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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.
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
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 ...
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
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.)
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"
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.