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New Estimate Suggests 5.5M Species On Earth, Not 30-100M
An anonymous reader writes "How many species share our planet? According to a recalculation by an international research team, the number is significantly lower than we thought — only around 5.5 million."
Actually, being tasty to humans is one of the most advantageous adaptations a species can have. Well, either the best or the worst, depending on if we raise them or unsustainably collect them from the wild until the population collapses. You don't see cows or chickens or apples or oranges in any danger any time soon, but then again, things have been eaten to extinction. I don't think it's too bad of an idea to, where possible, try to introduce cultivated or farmed endangered species into the food supply. Preservation through consumption.
The notion of interbreeding as the sole definition of species is simply wrong. Even where fertile hybrids are produced, as with brown bears and polar bears, it's still not enough to warrant declaring them the same species. There are a number of factors that go into determining when two populations are members of the same species or not, and producing fertile and fit offspring is only one of them.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Smallpox.
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