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60,000 Antelope Died In 4 Days, and No One Knows Why
An anonymous reader writes: The Saiga antelope has been hunted to near extinction. They've been put on the endangered species list, and they play a vital role in the ecosystems around Russia, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan, where their grazing helps get rid of fallen plant matter, which is prevented from decomposing by the cold temperatures. But earlier this year, a huge die-off hit the Saiga antelope herd in Kazakhstan, felling over 120,000 of them in a few short weeks. Scientists say an entire group of 60,000 died within a four-day span. The cause of this die-off is still a mystery. The researchers suspect some sort of bacteria, and early on pointed to Pasteurella strains. But those bacteria don't usually cause this much damage unless something else has weakened the antelope. "There is nothing so special about it. The question is why it developed so rapidly and spread to all the animals," one researcher said. They're looking into environmental factors, but nothing else seems too far out of the ordinary.
... that buck stopped there.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
The remaining few will have an evolutionary advantage over whatever kill the rest of them. Until a dumb ass human shoots them, that is, to put "the rarest specimens" up on his wall and brag about it.
This is how The Pronking Dead starts, you know.
...a pandemic to cull the human herd too.
I think if 4 billion humans dropped dead next week, we'd all be better off long-term. We're probably overdue for something like this anyway, given how little genetic diversity humans have.
Y'know... unless you're one of the 4 billion that was killed off...
By the sounds of it the "genetic diversity" between your parents wasn't much to talk about either.
Who will be the next victims of our inaction? Gnus?
I don't see how global warming could lead to the extinction of Free Software Foundation.
These deer were actually God's chosen people, and have been raptured. We all have to live through the end of days.
It was aliens.
What an ugly sentiment.
Dark Reflection
And you're dead wrong, even if all the cadavers mysteriously and magically turned into basic mineral components and were sprinkled all over the planet (instead of rotting wherever they dropped dead, contaminating air and water with diseases durably over the following weeks).
An 8 billion human population is overall better for mankind and also arguably for the planet, than just 1 billion.
Long-term, a forcibly reduced population would mean a lot less human capital (which is our true ultimate cap for progress potential), and a lot less competition for the same environmental resources, incentivizing a higher waste of these resources. Also, we'd be losing a lot of diversity, setting us back evolutionarily, and we'd just end up with more numerous but less adaptively fit individuals. This effect is well known and observed in all kinds of living organism populations, from bacteria to complex, social animals.
Oh and, if you'd honestly believe killing people is ultimately doing people a service, you'd have started killing already. Or are you just a cowardly homicidal hypocrite ?
Maybe we deserve this world ?
The next victims will likely include ourselves. As for the dolphins, as the most intelligent species of the world, they will find a way out.
Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
While lauding human potential, you omit cost, which considering how many people with even modertely useful degrees are under or unemployed; you're not getting those sunk costs back. And that is going to get worse as the population climbs.
Regarding diversity, the Idiocracy argument applies, as that diversity is heavily skewed in one direction, which ends up not being diverse at all. It takes more than sheer numbers.
Not advocating for any instance of a Final Solution (god knows no one is wise enough to select for best charecteristics), but this feel good, best of all possible worlds handwaving disregards very real problems the human population will face in the coming generations, and simply putting a smiley face on it insures a bloodbath will follow,
Don't worry, we are doing everything possible to cultivate a bug like this. My money is on a modified version of the bird flu, as easy to catch as a cold, but with the lethality of H5N1 (59%). It's brother H1N1 was the cause of the 1918 pandemic, which only killed between 3 to 5% of it's victims. We are currently creating the ideal environment for this bug to emerge in the chicken CAFOs. I'd bet on China for the point of origin. A million chickens in a big barn, bathing in their own feces, away from the lethal (for the bug) sun rays. Now THAT is bioengineering at its best ...
The troll comments posted here so far just show how ignorant Slashdotters are about wildlife and environment, in general.
Many extinct species would beg to differ.
http://news.discovery.com/anim...
I don't know why some people think that population reduction can only occur through mass-murder/pandemic. People can have less babies you know.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
An 8 billion human population is overall better for mankind and also arguably for the planet, than just 1 billion.
[citation needed], and also false dichotomy. With current practices, the Earth is provably over its carrying capacity. We have the technology to fix the problems, but do we have the will? Film at eleven.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
We warned you about global warming, and you didn't listen. Who will be the next victims of our inaction? Dolphins? Housecats? Gnus?
How about we warn the dolphins, then wait until after the housecats then start doing something?
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
It's hardly a matter of one political bend or another - I just had Jehova's Witnesses on my porch trying to tell about the world that is to come, and how only the really good people will be in it (making for a much smaller population, they emphasized) and God's going to clean everything up...
But you'll see it as a trope in fiction of all stripes. There's some terrible disaster, and mankind re-emerges into a form that somehow fits the political biases of the author. A lot of people imagine that being in horrible circumstances like that, fighting for survival with less technology and an awful lot fewer people would make for a simpler, more real world and yearn for it.
Not that long ago, here on Slashdot, a bunch of people were explaining to me that in such a world, as a woman, I would go back into my biologically ordained role of reproductive servitude, which struck me as saying a lot more about their preoccupations, I thought, than anything else, but then people always seem to project their fantasies into these scenarios. (Especially since I'd already mentioned that I was in my forties, as well as being a martial artist and martial arts instructor and having an awful lot of skills useful in such a society.)
People have been claiming we were hitting peak population since we hit 1 billion. Improved technology has prevented true overpopulation from happening. Those places with an actual growing population will either die out, or figure out a way to deal with it.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Many extinct species would beg to differ.
How can they do that? They're extinct.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Or you could not go full retard and try to drag politics into this.
The data is all available at census.gov, you can look at it yourself. The population of the US is growing by less than 1%, and all the growth is due to immigration (illegal and legal). This isn't a political statement, stop trying to drag politics into it.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
China has a negative population growth rate now.
India's population growth rate is slightly positive, but decreasing steadily. They should be negative growth in another decade or three.
Africa is a whole 'nuther issue. Of course, what Europe, North America, China, and India have in common is increasing standard of living. - maybe that would work for Africa too....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I wouldn't know. My answer to the future would be O'Neill Cylinders. That would solve the future population problems.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Education, particularly of women. There's a good talk (TED, I think) about how Bangladesh had tried all kinds of ways to reduce it's world-leading birth rate. None of them really worked. Then there was an unconnected program to send girls to school, and the birth rate fell through the floor.
By the way, the population growth rate of India has been declining since the 80s (and is currently less than the US in the 90s), and China's is currently less than the US. The world population growth rate is also in decline, and is currently less than the US in the 90s.
The current explanation, pins this on the Acacia Tree and this only happens when the antelope population is too large.
I couldn't find full articles that weren't behind paywalls, so this will have to do as reference: http://arthurmag.com/2010/01/0...
Jumpstart the tartan drive.