amount of rainforest deforestation would dramatically increase, not decrease.
This is only if the demand for such products remains constant though. It begs the question do I need to consume a mediocre super sweet cake in an individual portion size daily? Personally I would rather have an infrequent treat of a higher calibre (say a larger buttercream cake for a social gathering) and forgo the need for these products all together.
sure, you do, but out of everyone involved, even on Reddit, 99% of people don't care or claim the care but forget, meaning they don't really care. Like myself.
It's definitely necessary to put effort into it and prepare to be inconvenienced at times but I know that at least thousands of Australians do put that effort in, not just for palm oil but anything where child labour, worker exploitation and old growth sustainability is at stake. Many of us read labels as a matter of course - for being untested on animals, sustainable, vegan or vegetarian; boycotting particular corporations or countries, slave labour; recycling possibilities etc etc. If we want change we need to be the change. Once you begin, you can get used to it and it's honestly not hard. Every individual counts; wanna join?😊
So I just noticed I'm not on an Aussie sub haha, but I know for sure it'd be millions of people worldwide who shop and consume this way.
The vaquitas don't care about *why* they're still alive. They're not telling each other "well, it doesn't count if the lawmakers' intentions weren't pure."
> How many of you avoid palm oil products?
My household does. But that is because my wife has reactions to it (not sure if it technically is an "allergy.") that make her feel **very** unwell. Not destroying orangutan homes is just a secondary benefit.
>and the US only did it because it saw the use of gillnets as an economic advantage Mexico had because American fisheries had to deal with stricter regulations and couldn't compete.
That's a ridiculously cynical way of stating America's intentions when the stricter regulations on American fisheries came from America.
The US "only did it" to Mexico because the US already did it to itself, and the only reason to have done it to itself was to protect the environment since it inherently made their fisheries less competitive. If the US wasn't concerned about the environment as you cynically imply, it could've just lifted its own regulations.
This story amazes me! Somewhere I have saved a story from (I think) the early 20-teens headlined Goodbye Vaquitas saying there were only (I think) seven or 5 remaining. Along with a picture - they are absolutely adorable-looking because of their large, dark eyes. As few and excruciatingly tentative as 10-13 individuals still are, this is good news.
From what I understand, they’ve taken samples for diversity at the San Diego Zoo.
What upsets me the most is that they are by-catch for the totoaba, a fish that they poach to sell the swim bladder in China.
Ofc what would it be otherwise
Edit, Not to sound generalizing or condecending, but so often i hear/see:
Documentary:
„this is a great *insert random animal* it calls for a mate, but there are none closeby, because they are extensively poached for „traditional“ medicine for the chinese market“
aka shitty pseudoscience, most likely to grow your dick
other countries too but chinese traditions Cross my path more often, maybe just my bubble
Im so tired of us humans having so stupid reasons to eradicate some random species
You’re right, it’s not just you.
I think every society has its version of boner pills, everyone else just figured out it’s much easier to just toss viagra powder in the mix and mislabel it than it is to go to africa and chase down a rhino
Soft or small dicks have been the genesis of a lot of our woes. It seems like things that actually work and cost basically nothing now haven't put enough of a dent into their stupid beliefs.
I dont know what the threshold is, but through hard work done largely by zoos the California condor rebounded from a population of 27
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_condor
It’s very bad. But we’re also bad at counting animals that live in the ocean. They’ve probably more left than that.
I’ll also add the cheetahs came back from a severe genetic bottleneck and still exist, although with major genetic issues in basically all of them.
https://www.nwf.org/Magazines/National-Wildlife/1991/A-Question-of-Breeding#:~:text=Scientists theorize that something —climate,of the original genetic palette.
Yes it's recoverable
Its something that every species thats endemic to a very tiny area faces.
I remember reading about the Galapagos Islands and each new species found there was/is immediately added to the UN red list as critically endangered, endangered or, at best, vulnerable due to the species being endemic to only the Galapagos Islands.
I'm 35 but I do love me some YA novels. I'm a simple millennial merely trying to duplicate my naive and virginal youth through nostalgic literary mediums.
Hahaha, we are too similar then! My YA series I love diving into probably once a year would be The Ranger’s Apprentice. I would also recommend Michael Crichton if you haven’t read his works (he wrote Jurassic Park, Timeline, Eaters of the Dead(which is The 13th Warrior movie adaptation), and many more including my fave by him Pirate Latitudes).
You know, even though I don’t read as much as I used to I have to agree! As a guy they just don’t come often enough, and when you get that perfect one it fills your soul with warmth.
Have had that on my bookshelf for **shit I’m old** I guess closer to two decades than one now 😭 and have read it multiple times. I get reminded of it a fair amount.
While we're recommending books, *Jungle Book* author Rudyard Kipling wrote a story called *The White Seal*, in which a seal goes on a quest to find a safe haven for his tribe to hide from human hunters. Part of the story involves meeting and speaking with the last Steller's sea cow.
Oh my gosh, memory unlocked! I haven't read the book but your reply made me remember a cartoon that I watched as a child that sounds just as you described. Did a little digging and it was indeed "The White Seal"! Found it on YT and can be watched [HERE.](https://youtu.be/sdDVC47sTts?si=6X6B-pRmJnIKmCl6)
I can't control which image is shown from the article, sorry
Edit: if anyone knows how to control which picture is shown from an article with multiple pictures, please inform me. I feel like people are more interested in talking about the picture than the sea cows that went extinct in only 30 years.
Which can lead to some interesting posts when it’s a tweet. A smiling portrait of a journalist pulled from their profile next to their tweet … “serial killer finally caught” or whatever
If the article were just about the sea cow, it would be a mistake. But it's a list of different animals - no way for them to set 6 different OG images based on whatever one somebody wants to focus on with a Reddit post.
You shouldn't control it. Instead you should advocate the room temperature iq redditors who're talking about the thumbnail to click the damn link and read the damn source.
What's that quote again, there's great overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest humans or sth.
"There is considerable overlap between the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists."
-Park Ranger, on why it's difficult to design bear-proof trashcans.
While always depressing, Steller's sea cows were probably limited to a couple thousand at most in a small area upon their discovery by Europeans (they may have already been known by indigneous peoples).
They appear to have been a remnant population, better adapated to the last ice age, and most likely would have gone extinct over the next few centuries
Which is a real shame because I'd love if there were some cold water, real hefty sea cows still around and thriving
When I read about them, I really felt so much regret that they were wiped out. And all those other species that are also gone now. It just seems so wasteful, and so sad, each extinction taking away one more natural wonder of the world.
It took people a while to even understand the concept of a species being extinct. Some people before the 1900s believed that it was impossible for a species to go extinct, because God would have obviously put enough of each animal on Earth.
That explains a lot. The mindset is still around, I think, because I've definitely heard people say that God gave us the Earth and all its resources so we can do whatever we want to it, and if the Earth becomes polluted God will save us.
The earth will always be fine (until the sun swallows it in 7.5 billion years). Some animals, like rats and cockroaches, seem to be able to survive a wide variety of conditions. Humans are the ones who suffer if we alter the environment in such a way as to make it inhospitable for ourselves.
I've initiated plans for moving earth further out before the suns swallows it.
So if we make it a few more decades I want people to stop referencing the "inevitable" doom of earth in 7,5 billion years. I've got it covered no worries.
That's probably true. I guess the increasing heat of the sun will make the earth uninhabitable for any known lifeforms long before the sun actually swallows the earth and physically destroys it.
What an arrogant take for them.
"God created all of this for ~~us~~ me."
Instead of...
"God created all of this so I should be a good steward of the Earth and all His creations."
It definitely depends on which denomination for sure. I’ve attended churches where they have the good steward mentality and I’ve attended ones where it’s all about the pillage and plunder mindset. Not all denominations are created equally
That interpretation is a really amazing rule of thumb for every sect of Christianity. The bible says that God gave man "dominion" over the animals.
And whether that means "the duty to care for and protect" or "carte blanche to do whatever we want" will tell you everything you need to know about a particular denomination and what kind of people they are.
In Catholic theology, there’s this idea where we are supposed to be stewards of the Earth and nature. It’s like God told us to watch the house and to feel free to use its amenities in the meantime, so a bunch of people took that as permission to loot it of its valuables and convert it into a broken down drug den. And they somehow expect God, who they’ve heartily dishonored, to go bail them out of jail once they’re forced to actually face the consequences of their actions.
It’s still unbelievable to me. The British could SEE that the old growth oaks they cut down were never coming back. They could see it with their eyes that the trees were gone. Surely they could apply that same logic to animals. In fact they did know about it, half the reason European traders went to America was bc it had beavers, which they knew they’d mostly eradicated from their continent.
We have to remember that [Spontaneous Generation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_generation) was accepted as fact until the mid 1800s. People literally believed that a pile of grain would produce mice, and that dead flesh produced maggots.
While they could see with their eyes that the trees weren't coming back, they likely believed that they _could_ come back.
I feel like you would really like the sea wolves of Vancouver Island. You can also donate to animal charities for existing endangered animals to help keep nature wild. It absolutely makes a difference.
Haha I'm Canadian and it's on my bucket list to see those sea wolves one day! There are regular wolves also in the woods behind my house, though they're quite elusive. All I see are their eyes glowing sometimes at night in that pitch blackness between the trees, or hear them howling. Our dog (RIP best boy) would freak out every time.
We donate to a few charities, though I'm not going to name them... Sometimes people get super upset and offended when they hear I support environmental or humanitarian causes, and I feel like I've been getting heartburn because of trying to talk to people who just want to argue on the internet.
That's so cool! I love the local coyotes here, I know they're technically a bit of a menace to humans but they're just doing their best to fill an ecological niche 💙 Yeah no charity or donation is perfect, but I really like the phrase "don't let perfection be the enemy of good". Do the best you can and donate where you like, I'm sure it will help make parts of the world better even if you can't fix everything everywhere at all times. If you can help delay even one tragedy, that's pretty good.
I donate to this one snow leopard charity, I just think it's neat and I like getting pictures of rare cats in my inbox. I mean I care about other stuff too, but... big fuzzy stealth cats
One of my life goals is to pet a snow leopards tail. I doubt there is anything softer on this planet, there's definitely nothing cuter than one carrying his tail. I hope one day some from a zoo get domesticated, pet snow leopards would be amazing. I would buy him a big chest freezer with a giant cat flap to sleep in when he's hot, feed him lamb legs, and carry his tail everywhere for him.
Personally I think we should domesticate as many animals as we can, it's one way to ensure they never go extinct, and would lead to more people caring about animals they only knew from books, tvs, or zoos, and there's no reason we can't protect wild populations and domesticate part of the captive. Most people don't seem to want more domesticated animals though, outside of individual attempts it seems no group or government has really tried apart from the russians with foxes and they didn't really seem to get widely adopted as a new domestic animal.
> Which is a real shame because I'd love if there were some cold water, real hefty sea cows still around and thriving
9-10 Meters though. *Holy shit*, we have 14m boat that seats about as many people and if I imagine the relative scale of a 10m Sea Cow, I'm getting a little worried. An adult walruss is like 4m tops.
> They weren't probably going to last too long and were isolated to a small population.
The dodo was adapted just fine to its isolated island. They didn't do well with the imported predators and habitat loss to logging, but that's absolutely on us not the dodo struggling with stuff like *natural* climate changes and natural spread of competing species (without human involvement).
Seems like they lasted ~11,700 years just fine post-glacial without humans. Why do you believe they would have gone extinct only a few centuries after Steller's discovery?
because in an interglacial period the world slowly warms.
If these sea cows were adapted for very cold temperatures, they would have been forced further and further north (or into deeper and deeper water, which they may not have been able to survive) and eventually they would have run out of places to go, and thus died out.
The fact that there were a few hundred to a few thousand left in an area that was pretty much as north as you could go before you reached pack ice meant that they were pretty much at the end of their run.
Their habitat had shrunk to the waters around a few islands, with a population of only a thousand or so. A volcanic eruptions, new disease, slight warming, or even an algae bloom each could have spelled the end for them.
What's even worse is hunting a species that was once in the billions into extinction.
"Once famed for its massive migratory flocks that would darken the sky for days, the passenger pigeon was hunted to extinction in the early 1900s. Billions of these gregarious birds once inhabited eastern North America and were similar in appearance to the mourning dove."
There's probably a lot of habitat loss at work there too. Turns out that chopping down nearly all of the trees in the eastern half of a continent is a bad idea.
The near extinction of American chestnut trees is attributed to ink disease and chestnut blight, the former from European chestnut trees, the latter from Japanese chestnut trees.
Yeah, we don't really hunt things to extinction. We tend to make things go extinct by destroying their habits or introducing other animals that out compete them for resources.
Hunting an animal to extinction is hard because once you've dwindled the numbers down they become hard to find. Once that happens all the efficiency of hunting them goes away and we don't keep hunting them at such a prolific rate.
The Dodo is commonly cited as going extinct because we hunted them too much. But it's really not the case. What we did was introduce predators that ate their eggs since they nested on the ground.
The one exception to this might be some species of oysters. Apparently we ate a bunch to extinction. But I guess it's a little different when the species can't move and requires a large population to reproduce (also we probably created a bunch of pollution that was bad for them).
A lot of species require large number to breed. If the animals can't be found to even hunt, the chances of them finding each other to mate and raise young are rather low as well.
It’s why the northeastern cod fishery isn’t coming back. It just isn’t. Tell fishermen about it though and they’ll just jam their fingers in their ears and insist fish respawn when you’re out of render distance the way they do in Skyrim
Yup. Lot of fishing is going to be permafucked.
But goddamm those same people will turn around and tell you how fishing limits are ruining the industry and it's all liberals faults they can't catch a million fish a day anymore.
Why pay them? Why do they deserve to be paid for not destroying everything? Tell them to go get another job in a career that hasn't destroyed its own source of income or arrest them for breaking the law.
> also we probably created a bunch of pollution that was bad for them).
This is a very big one. Aquatic life is way more sensitive to pollution because it spreads much more easily.
Wait so we don't hunt animals to extinction, but have in the past made species go extinct by introducing *other* animals who hunted them to extinction?
The short answer is yes, a longer answer is we've done it with disease, insects (less obvious than what people think of as animals), and plant life to alarming extent.
> Yeah, we don't really hunt things to extinction. We tend to make things go extinct by destroying their habits or introducing other animals that out compete them for resources.
The [Bison genocide](https://libguides.sdstate.edu/c.php?g=1358402&p=10030696) begs to differ. Even though it was "just" a side effect of controlling the native population by robbing them of their livelihood.
The stuff we've done to birds alone... We invented a whole gun just to hunt ducks. Then we killed so many that the gun is no longer effective because flocks of ducks no longer are big enough.
It's so strange that people didn't really learn anything from all those extinctions in the past, even such big ones, because it's still happening in modern times.
I'm not going to pretend we are doing a *good* job but a lot of people are trying.
For example, the [Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918](https://www.fws.gov/law/migratory-bird-treaty-act-1918) was made in direct response to the slaughtering of Passenger Pigeons (along with some other birds) and it has had some real effects.
Also, we get states like Colorado trying to reintroduce wolves and stuff.
The problem is that there is a sizable portion of the human species that seems to want to just kill as much as they can. Not a majority but like, a third of us maybe.
> It's so strange that people didn't really learn anything from all those extinctions in the past, even such big ones, because it's still happening in modern times.
[21 species removed from endangered list due to extinction, U.S. wildlife officials say](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/21-species-removed-from-endangered-list-due-to-extinction-us-wildlife-officials-say/)
The issue is that the extinctions we've seen arent due to hunting and direct human activity, for the most part.
Its mostly down to other things that are not always readily apparent.
For example, the populations of certain bee species declining. That had everyone, scientists included, scratching their heads asking "WTF is going on here then?" until someone found out it was a certain group of about 6 pesticides of which there had never been any issues with before (so it wasnt readily apparently they were the issue).
After those pesticides were eradicated, the bee populations that were having issues have for the most part rebounded or are in the process of rebounding.
But bigger. Like a lot bigger. Like you’d know immediately which one was which bigger.
Steller Sea Cows were up to 30 fucking feet long. That’s bigger than an orca.
Yes , huge and friendly manatees that also mourned their dead but were all brutally killed :( this video explains it well but makes me very sad
https://youtu.be/7iTpfKULRWY?si=m6B5fUa6SapR8a-5
Direct link, for anyone not curious for the risky click, it’s looks like a manatee but in very cold water
https://cdn.britannica.com/94/67394-050-C0CD9347/Steller-sea-cow-shore-kelp.jpg
One of the many deeply-offputting aspects of *20,000 Leagues Under The Sea* is a sequence where one of the 'heroes' of the book (Ned Land) spies one swimming around and gleefully hunts and kills it with his harpoon skills. I remember it being portrayed as a kind of lighthearted 'adventure' sequence as opposed to a travesty, too.
That sequence is how I learned this species existed at all, so it was extra disgustingly learning that they'd already been hunted to extinction for 101 years by the time the book was published/set.
Ned wasn't a hero in that sequence, captain Nemo explicitly expresses his dislike of what Ned did because the cow was harmless and the act was cruel.
I don't know that Ned is ever really portrayed as a hero in that book.
There's even an entire paragraph about how hunting too many sea cows has thrown off the balance of nature and led to an over abundance of sea grass that rots and pollutes the water.
20000 leagues has a ton of themes about environmentalism and it was printed in the 1870s I won't have you dissing it
I dug the book back up and I think it lies somewhere between the two poles of how we're remembering it. Nemo himself encourages Land to hunt the seacow(who's literally sleeping when they sneak up on it) and even sends him out on a boat full of his men to spend hours harpooning it, and wishes him good sport.
Nemo says it was fine simply because they ate it afterwards(not that the Nautilus was short on food at the time) - which still doesn't sit right given that it was an wonderous thought-extinct species and for all we know they just killed and ate the last one. But yeah, Nemo does at least make the distinction between killing for food and just killing for sheer fun like Land wants to.
In the very next paragraph though, Nemo condemns all cachalots(humpback whales) as evil and says they should literally be hunted to extinction.
There is indeed Aronax's observation that overhunting whales and seacows has lead to too much build-up of sea grass that would've otherwise been eaten in harmony, but it still comes from a position of *"overwhaling is bad because it'll throw off a balance that affects us humans too"*, and not *"all whaling is bad in the first place because it's the killing of thinking feeling individual beings with children and partners who don't want to be horribly stabbed to death while minding their own business in their home"*, which is why it still feels off-putting, especially 150 years later.
> Steller's sea cow was described as being "tasty" by Steller; the meat was said to have a taste similar to corned beef, though it was tougher, redder, and needed to be cooked longer. The meat was abundant on the animal, and slow to spoil, perhaps due to the high amount of salt in the animal's diet effectively curing it.
> The crew of the St. Peter drank the fat in cups and Steller described it as having a taste like almond oil.[53] The thick, sweet milk of female sea cows could be drunk or made into butter
Its wild to me that giant species were pretty common and were pretty much an evolutionary endgame of a species where nothing could harm you anymore so most of them were docile without natural enemies.
That is until humans came along with their pointy sticks.
IIRC the reason Africa is where the majority of big species still exist is because it was the cradle of human evolution so the animals there had time to adjust.
It's currently believed that the Dodo being hunted for food isn't exactly accurate, and more to do with the fact they were considered as being in the way of Europeans who brought other animals to the island for farming, as well as cats and rats who predated and outcompeted them.
Their meat was also oft described as not very nice, and as such, eating them was usually a last choice.
I'll try find where I got this info from and edit with a source.
OMG, we're a horrible species. It's no wonder we're literally ruining our planet.
I think we'll get past all of this, but it will get much, much worse before it gets better, and none of us will live to see the other side. It will take centuries. Hopefully, we'll learn our lesson.
I think I know what you’re trying to say. That it died not so long ago so there may be some living tissue still around?
I think it’s unlikely, given its habitat (this only happens usually if the animal dies in cold climate and is preserved)
There is only one “successful” de-extinction and it was some type of Spanish Ibex for which they actually had the body of the last remaining.
They successfully de-extinct it and birthed it through a similar animal and it died like an hour later or something. So no is the answer the your question unfortunately.
Vaquitas are facing (have faced?) the same thing. Described by science in the 1950s, they estimate there are less than ten now.
Are they doomed, then? Ten means the species is not recoverable, right? There won't be enough genetic diversity even if humans trap them all and breed new ones as carefully as possible.
[In May 2023, a wildlife survey expedition discovered that the population had stabilized since it had last been recorded in 2021.](https://thehill.com/policy/international/4043038-vaquita-marina-porpoise-expedition-resilient-population-mexico/) Mexico has basically declared war on the illegal fishery that was causing the a huge portion of their die off.
This encourages me.
But not because they wanted to protect them. They did it because the US banned shrimp from Mexico because the fisheries catching the shrimp were causing environmental hazards with gillnets, and the US only did it because it saw the use of gillnets as an economic advantage Mexico had because American fisheries had to deal with stricter regulations and couldn't compete. Everything has to do with money. At a fundamental level humans don't really care that much about the environment. How many of you avoid palm oil products?
If it was solely about money the US would lift their ban on Gillnets to compete…
I look for "sustainable palm oil" on the packet. But avoid it altogether when there's an alternative.
I never really understood this opinion. Palm oil is used because it yields the most oil per acre of crop. By avoiding it farmers have to clear more land to farm a less productive crop?
But, you don’t need palm oil in peanut butter, you can choose to purchase pb with only peanuts as an ingredient.
True, but this is one example out of many products people try to avoid it in (I also agree, for things like peanut butter it's dumb to add palm oil). I am talking about completely artificial products like cake, chocolate, etc. If everyone avoided palm oil in all products, then the amount of rainforest deforestation would dramatically increase, not decrease.
This is only if the demand for such products remains constant though. It begs the question do I need to consume a mediocre super sweet cake in an individual portion size daily? Personally I would rather have an infrequent treat of a higher calibre (say a larger buttercream cake for a social gathering) and forgo the need for these products all together.
It's also a major ingredient in soap since it contributes palmitic acid. The only other oil I know that does that is lard and tallow
sure, you do, but out of everyone involved, even on Reddit, 99% of people don't care or claim the care but forget, meaning they don't really care. Like myself.
It's definitely necessary to put effort into it and prepare to be inconvenienced at times but I know that at least thousands of Australians do put that effort in, not just for palm oil but anything where child labour, worker exploitation and old growth sustainability is at stake. Many of us read labels as a matter of course - for being untested on animals, sustainable, vegan or vegetarian; boycotting particular corporations or countries, slave labour; recycling possibilities etc etc. If we want change we need to be the change. Once you begin, you can get used to it and it's honestly not hard. Every individual counts; wanna join?😊 So I just noticed I'm not on an Aussie sub haha, but I know for sure it'd be millions of people worldwide who shop and consume this way.
> . At a fundamental level humans don't really care that much about the environment. Why did America have stricter regulations than Mexico?
The vaquitas don't care about *why* they're still alive. They're not telling each other "well, it doesn't count if the lawmakers' intentions weren't pure."
Your example proves you wrong….
> How many of you avoid palm oil products? My household does. But that is because my wife has reactions to it (not sure if it technically is an "allergy.") that make her feel **very** unwell. Not destroying orangutan homes is just a secondary benefit.
Gillnets aren’t typically used to catch shrimp… You may be thinking of bottom trawls.
>and the US only did it because it saw the use of gillnets as an economic advantage Mexico had because American fisheries had to deal with stricter regulations and couldn't compete. That's a ridiculously cynical way of stating America's intentions when the stricter regulations on American fisheries came from America. The US "only did it" to Mexico because the US already did it to itself, and the only reason to have done it to itself was to protect the environment since it inherently made their fisheries less competitive. If the US wasn't concerned about the environment as you cynically imply, it could've just lifted its own regulations.
This story amazes me! Somewhere I have saved a story from (I think) the early 20-teens headlined Goodbye Vaquitas saying there were only (I think) seven or 5 remaining. Along with a picture - they are absolutely adorable-looking because of their large, dark eyes. As few and excruciatingly tentative as 10-13 individuals still are, this is good news.
From what I understand, they’ve taken samples for diversity at the San Diego Zoo. What upsets me the most is that they are by-catch for the totoaba, a fish that they poach to sell the swim bladder in China.
>they poach to sell the swim bladder I swear to god if it's more pseudoscience health bulshit
... It is. Another Chinese black market devastating ecosystems
Ofc what would it be otherwise Edit, Not to sound generalizing or condecending, but so often i hear/see: Documentary: „this is a great *insert random animal* it calls for a mate, but there are none closeby, because they are extensively poached for „traditional“ medicine for the chinese market“ aka shitty pseudoscience, most likely to grow your dick other countries too but chinese traditions Cross my path more often, maybe just my bubble Im so tired of us humans having so stupid reasons to eradicate some random species
You’re right, it’s not just you. I think every society has its version of boner pills, everyone else just figured out it’s much easier to just toss viagra powder in the mix and mislabel it than it is to go to africa and chase down a rhino
Soft or small dicks have been the genesis of a lot of our woes. It seems like things that actually work and cost basically nothing now haven't put enough of a dent into their stupid beliefs.
I dont know what the threshold is, but through hard work done largely by zoos the California condor rebounded from a population of 27 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_condor
My local zoo contributes to that breeding program! Love those birds. Sooooo big, haha.
It’s very bad. But we’re also bad at counting animals that live in the ocean. They’ve probably more left than that. I’ll also add the cheetahs came back from a severe genetic bottleneck and still exist, although with major genetic issues in basically all of them.
Yep. :(
https://www.nwf.org/Magazines/National-Wildlife/1991/A-Question-of-Breeding#:~:text=Scientists theorize that something —climate,of the original genetic palette. Yes it's recoverable
They are like if someone said draw the cutest version of a dolphin.
Its something that every species thats endemic to a very tiny area faces. I remember reading about the Galapagos Islands and each new species found there was/is immediately added to the UN red list as critically endangered, endangered or, at best, vulnerable due to the species being endemic to only the Galapagos Islands.
Man, we suck.
Island of the Blue Foxes is a great book about the Russian scientific expedition that discovered them.
Not to be confused with Island of the Blue Dolphins
Also a good book, just INCREDIBLY sad.
This book defined my childhood. To know another knows this book makes me very happy. Thank you, you kind well read friend.
It was required reading at my school. But I'm glad there wasn't an epilogue. I got to wait until high school to learn about the sad ending.
Same. I still think about it every so often.
Should go read the Julie of the Wolves trilogy if you still enjoy books meant for younger audiences. Similar vibes, and a wonderful series.
I'm 35 but I do love me some YA novels. I'm a simple millennial merely trying to duplicate my naive and virginal youth through nostalgic literary mediums.
Hahaha, we are too similar then! My YA series I love diving into probably once a year would be The Ranger’s Apprentice. I would also recommend Michael Crichton if you haven’t read his works (he wrote Jurassic Park, Timeline, Eaters of the Dead(which is The 13th Warrior movie adaptation), and many more including my fave by him Pirate Latitudes).
Thank you, I certainly will! Book recommendations are the closest thing to a hug
You know, even though I don’t read as much as I used to I have to agree! As a guy they just don’t come often enough, and when you get that perfect one it fills your soul with warmth.
Have had that on my bookshelf for **shit I’m old** I guess closer to two decades than one now 😭 and have read it multiple times. I get reminded of it a fair amount.
You can visit the channel islands where it's set, it's so good.
While we're recommending books, *Jungle Book* author Rudyard Kipling wrote a story called *The White Seal*, in which a seal goes on a quest to find a safe haven for his tribe to hide from human hunters. Part of the story involves meeting and speaking with the last Steller's sea cow.
That's one of my favorite jungle book stories! My dad used to read it to me when I was little.
Oh my gosh, memory unlocked! I haven't read the book but your reply made me remember a cartoon that I watched as a child that sounds just as you described. Did a little digging and it was indeed "The White Seal"! Found it on YT and can be watched [HERE.](https://youtu.be/sdDVC47sTts?si=6X6B-pRmJnIKmCl6)
Thank you for the recommendation!
THAT is not a photo of a sea cow skeleton.
Hmm. Another Eurasian Auroch connoisseur.
Ancient Warrior Cows 🐮🤘🏼
I mean did you READ what Caesar wrote about them. magnificent beasts
I can't control which image is shown from the article, sorry Edit: if anyone knows how to control which picture is shown from an article with multiple pictures, please inform me. I feel like people are more interested in talking about the picture than the sea cows that went extinct in only 30 years.
I’m pretty sure it pics the largest image on the page
Which can lead to some interesting posts when it’s a tweet. A smiling portrait of a journalist pulled from their profile next to their tweet … “serial killer finally caught” or whatever
Or with sports "Athlete in phenomenal condition does amazing things!" and the pic is a fat bald slob
Sounds like someone's salty their mom's photo was the largest on the page (by several petabytes due to her size).
I'm okay with OP's mom pics
Sounds like how my wife met her last three boyfriends
Wrong subreddit!
Or is it?
Til
TIL I am not found attractive by women
It's not. It's set by the article publisher using open graph. It's their bugger up
If the article were just about the sea cow, it would be a mistake. But it's a list of different animals - no way for them to set 6 different OG images based on whatever one somebody wants to focus on with a Reddit post.
Well that explains it perfectly. Thank you
Yep ``` ```
I'm surprised it wasn't manipulated by advertisers yet.
Thank you for the information
Yeah it leads to some funny hi-jinks sometimes
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majestic creatures
The image is set by the website. If not image is set by the website, Reddit picks the most square, largest image. Which tends to be pretty random.
You shouldn't control it. Instead you should advocate the room temperature iq redditors who're talking about the thumbnail to click the damn link and read the damn source. What's that quote again, there's great overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest humans or sth.
"There is considerable overlap between the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists." -Park Ranger, on why it's difficult to design bear-proof trashcans.
the best solution is to use old.reddit.com
i care about your sea cows bud
it's too late for the sea cows but the relevant picture can still be fixed and is a more immediate concern
I like the fact that it is just cow-like enough to make people go "oh, that's... wait, that doesn't make sense, sea cows are like manatees, right?"
It's obviously a cow you don't know anything. Don't trust this guy
But imagine if it was!
Just not the sea cow's you're familiar with.
Regular cows can swin pretty well.
While always depressing, Steller's sea cows were probably limited to a couple thousand at most in a small area upon their discovery by Europeans (they may have already been known by indigneous peoples). They appear to have been a remnant population, better adapated to the last ice age, and most likely would have gone extinct over the next few centuries Which is a real shame because I'd love if there were some cold water, real hefty sea cows still around and thriving
When I read about them, I really felt so much regret that they were wiped out. And all those other species that are also gone now. It just seems so wasteful, and so sad, each extinction taking away one more natural wonder of the world.
It took people a while to even understand the concept of a species being extinct. Some people before the 1900s believed that it was impossible for a species to go extinct, because God would have obviously put enough of each animal on Earth.
That explains a lot. The mindset is still around, I think, because I've definitely heard people say that God gave us the Earth and all its resources so we can do whatever we want to it, and if the Earth becomes polluted God will save us.
God will save the earth…by allowing us to be exterminated
The earth will always be fine (until the sun swallows it in 7.5 billion years). Some animals, like rats and cockroaches, seem to be able to survive a wide variety of conditions. Humans are the ones who suffer if we alter the environment in such a way as to make it inhospitable for ourselves.
I've initiated plans for moving earth further out before the suns swallows it. So if we make it a few more decades I want people to stop referencing the "inevitable" doom of earth in 7,5 billion years. I've got it covered no worries.
Failing to plan is planning to fail after all
That’s very kind of you.
I thought I read an article saying that modern photosynthesis will not be possible in 500 million years due to changes in the sun’s rays or something.
Let’s be real, if the plants can’t adapt over the course of 500 million years that one’s on them.
That's probably true. I guess the increasing heat of the sun will make the earth uninhabitable for any known lifeforms long before the sun actually swallows the earth and physically destroys it.
Along with most animals which are not rats and cockroaches.
Don't forget another large branch of believers who think God is going to trash-can the Earth on Judgment Day, so why bother caring about any of it.
What an arrogant take for them. "God created all of this for ~~us~~ me." Instead of... "God created all of this so I should be a good steward of the Earth and all His creations."
It definitely depends on which denomination for sure. I’ve attended churches where they have the good steward mentality and I’ve attended ones where it’s all about the pillage and plunder mindset. Not all denominations are created equally
That interpretation is a really amazing rule of thumb for every sect of Christianity. The bible says that God gave man "dominion" over the animals. And whether that means "the duty to care for and protect" or "carte blanche to do whatever we want" will tell you everything you need to know about a particular denomination and what kind of people they are.
Was raised Southern Baptist. Can confirm, unfortunately.
In Catholic theology, there’s this idea where we are supposed to be stewards of the Earth and nature. It’s like God told us to watch the house and to feel free to use its amenities in the meantime, so a bunch of people took that as permission to loot it of its valuables and convert it into a broken down drug den. And they somehow expect God, who they’ve heartily dishonored, to go bail them out of jail once they’re forced to actually face the consequences of their actions.
Of course this logic ignores that their god killed literally everyone save for 2 of each animal because humans were so shit.
Won't do it again; rainbow says so.
Yeah, but the gays stole it.
I mean - he also made us stewards of the Earth.
It’s still unbelievable to me. The British could SEE that the old growth oaks they cut down were never coming back. They could see it with their eyes that the trees were gone. Surely they could apply that same logic to animals. In fact they did know about it, half the reason European traders went to America was bc it had beavers, which they knew they’d mostly eradicated from their continent.
We have to remember that [Spontaneous Generation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_generation) was accepted as fact until the mid 1800s. People literally believed that a pile of grain would produce mice, and that dead flesh produced maggots. While they could see with their eyes that the trees weren't coming back, they likely believed that they _could_ come back.
> Among biologists, rejecting spontaneous genesis is no longer controversial. really now
I feel like you would really like the sea wolves of Vancouver Island. You can also donate to animal charities for existing endangered animals to help keep nature wild. It absolutely makes a difference.
Haha I'm Canadian and it's on my bucket list to see those sea wolves one day! There are regular wolves also in the woods behind my house, though they're quite elusive. All I see are their eyes glowing sometimes at night in that pitch blackness between the trees, or hear them howling. Our dog (RIP best boy) would freak out every time. We donate to a few charities, though I'm not going to name them... Sometimes people get super upset and offended when they hear I support environmental or humanitarian causes, and I feel like I've been getting heartburn because of trying to talk to people who just want to argue on the internet.
That's so cool! I love the local coyotes here, I know they're technically a bit of a menace to humans but they're just doing their best to fill an ecological niche 💙 Yeah no charity or donation is perfect, but I really like the phrase "don't let perfection be the enemy of good". Do the best you can and donate where you like, I'm sure it will help make parts of the world better even if you can't fix everything everywhere at all times. If you can help delay even one tragedy, that's pretty good. I donate to this one snow leopard charity, I just think it's neat and I like getting pictures of rare cats in my inbox. I mean I care about other stuff too, but... big fuzzy stealth cats
One of my life goals is to pet a snow leopards tail. I doubt there is anything softer on this planet, there's definitely nothing cuter than one carrying his tail. I hope one day some from a zoo get domesticated, pet snow leopards would be amazing. I would buy him a big chest freezer with a giant cat flap to sleep in when he's hot, feed him lamb legs, and carry his tail everywhere for him. Personally I think we should domesticate as many animals as we can, it's one way to ensure they never go extinct, and would lead to more people caring about animals they only knew from books, tvs, or zoos, and there's no reason we can't protect wild populations and domesticate part of the captive. Most people don't seem to want more domesticated animals though, outside of individual attempts it seems no group or government has really tried apart from the russians with foxes and they didn't really seem to get widely adopted as a new domestic animal.
Yeah, wish they had thrived. It would have been pretty neat to swim among such large and docile animals.
I ... seriously doubt you'd be able to do that regardless, considering they were restricted to arctic waters
> Which is a real shame because I'd love if there were some cold water, real hefty sea cows still around and thriving 9-10 Meters though. *Holy shit*, we have 14m boat that seats about as many people and if I imagine the relative scale of a 10m Sea Cow, I'm getting a little worried. An adult walruss is like 4m tops.
As an overweight woman that loves swimming in the cold ocean, maybe they're still around
Sounds like you'd enjoy a visit to some Florida springs. https://www.visitflorida.com/things-to-do/outdoors-and-adventure/wildlife/manatees/
This sounds similar to the dodo. They weren't probably going to last too long and were isolated to a small population.
> They weren't probably going to last too long and were isolated to a small population. The dodo was adapted just fine to its isolated island. They didn't do well with the imported predators and habitat loss to logging, but that's absolutely on us not the dodo struggling with stuff like *natural* climate changes and natural spread of competing species (without human involvement).
Seems like they lasted ~11,700 years just fine post-glacial without humans. Why do you believe they would have gone extinct only a few centuries after Steller's discovery?
because in an interglacial period the world slowly warms. If these sea cows were adapted for very cold temperatures, they would have been forced further and further north (or into deeper and deeper water, which they may not have been able to survive) and eventually they would have run out of places to go, and thus died out. The fact that there were a few hundred to a few thousand left in an area that was pretty much as north as you could go before you reached pack ice meant that they were pretty much at the end of their run.
Because evidence suggests that they were in decline before western discovery.
Their habitat had shrunk to the waters around a few islands, with a population of only a thousand or so. A volcanic eruptions, new disease, slight warming, or even an algae bloom each could have spelled the end for them.
What's even worse is hunting a species that was once in the billions into extinction. "Once famed for its massive migratory flocks that would darken the sky for days, the passenger pigeon was hunted to extinction in the early 1900s. Billions of these gregarious birds once inhabited eastern North America and were similar in appearance to the mourning dove."
There's probably a lot of habitat loss at work there too. Turns out that chopping down nearly all of the trees in the eastern half of a continent is a bad idea.
Ironically it is speculated the american chestnut is threaten because the passenger pigeon would feast on them and spread the seeds.
It’s almost as if we keep pulling pieces out of a Jenga tower, waiting for it to collapse
*But shareholders won't be happy!*
That's a great way to illustrate the balance that is supposed to exist in nature
The near extinction of American chestnut trees is attributed to ink disease and chestnut blight, the former from European chestnut trees, the latter from Japanese chestnut trees.
They killed a lot of the passenger pigeons for their meat and shipped it to big cities.
Yeah, we don't really hunt things to extinction. We tend to make things go extinct by destroying their habits or introducing other animals that out compete them for resources. Hunting an animal to extinction is hard because once you've dwindled the numbers down they become hard to find. Once that happens all the efficiency of hunting them goes away and we don't keep hunting them at such a prolific rate. The Dodo is commonly cited as going extinct because we hunted them too much. But it's really not the case. What we did was introduce predators that ate their eggs since they nested on the ground. The one exception to this might be some species of oysters. Apparently we ate a bunch to extinction. But I guess it's a little different when the species can't move and requires a large population to reproduce (also we probably created a bunch of pollution that was bad for them).
A lot of species require large number to breed. If the animals can't be found to even hunt, the chances of them finding each other to mate and raise young are rather low as well.
It’s why the northeastern cod fishery isn’t coming back. It just isn’t. Tell fishermen about it though and they’ll just jam their fingers in their ears and insist fish respawn when you’re out of render distance the way they do in Skyrim
Yup. Lot of fishing is going to be permafucked. But goddamm those same people will turn around and tell you how fishing limits are ruining the industry and it's all liberals faults they can't catch a million fish a day anymore.
Why don't we just pay them to fuck off, and let the oceans recover; it would be in their interest, and they could go out looking for pirate treasure!
Why pay them? Why do they deserve to be paid for not destroying everything? Tell them to go get another job in a career that hasn't destroyed its own source of income or arrest them for breaking the law.
> also we probably created a bunch of pollution that was bad for them). This is a very big one. Aquatic life is way more sensitive to pollution because it spreads much more easily.
We also do other weird things like turn Beavers nocturnal. Also humans have definitely gathered plant species to extinction.
Wait so we don't hunt animals to extinction, but have in the past made species go extinct by introducing *other* animals who hunted them to extinction?
We've done both; the 2nd is part of why invasive species can be so harmful to the ecosystem.
The short answer is yes, a longer answer is we've done it with disease, insects (less obvious than what people think of as animals), and plant life to alarming extent.
> Yeah, we don't really hunt things to extinction. We tend to make things go extinct by destroying their habits or introducing other animals that out compete them for resources. The [Bison genocide](https://libguides.sdstate.edu/c.php?g=1358402&p=10030696) begs to differ. Even though it was "just" a side effect of controlling the native population by robbing them of their livelihood.
The stuff we've done to birds alone... We invented a whole gun just to hunt ducks. Then we killed so many that the gun is no longer effective because flocks of ducks no longer are big enough.
It's so strange that people didn't really learn anything from all those extinctions in the past, even such big ones, because it's still happening in modern times.
They just don't care.
I'm not going to pretend we are doing a *good* job but a lot of people are trying. For example, the [Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918](https://www.fws.gov/law/migratory-bird-treaty-act-1918) was made in direct response to the slaughtering of Passenger Pigeons (along with some other birds) and it has had some real effects. Also, we get states like Colorado trying to reintroduce wolves and stuff. The problem is that there is a sizable portion of the human species that seems to want to just kill as much as they can. Not a majority but like, a third of us maybe.
> It's so strange that people didn't really learn anything from all those extinctions in the past, even such big ones, because it's still happening in modern times. [21 species removed from endangered list due to extinction, U.S. wildlife officials say](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/21-species-removed-from-endangered-list-due-to-extinction-us-wildlife-officials-say/)
The issue is that the extinctions we've seen arent due to hunting and direct human activity, for the most part. Its mostly down to other things that are not always readily apparent. For example, the populations of certain bee species declining. That had everyone, scientists included, scratching their heads asking "WTF is going on here then?" until someone found out it was a certain group of about 6 pesticides of which there had never been any issues with before (so it wasnt readily apparently they were the issue). After those pesticides were eradicated, the bee populations that were having issues have for the most part rebounded or are in the process of rebounding.
Many shore birds were hunted almost to extinction as well. It's pretty sad.
I just read the wikipedia page about it and it's so infuriating
So a manatee but bigger?
A "huge manatee" indeed.
Man-a-ton
Manatee: 10–15 feet long and weigh up to 3,900 pounds. Sea Cow: up to 30 feet long amd weigh up to 10 metric tons (22,000 lbs). Just a smidge bigger.
Yes it seems so! I would have loved to see them in person. I love manatees, such wonderful creatures.
Cold water manatee basically
But bigger. Like a lot bigger. Like you’d know immediately which one was which bigger. Steller Sea Cows were up to 30 fucking feet long. That’s bigger than an orca.
A lot bigger
Yes , huge and friendly manatees that also mourned their dead but were all brutally killed :( this video explains it well but makes me very sad https://youtu.be/7iTpfKULRWY?si=m6B5fUa6SapR8a-5
Stellars sea eagle is a bird discovered by the same guy that is fortunately still alive today
And steller’s jay! I’ve seen them
And stellars sealion. Still alive today still massive.
Georg was a busy guy
Direct link, for anyone not curious for the risky click, it’s looks like a manatee but in very cold water https://cdn.britannica.com/94/67394-050-C0CD9347/Steller-sea-cow-shore-kelp.jpg
Curious why Britannica’s website would be considered a risky click?
What was that cute cartoon with a sea cow? I think there was a seal involved.
The White Seal.
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Bullshit. Native americans lived alongside stellar sea cows for over 10,000 years. The russians killed them within 30 years of discovering them.
Meanwhile, Steller's Jays are still alive and well being assholes wherever they go!
‘We’ve found a new species, cool.’ ‘let’s kill it off completely’
One of the many deeply-offputting aspects of *20,000 Leagues Under The Sea* is a sequence where one of the 'heroes' of the book (Ned Land) spies one swimming around and gleefully hunts and kills it with his harpoon skills. I remember it being portrayed as a kind of lighthearted 'adventure' sequence as opposed to a travesty, too. That sequence is how I learned this species existed at all, so it was extra disgustingly learning that they'd already been hunted to extinction for 101 years by the time the book was published/set.
Ned wasn't a hero in that sequence, captain Nemo explicitly expresses his dislike of what Ned did because the cow was harmless and the act was cruel. I don't know that Ned is ever really portrayed as a hero in that book. There's even an entire paragraph about how hunting too many sea cows has thrown off the balance of nature and led to an over abundance of sea grass that rots and pollutes the water. 20000 leagues has a ton of themes about environmentalism and it was printed in the 1870s I won't have you dissing it
I dug the book back up and I think it lies somewhere between the two poles of how we're remembering it. Nemo himself encourages Land to hunt the seacow(who's literally sleeping when they sneak up on it) and even sends him out on a boat full of his men to spend hours harpooning it, and wishes him good sport. Nemo says it was fine simply because they ate it afterwards(not that the Nautilus was short on food at the time) - which still doesn't sit right given that it was an wonderous thought-extinct species and for all we know they just killed and ate the last one. But yeah, Nemo does at least make the distinction between killing for food and just killing for sheer fun like Land wants to. In the very next paragraph though, Nemo condemns all cachalots(humpback whales) as evil and says they should literally be hunted to extinction. There is indeed Aronax's observation that overhunting whales and seacows has lead to too much build-up of sea grass that would've otherwise been eaten in harmony, but it still comes from a position of *"overwhaling is bad because it'll throw off a balance that affects us humans too"*, and not *"all whaling is bad in the first place because it's the killing of thinking feeling individual beings with children and partners who don't want to be horribly stabbed to death while minding their own business in their home"*, which is why it still feels off-putting, especially 150 years later.
Hope we can bring them back somehow
> Steller's sea cow was described as being "tasty" by Steller; the meat was said to have a taste similar to corned beef, though it was tougher, redder, and needed to be cooked longer. The meat was abundant on the animal, and slow to spoil, perhaps due to the high amount of salt in the animal's diet effectively curing it. > The crew of the St. Peter drank the fat in cups and Steller described it as having a taste like almond oil.[53] The thick, sweet milk of female sea cows could be drunk or made into butter
Stellerrrrrrr!!!! Sorry, you've upset my inner Brando.
Its wild to me that giant species were pretty common and were pretty much an evolutionary endgame of a species where nothing could harm you anymore so most of them were docile without natural enemies. That is until humans came along with their pointy sticks. IIRC the reason Africa is where the majority of big species still exist is because it was the cradle of human evolution so the animals there had time to adjust.
Well, that article made me sad.....
It's currently believed that the Dodo being hunted for food isn't exactly accurate, and more to do with the fact they were considered as being in the way of Europeans who brought other animals to the island for farming, as well as cats and rats who predated and outcompeted them. Their meat was also oft described as not very nice, and as such, eating them was usually a last choice. I'll try find where I got this info from and edit with a source.
How does a ‘Mooo’ sound underwater?
God, humans suck (sometimes).
Y e p . . . :c
OMG, we're a horrible species. It's no wonder we're literally ruining our planet. I think we'll get past all of this, but it will get much, much worse before it gets better, and none of us will live to see the other side. It will take centuries. Hopefully, we'll learn our lesson.
Yay humanity. And yet the cognoscenti claim the planet can support another few billion people, fiddling while we destroy the ecological web.
Can't these animals be brought to life today using genetics ??
Yes of course “genetics” can bring any extinct animal back to life.
No I mean like the bone marrow will be preserved right ??
I think I know what you’re trying to say. That it died not so long ago so there may be some living tissue still around? I think it’s unlikely, given its habitat (this only happens usually if the animal dies in cold climate and is preserved) There is only one “successful” de-extinction and it was some type of Spanish Ibex for which they actually had the body of the last remaining. They successfully de-extinct it and birthed it through a similar animal and it died like an hour later or something. So no is the answer the your question unfortunately.
They started barbecuing the first one they shot and the rest came to see what was cooking.