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White Dolphin Functionally Extict
An anonymous reader writes "For the first time in nearly fifty years another mammal, specifically an aquatic mammal, has gone extinct. In this case, it was the white dolphin, also known as the Baiji, which used to live in the Yangtze River in China. The dolphin had been known to exist for the last 20 million years."
Makes me feel bad about the tuna sandwiches I had for dinner last night.
I, for one, morn the loss of our potential aquatic overlords.
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If you feel like it, mail the url, and where ya came from to pater@slashdot.org.
But really, the best way to bring them back is to make them profitable. So... the answer is a "swim with the white dolphins" exhibit in China. Then, if the place can sell the swim with the dolphin experience for 200 bucks, people will start breeding and stop killing white dolphins!!
Perfect!
How did they taste?
Hindsight in 20-20 indeed. Maybe now governments will get the idea that if you want to protect a species, you actually have to protect it. Just sitting arond and holding press conferences and askind advisors endlessly will not solve a single thing. This crap needs to change, and soon.
.-.
Don't kid yourself. If a white dolphin ever got the chance he'd eat you and everyone you care about.
I know they're not really equivalent, but it's still funny to see this right above "New Zealand's First Land Mammal Discovered".
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
- Last Chance to See
, which is really an amazing book for those of you who haven't read it. The sadness of this situation will no doubt be marred by countless slashdot posts by the rabid anti-environmental right who tend to post on these sorts of stories.That's not true...We take the Lexus to the environmental rally on Sundays, Saturday is Hummer day.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
Where did you learn Math? Verizon? Anyway, we should care because we are directly responsible for their extinction, not mother nature.
Jonathanjk.com
it sucks that they're gone, but times change and evolution is cruel mistress. they should have grown opposable thumbs 20000 years ago and stopped our ancestors from inventing the plow then maybe they would have stood a chance.
lose != loose
and thanks for all the fish!
Best Slashdot Co
No, "near" or "almost" implies that there is still a chance to bring them back. In this case, the gene pool is aparently too small to do that. That's what "functionally extinct" means.
Delay is preferable to error. (Thomas Jefferson)
They called him Fripper, Fripper ...
Because this extinction can be directly traced to human interference. Because the animal was part of an ecosystem that has now been diminished, and human interference therefore harmed the entire ecosystem. Because diminished ecosystems are less resistant to new predators and diseases. Because diminished ecosystems have a point of no return at which they completely collapse, even if other species are still present.
Most importantly though, because the planet just got a little less interesting and wondrous.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Those of you referencing HHGTTG are off a bit....
Douglas Adams wrote "Last Chance to See...", with naturalist Mark Carwardine, and one of the endangered species they sought out was....
The Baiji river dolphin.
And now, the last chance has passed. I miss Mr. Adams, but I'm glad he didn't have to see it.
- j
fuckin' unelected lying Chimp
He and the GLOBAL WARMING DENIERS killed the white dolphin
it probably drowned because all the ice on the Yangtzee thawed thanks to Halliburton.
All you stupid Christian idiots probably think Osama bin Laden did it.
Even though there is NO connection between 911 and white dolphins!
Because maybe one of those extinct species was good at statistics.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
My question is, is anyone preserving DNA samples from the existing specimens? Maybe another 20 years it will be feasible to produce clones of the species. I'm not saying try and repopulate the species into the wild, though that could be an option, but rather perhaps just for preservation in a zoo or similar habitat. Whether or not this actually happens in the future, we'd need to start thinking about gathering and preserving the DNA samples now. If we hurry, it may not even be too late to come up with 20 to 25 unique sets to match the number the article suggests is the minimum number of dolphins needed to even hope for a resurgence of the species.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Any species that consumes without taking responsibility for the survival of the communities it consumes, and thereby destroys them, is suicidal. This was a main point in Derrick Jensen's book "Endgame":
Endgame
a couple quick excerpts relating to these dolphins:
Premise Six: Civilization is not redeemable. This culture will not undergo any sort of voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living. If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will continue to immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it (civilization, and probably the planet) collapses. The effects of this degradation will continue to harm humans and nonhumans for a very long time.
Premise Ten: The culture as a whole and most of its members are insane. The culture is driven by a death urge, an urge to destroy life.
Premise Fourteen: From birth on - and probably from conception, but I'm not sure how I'd make the case - we are individually and collectively enculturated to hate life, hate the natural world, hate the wild, hate wild animals, hate women, hate children, hate our bodies, hate and fear our emotions, hate ourselves. If we did not hate the world, we could not allow it to be destroyed before our eyes. If we did not hate ourselves, we could not allow our homes - and our bodies - to be poisoned.
Premise Nineteen: The culture's problem lies above all in the belief that controlling and abusing the natural world is justifiable.
Chinese river dolphins (of both the pink and white variety) are covered in a lesser-known but extremely good book by Douglas Adams called "Last Chance to See", which covers a variety of endangered species.
I love how the publicity for the dolphins led to a media circus that resulted in them actually being considered a delicacy in the area.
Choice quotes from the book here: Douglas Adams: Last Chance to See Quotes
If you're half as beautiful naked, you'd be 4 times as beautiful with twice as many clothes on.
I agree. In the book he gives a poiniant description of the environment of the Baiji. Due to heavy traffic the river itself contains constant mechanical noise. For a creature that uses sonar to see and move life in white noise is blindness. He compared it sleshwere eloquently to spending your life in a snowstorm able to see but seeing nothing.
As much as people may want to celebrate this, or at least gloat, about the weak dying off and this being part of the "natural cycle" I say that's just a bit sick and way too short sighted.
I'm an environmentalist for many reasons chief among them is that I'm selfish. No matter how much we may like to hide in our offices we depend, completely depend, upon the life on the earth around us. Between Dolphins dying in the Yangtse, to the sheer number of ocean species that will die as the ice retreats the web we depend on is, strand by strand, being cut. Sitting around and saying "I told you so" to each other will do no good. Either we all (all animals) survive or we don't but resorting to simple stories gets us nowhere.
Find one (nouveau New Zealand mammal), lose one (Chinese White Dolphin). It evens out, no? :: Goes and votes Republican ::
I kid, I kid.
Humans are natural, hence they are part of natural selection. This false dichotomy between nature and man is, frankly, just so much hippie bullshit.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
"First they came for the white dolphin, but I didn't say a word because I'm not a white dolphin..."
So say we all
Like the any grammar nazi here, a geography nazi would bring up this:
Can we please call the river by its true name: the Long River?
This mistake of taking the name of a small part of the river (Yangtze) and using that name for the whole river has been compounded by nearly every English-language atlas and reference book. But it's still wrong.
At least we use the proper names of the Yellow River and Pearl River in China. And some people even call the Amur River the Black Dragon River (Heilongjiang).
20 Million Years.
Repeat after me: Twenty Million Years
Yeah, they just happened to have been naturally selected for extinction now, nevermind that we KNOW exactly what the cause of their decline has been, and that we KNOW it is because of OUR artificial impact on their natural environment.
You couldn't have picked a worse place or time to pull that steaming pile of shit out.
No Comment.
Huh? Humans are animals. Animals killing off other animals is the quintessential example of natural selection.
Furthermore, natural selection doesn't care about what's "natural" or not. Bears, fishing boats, or meteors - it's all just 'death'.
Whoo, signature!
DesireCampbell.com
I /thought/ my tuna sandwich tasted different today.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
yes very correct. But in the grand scheme of things, we're more likely to be classified as a 'parasite' on the planet since 'modern' civilizations haven't been able to live in harmony with the environment we occupy.
*Successful* parasites don't kill the host...we on the other hand are doing are best to kill the earth, our 'host'.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
yes, 99.9% of all species have gone extinct before mankind came around. but it matters when a creature goes extinct not because of meteors, or climate change, or volcanoes, or what not
but because of us
it's about responsibility and accountability. us humans are powerful enough now that we are responsible for this globe. we have have our hand on the global thermostat, we have our hands around the necks of thousands of species. and we can do pretty much whatever we want to
hear that?: we can do pretty much whatever we want to
and some of us choose to actually care about what we do to this globe
i know you don't care, but the fact that you don't care does not move those of us who do care
and our agenda and our concerns will not be blocked or pushed around by the likes of you
if you had an agenda of your own, that would be another thing. we could bargain
but you don't have an agenda. you just don't care what meltdowns or is choked on trash or is paved over with a parking lot. you simply don't care
fine. hurray for you
but don't assume that therefore your opinion matters to those of us who do care about the fate of our ecosystems
you simply don't matter. you are inert. you are a loud ignorant voice
and you are ignored
but keep up with the trolling anyways, everyone needs comic relief
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I won't believe the white dolphins are dying until Netcraft confirms it.
What makes you think that we homo sapiens fall into the "fittest" category in this case?
What makes you think we've got a better shot at making "the cut" than trees, grass, rats, corn, ants, plankton, robins, mushrooms, or (the perennial favorite) cockroaches?
If your answer is "because we're intelligent", ask yourself why the dolphins died out before the insects in this particular area. For as awesome as we are, we're not nearly as well-equipped to battle extinction by environment change as we'd like to think.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Sometimes stuff dies.
/. where software monoculture is almost universally agreed is a Bad Thing(r).
y Id=6299480
Marginalizing an important issue like biodiversity is fun isn't it?
This is
It stands to reason a biologic monoculture carries with it even more dire consequences than software. Our best interests are served to ensure there are as many species as possible walking/crawling/swimming around.
Let me give you an example. Bees. The American commercial bee population is a monoculture. In California the central valley bee population has been decimated by a disease that the bee keepers can no longer control. Guess what? No tree nut harvest. How about the other plants that bees pollinate? http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?stor
Now, what happens when it's cows or corn? Rice? Wheat? Please re-examine this belief carefully and mod parent down.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
And yet the only species in the entire world that gives a damn about preserving other species is human beings.
OK, so it's natural selection.
The problem is this: We can pick our actions. We cannot pick their consequences.
Anyone who thinks humans can't have an impact on the environment have their heads so far up their butts that the lump in their throat is their nose.
Our actions or lack of actions do have consequences, and we do have to live with those consequences.
I have no idea what the consequence of this species being lost will be, but I guarantee there will be consequences, and doubt very highly that they will be positive and produce a net gain in the world.
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Saturday is Hummer day.
I wish.
Oh, you meant the car. Sorry.
Well, if it came down to it, yeah. That would happen. It would mean _many_ generations of bad blood, but eventually the population could spread, diversify, and get back up to a better selection pool of genes. A species can recover from such a catastrophe (it's theorized to have happened with cheetahs), but it's a long, difficult process that may just as easily end up with extinction.
I don't know about you, but my servers run on the power of cotton candy and happy thoughts. -Anonymous Coward
The difference between man and the "natural world" is poetic, not scientific. It is a romantic view, and it is irrational. We view nature as everything other than what we have created. Whenever we talk about nature, it is usually associated with the good and man is associated with the bad. However, when speaking of a scientific phenomenon such as natural selection it is stupid to separate man and nature. We are part of the ecosystem just like every other animal. The "destruction of nature" IMO is only dangerous as far as it affects us. The world is a cruel and harsh place, with or without humans. Extinction happens. Life on Earth was here long before we emerged, and it will be here long after we are gone.
The earth is 'alive' at least in comparison to say...Mars.
Feel free to go live there...
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
oh yea, and what's natural is good right? Like rape and murder? Thanks dr.Morality, you have staightened me right out!
20 Million Years.
Well that was plenty of enough time to evolve into something that can develop an industrial civilization and subjugate all other sentient beings.
If they didn't want to go extinct they could have spent all that time developing their own space program and left.
Or nuclear weapons depending if they were not in a "good mood" kind of species.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I have to give credit where credit is due, though. The stupidity of all the organizations - from Greenpeace to the Chinese Government - that could have made a difference but chose not to make a difference that mattered is not the mundane stupidity we see in everyday life. This is a highly trained, highly refined breed of stupidity that only the truly gifted hand-wringer could develop.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
If ALL selection were natural selection, there wouldn't be any point in coining the term 'natural selection' instead you would use the word 'selection'.
Well, the "natural" part of "natural selection" is supposed to mean that it isn't purposefully chosen. It's meant to run parallel but contrast with the breeding of animals for specific purposes.
It's the dolphin bits that give tuna that great taste.
The bubble-era vision of a Utopian ocean is dented and dirty...The white dolphin has collided with the olive tree, and its crumpled hulk spins in a ditch as the orchard smolders.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
TFA calls the Baiji "functionally extinct" and "effectively extinct" is there some sort of "non-functioning extinction" or "ineffective extinction"? They're either extinct, or not extinct (with a possible "believed to be extinct" and maybe even "extinct in the wild") why must people muddy things up with unnecessary qualifiers that add nothing to the facts?
As for this issue, let's stick to morality, since this is a moral issue.
Um, just to clarify a few things, please lay out your moral framework, as it relates to which living creatures it's OK to kill, and by what means. If it's a moral issue, that should be very simple for you to describe, since surely you're not basing that notion on any mixed premises or anything.
Are you a vegan? And if so, what steps are you taking to make sure that a particular sub-species of earthworm that lives only in a little valley where thin, pale-looking organic farmers use ox-drawn iron-age plows to greenly raise the plants from which your Thanksgiving tofurkey was molded are all cut to ribbons in the process? You could be partly responsible for wormicide.
Or, do your moral considerations vary as a function of animal cuteness or whether or not it was portrayed as good or evil in Narnia?
I hate to see anything extinct, and wish that Giant Cave Bears still existed to eat granola-crunching naturalists that talk to trees on a first name basis, but you'd better be careful about the distinction between "dumb" and "immoral." Because once you cast the damage or support done to/for a particular species in moral terms, you're into some deep water. That is, if you have any intellectual honesty whatsoever.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Why is it - knowing that the dolphin probably bailed out - I'm suddenly looking up in the sky wondering if a large fleet of construction ships will soon be overheard in preparation to create an interstellar bypass?
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
by your same logic, if i murder you, it's a natural act
so therefore, i should not be held accountable, right?
accountability and responsibility: what do those concepts mean to you?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Modern Extinctions
This is certainly not a complete list, but there are plenty of species listed as going extinct after 1956.
I say we focus on those instead of crying over what is essentially a sad but unimportant story.
Did it occur to you that bee monoculture was a problem until you read that story? Yeah, me neither. See that's the problem. If we could tell which species and ecosystems were important to protect, I'd be right behind you: "pay attention to the ones that matter, and who gives a fuck about the rest?!?!"
But the problem is, we don't know what the hell we're doing. We don't know what species are important, what environmental variables do what, and we generally don't find out until things have gotten out of hand and shit like entire species have been destroyed. You can find innumerable examples where a seemingly insignificant change in an environment caused some fairly significant and harmful cascade.
Because we don't understand exactly how ecosystems work yet, we're limited to leaving them mostly alone and keeping them the way they are, because as every programmer knows, getting excited and trying to fiddle with a system you don't understand frequently leads to a crash. And unlike on a computer, we can't just reboot the planet.
If this species was not an integral part of our environment, then why all the fuss about its death?
1. I'm not here to teach you basic biology. Shame on you if you graduated high school without a basic understanding of the food chain.
2. Humans are creating biologic monoculture.
A pandemic WILL come along and without biodiversity we're all dead.
These are historical facts that cannot be argued away.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
buzzkills with a diminished sense of humor, like yourself.
damaged by dogma
Alongside the search for the Baiji, the scientists surveyed also the population of the endemic Yangtze Finless Porpoise, and the total was less than 400. The situation of the finless propoise is just like that of the baiji 20 years ago, sais Wang Ding, deputy director of the Institute of Hydrobiology Wuhan. Their numbers are declining at an alarming rate. If we do not act soon they will become a second Baiji, said Wang Ding, deputy director of the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Science in Wuhan
http://www.baiji.org/expeditions/1/overview.html
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
Agent Smith? Is that you?
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
*Successful* parasites don't kill the host...we on the other hand are doing are best to kill the earth, our 'host'.
I have yet to see a parasite anywhere that gives a rats ass about its host. For that matter, I've never seen any animal care about its effect on the environment. So, say what you will about man, but we are the only species on the planet that cares for other species (pets, PETA, conservation organizations and so on), recognizes its own impact on the environment and tries to do something about it (futile or not). So before you go "man-bashing", tell me of any other creature anywhere that would take a single step to save another species from extinction.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I figure that we could handle environmental changes far better than most species. First of all, we have considerable intelligence and tools that extend our "natural" adaptability. Second, how many other animals can thrive on 6 of the 7 continents (or all 7 if you let people use tools)? Third, we can eat a fairly varied diet, so our survival isn't dependent on any specific prey. Fourth, our population is enormous compared to the minimum number needed to sustain the species (i.e. not enter an extinction spiral/cascade). If 5 billion of us were to instantly just fall over dead, the human species still wouldn't be threatened with extinction. Of course, a significant climate change probably would kill a bunch of people, and make life kinda suck for the survivors, so it's in our best interest to prevent that from happening. Extinction is probably impossible for humans unless we do something really dumb, like ignite the atmosphere or create some super virus.
I'd believe that if it weren't for the extremely large number of pirates operating in Chinese waters. Assuming said pirates aren't operating with the full knowledge of the Government, of course.
And are pirates operating in the Yangtze river where this species of dolphin lives? Also, my guess is pirates know how to play the game so they don't get caught. I kinda doubt the greenpeace guys, or other environmental groups know how to do this.
the Government is unlikely to have made any serious effort to stop a group that saved said Government from political embarrassment or expense, particularly if said Government could claim credit for any success
If I were a Chinese government official, I might be leary of news travelling around that China couldn't stop the extinction of a species that only exists in China, and had to allow outsiders to do it.
Also, how expensive would it have been for any of these groups to mount a full-fledged captive breeding program? I certainly don't know.
My point is that's it's pretty easy to sit on your easy-chair and be critical of outside groups not stopping this. It's quite a bit different when you consider what it actually might take to do something about it. I have a hard time believing it's a simple movie-plot where they sneak into China, round up some dolphins, then high tail it out, with cute dolphins doing tricks on the ship while the credits role. (Throw in a love story, some personal sacrifice, and someone being left behind, and you've got yourself a summer blockbuster).
AccountKiller
>The problem with fishing was not limited to overfishing - >there are plenty of fish upriver of the dam. The problem >was that the Chinese saw no point in allowing the dolphins >and the fish to be in the same stretch of river.
Plentiful "fish upriver of the dam" is a myth. Do you know how big the Three Rivers dam is and the amount of urban and industrial pollution that continues in its proximity, upstream and downstream?
>The Chinese could - very easily - have moved the dolphins upriver of the dam, getting them out of the way of boats, pollution, etc. The decision not to do so had nothing to do with capability, money, resources, fish, pollution, or any other such problem. The decision not to was based on apathy.
Nothing's free. Transport of dolphins and cetaceans is more difficult then it sounds. The dolphins first have to be tranquilized, I believe. Then the dolphin movers use a special cloth harness, straps and suspension mechanism to keep their weight evenly distributed. You sound like a racist saying it's none of the above reasons but apathy.
>The environmentalists were equally capable of moving the dolphins.
It takes money fool.
And keep in mind that all the other species on earth need us (or another species like us) and our clever monkey brains to figure out how to get off this rock before the sun explodes in a couple billion years. Otherwise all life that we know of will die and the whole entire exercise will have been pointless.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The late Douglas Adams (along with Mark Carwardine) wrote a book titled Last Chance to See about a number of animals on the brink of extinction. The chapter Blind Panic was all about the baiji dolphin's predicament. Practically blind, the baiji dolphin relied sonar to navigate the Yangtze river - the trouble is that the Yangtze is really busy and hence noisy and polluted. The baiji didn't stand a chance, though from the book it seemed that the Chinese did put a lot of effort into trying to save them.
Scott
The only animals that matter are the cow, the pig, and the chicken. They'll never go extinct from environmental factors because we humans have taken over their care and feeding (and eating.)
There may be a moral argument for keeping a species from extinction, but there's usually a financial argument for killing just one more. Every time a poacher kills an Elephant, his family gets to eat, or he gets to buy a new car. There will always be people for which finance trumps morals. The rain forests aren't being cleared because people hate trees, it's because they need more room for cows, pigs, and chickens.
Personally, I'm sad to see another species go extinct, but in reality, it will have no impact on my life that there are no more white dolphins in China.
I, for one, welcome our new natural overlords. I would certainly advocate razing (and recycling the steel) when these buildings wear out and replacing them with earthen buildings. Also wooden buildings should also be supplanted with earthen ones when their time is up. Cob and adobe last way longer, takes way less energy to create the materials (straw, sand and clay) and won't be destroyed by california's wildfires, and if built with a concrete pad in the foundation will also stand up to earthquakes. And I could quit my bullshit cubicle job and go be a cobber or adobe builder. Everybody wins!
Jon
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
I thought cows went happily to their these days, ever since that autistic woman redesigned the slaughterhouses.
See BBC Horizon programme "The Woman Who Thinks Like A Cow"...
No sig today...
I agree this civilisation is going the wrong way, but these premises look very suspicious.
About premise fourteen. First, never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity. Nobody teaches people to hate living things, people don't hate living things and spend their life fulfilling their urge to destroy life. They just don't care most of the time, and if they can improve their own lives while not caring about wildlife, they do it. It's all about gread and short sight. Hate doesn't enter into it.
About premise ten. The culture is not driven by death urge, this would not be profitable. This culture is driven by advertisment induced urge to consume tons of useless shit.
About premise six. I don't know what can be done to change this situation. But people crying to "put halt to it" also rarely do. How do you make billions of people to change their lifestyle overnight? Put all of them in prison? Stick guns to their heads and force them to do what you say for the sake of saving earth? How do you gain more power than corporations/individuals who profit from the current way of life? How do you make people join your cause if they are already living in comfort and don't want to get up from their couch?
The problem with earth, is that earth is commons, and tragedy of commons (see the wikipedia) applies to it. It will always be profitable to overuse/overexploit earth for personal gain, and screw the others. Regulation and government intervention can slow this down, but only a little.
--Coder
No animal intentionally lives in harmony with their environment. The only reason humans are causing a mass extinction rather than any other animal, is because we're considerably more efficient, so much so that we're in a different league entirely to other animals. The reason we're having problems is because of our success as a predator; we have to reign in our power considerably in order to prevent the destruction of the environment around us. Few species are capable of such restraint.