Indeed, the problem appears to be fewer mammals.
All of your cute n cuddly favorites, from the super intelligent dolphins, to bulky, lovable whales, to apes and cats and hyraxes are dying off in a horrible evolutionary cataclysm, termed an
“extinction crisis” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
“Within our lifetime, hundreds of species could be lost as a result of our own actions,” said Julia Marton-Lefèvre, the director general of the I.U.C.N., a network of campaign groups, governments, scientists and other experts.
The group’s annual
Red List just came out, and it includes at least of quarter of all of earth’s mammals. That. Blows. So. Much. In only slightly less depressing news, a third of the planet’s amphibians are also in the crapper. While I’d like to believe otherwise, I have the feeling that the
Chevy Volt is not going to solve this problem all by itself. And as Dose readers know, my enduring raison d’etre is the hope that, somewhere in the Yangtze, the
Baiji lives.
Meanwhile, some “leading geneticist” says that
human evolution is breaking down because men aren’t waiting until they’re old to have kids, because old men’s sperm is more unstable and therefore more likely to contain the mutations that power the evolutionary process. Oh, that and now you can be a
total moron and yet manage not be killed off by nature before procreating.
As if we didn’t have enough to worry about what with our mammal problems.
(more…)
