The worst of times, The best of times

Welcome to my assessment of the IUCN Red list of Extinct animals. It's crap. The IUCN decides to set arbitrary rules on what qualifies a species as endangered, critically endangered, or extinct based on flawed surveys, poor statistics, unrealistic models, and a panel of yuppies. For instance, to date the IUCN Red List of extinct animals states that there are 582 extinct terrestrial species on the entire planet. Let's analyze this number. It includes insects and all animal groups. In order for an animal to make the extinct list it must not have been seen or have had a confirmed sighting in 60 years. Although this is the requirement for the IUCN, I checked with mother nature and she told me that the moment there are no more individuals of a species left alive that the species is extinct. The IUCN spends so much time trying to decide if a species is endangered or critically endangered, that the species can go extinct. And by IUCN's standards that species isn't extinct until 60 years after it went extinct or if "the last known individual is known to have died". The IUCN is so amazing, that one of the animals added to the extinct list the year 200o was the Yunnan box turtle, a species that hasn't been seen since 1906 (94 years!). In 2006 the tasman booby was added to the extinct list. The tasman booby was believed to be extinct since the early 1800's! The IUCN page comments that the tasman booby is known from "bones found in aeolian coral sand, from Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands". That's amazing, because there are many species now extinct (or "presumed extinct" according to IUCN) that have been photographed, videotaped, even have tissue samples in cryogenic storage. But oh well. Maybe someday we'll start putting a little more effort into saving a species before it even beomes endangered, rather than lament "presumed" extinction.

Even though the IUCN doesn't claim it, the last seven years of the first millennium show that the new millennium is just as much a conservation failure as the last. Just in December of 2006 the Baiji dolphin (Yangtze river dolphin) has been presumed to be extinct, as every survey conducted within its homerange have shown no individuals, and just in almost a decade earlier in 1997 there were only three individuals of the species reported. IUCN calls the Baiji "the most endangered cetacean in the world". Well Duh. In 2006 the Western Black Rhinoceros has also been presumed extinct (subspecies of Black Rhinoceros, Black Rhinoceros sp. as a whole are classified as Critically Endangered). The Po'ouli went extinct in 2004, being the 14th honeycreeper of Hawaii to go extinct, and the seventh species to go extinct since 1900. More species have possibly gone extinct as well.

The new millennium poses some hope of redemption in this failure. DNA sequencing work has been and is being conducted on Dodo remains and tasmanian tiger specimens. Tissue of the Baiji and the Pyrennean Ibex subspecies are available to attempt ressurection cloning. And perhaps the greatest achievements have been the release of over 200 California Condors into the wild in Arizona, Baja California, and even California itself. At Big Sur California in 2006 a pair of released Condors have exhibited nesting behavior, making the first possible nesting in the region in over 100 years. Condors were spotted eating whale carcasses in Ventura County, a step towards the species becoming self sustaining in the wild, and a chick successfully born in the wild in Ventura County became the first ever chick to fly in the wild in 22 years. The chick is now two years old. For those of you that don't know the last wild condor was captured in 1987 to save the species from extinction via captive breeding program. At the time there were around 27 condors. A decade and a half later the first captive raised chicks would be successfully released. Igor, the last condor to be captured, was re-released into the wild in 2001 after fathering 16 chicks in captivity, and seems to be thriving. His new job is to teach the Condors how to be wild again

Sometimes good news, is actually good....

A new year has come, but it is the seventh year from now that excites me. Why? A common plains Zebra will become sexually mature at age seven or older, and that is good news for a project making progress since 1987. But don't let me get ahead of myself.
There are four kinds of Zebra. Three of them have white and black stripes and look very much like all the Zoo pictures every young child has seen, but one is very different, and also, very dead. The quagga was the fourth Zebra, a subspecies of plains Zebra, that inhabited the Karoo plains of South Africa. When European settlers came to the Karoo plains they brought sheep with them. Grass is sparse, and the quagga was competition for growing sheep farms. Many quagga were killed because of this reason. Many were killed for their meat, as more settlers came to the plains, many were killed for food and the leather industry over seas, and lastly, many were killed for sport on African Safaris. The animal was doomed. Many were brought to Zoos in Europe, and being easy to tame, even were employed in pulling carriages on the streets of London. By 1878, Quaggas in the wild were gone. Not truly realized, because the name quagga was used for all types of zebra. The London Zoo mare was the only specimen to be photographed, five photos were taken, three shown here. The last quagga died at the Amsterdam Zoo in 1883. And the subspecies was extinct.
Many skins of quaggas were mounted, including the last female (far left). These skins show the differences in extremities of the striping on the head, neck, and shoulders.

From skins like these, DNA proved that the quagga was a subspecies. This information led to a great ambitious project. In 1987, plains zebras with less stripes on the legs and flanks were gathered up to breed. A process known as selective back breeding was started. The project is on it's third generation, yeilding the best foals in 2005. And that's why in seven years the prospects are so amazing, because the best foals will be able to breed.
There is some disappointing news though. The project is not breeding Equus quagga quagga, but look alikes. THe original gene pool has to be resurected to be the true species. This can be done, but it would take money, and a neat plan. But with the look alikes already spawned from the original ancestor, a good start for filling the genetic gaps has been established. The future is looking good though, for the quagga to be the first resurected species.

Close, but not gone...

This is the Hawaiian Crow, known in Hawaii as the 'alala, after the cry of a yound child, the sound of its song. The Hawaiin Crow has suffered all of the same devestation of the honeycreepers in this small island community, labeled the bird extinction capitol of the world. The crow, in 2002 had just two individuals in the wild, while some are being bred in captivity. The captive released birds have not survived, but go figure, they're being released into the same environment that is killing them, the environment has to change first congressman. There are 48 individuals in captivity, making it extremely rare, even for a small island bird. If you have anything to pray about in your religion, add this little crow to your prayers, but it needs more now than a miracle....

It's happened sooner than you think in our past...

The honeycreepers are a group of amazing birds, with a large number of species indigenious to Hawaii. These birds are not well known, and neither is their tragedy. Pictured here are a few of the species existing today. In ordrer, they are the Akiapolaau, Akohekohe, Apapane, 'I'iwi, and the KauaiAmakihi. They are splendid birds, and they are growing lonely amond their kind. Why
do I say so? Because 13 species of Hawaiin honeycreeper, are extinct, most in the last 30 years. Disease that came from immigrant mosquitoes delt a horrible death toll on the birds, and habitat loss shredded the world they had evolved to live in, and ferral pigs and mice have decimated them as well. Many factors are against these beauties. Such that all but one of the species below are now extinct.
Nothing but bodies will you see of these poor birds, other than a few saved photographs that were taken when someone actually might have cared. But the saddest of the honeycreeper extinctions is of late. And the honeycreepers show how blind a country can be to its vanishing backyard. The United States has done nothing governmentally for the honeycreepers, which echoes in the story of the Po'o-uli. This bird was only discovered in 1973 on the island of Maui on the Ko'olau reserve. Less then 200 were reported. Disease and habitat loss had taken a severe toll on a species we had no clue of. By 1995 there were five left, possibly seven, and by 1997 only three remained located. One was captured and introduced into the range of another, hoping for mating, but the individual returned to its original range. In 2002 one of the remaining individuals was captured and brought to the San Diego Zoo, in the hopes of establishing a breeding program. The other two, have not been seen since, and given their age, probably never will. The captured individual was old as well, and on November 28, 2004, one year ago next week. The species, is today, labeled extinct. Just one year ago, one more species was gone. Did you hearit die? Do you hear them die? Because they wrack my brain with their screams and death moans of pain, that no one else hears.

And behold, the things we will never see, and yet are not dreams....

There are some things that are not so radically different. Not dinosaurs or mammoths, but animals that look so familiar to the things we see every day, but each with their own charasmatic flair, of things we don't see everyday. And yet, we will never see these things again. What really gets to me is not the older ones, the thylacines and the dodos that I could never have seen given the time of my birth, but the species I never got to see alive, since the day I was born, such as the Dusky seaside sparrow, or the pyrenean goat. It's sad to say that we will never see xerces butterflies, or glimpse passenger pigeons. Think of the elk, or deer, or turkeys, or pigeons. Think of you seeing them, these amazing animals, and then think of your kids never having the chance. This is what has happened to us, in our ignorant lifetimes. Maybe by now, reading this blog, you realize the shithole this world is in. Maybe by now you realize that bad things are happening, and are not stopping. Will you try to stop them? Because I cannot do it alone. And neither can other scientists, writers, and entrepreneurs trying to right now.
It can seem sometimes that it's all Europeans and white people that have destroyed the ecosystems of this world. But the truth is, in places like Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii, Europeans already had a really good start. Why? The polynesians. The polynesians were one of the most devastating cultures to hit the pacific, killing off almost all of the megafauna, and introducing their own domesticated breeds with them as they traveled hundreds of years before any white man ever came to the pacific islands. Among the most magnificent of the tragedies of the polynesians were the moas. Great birds, like an ostrich or an emu, but brown to grey, and shaggy. They had no wings or arm bones left, massive legs, and little heads on long necks. The smallest were a little bigger than a turkey. The largest, when fully extended at the neck, were up to 13 feet tall. That is double the hieght of a tall man. THe last of about eleven species of moa existed just long enough for white men to recount great sightings of the birds, and several mummified carcasses have been found dating 500 years or so old, placing them with the first white comers. but no photos have ever been taken. No mounted specimens in a British museum. Nothing but bones, a few feathers, and stories from an ancient tribe.

History, indeed repeats itself...

This is the Heath Hen, a type of prairie chicken that lived in the Northeastern United states. It gathered every year to mate in leks, a little patch of grass to compete for females. The birds were overkilled by pilgrims and settlers, and were depleating rapidly by the revolutionary and civil wars. Conservationists began an interest, including John Audubon, when the birds were reported to only survive on Martha's vineyard, a tiny island off of cape cod. THere were about 50 left. The island was protected, and the population sprouted a comeback, 2,000 individuals strong by 1915, one year before the extinction of passenger pigeons and five before the carolina parakeet, shown left. THen disaster struck, fires burned the leks, and a surge in goshawks caused over predation, then domestic turkeys brought disease that swept across the island. By 1927 there were 13 left. Mostly males. THe last of which was sighted in 1932. Today a subspecies of the heath hen, once roaming a million acres in texas, the attwater's prairie chicken, is extremely endangered. There are perhaps 300 individuals surviving, only 60 or so in the wild. The wild population is being stimulated by captive bred birds, and it declines 50% in the wild every year. It survives on two wild life refuges that make up 1% of it's original habitat. It seems this ghost of a former new england game bird, will be a ghost again someday, unless much work to save it, and it's habitat, is put into higher action. You can adopt attwater's prairie chickens for $25, just google "adopting attwater's prairie chickens", and you can help out in preserving this world we've done so much to destroy.

Do reptiles cry?

This is lonesome George. He is, as you can plainly see, a Galapapos tortoise. And as can be guessed by his name, he is lonely. Particularly lonely, for George, despite hopes of finding females on his home island still, is the very last Pinta island tortoise, one of the surviving 11 subspecies of Galapagos tortoise, of the original 14. But it truth, only 10 subspecies survive. Why? Lonesome George is extinct. He is very much alive, but he is more extinct than a museum specimen. He will never be able to mate with a pure female, only try to hybridize with another subspecies, which is attempting to be done, but the pinta subspecies is gone forever. George is better as a living photograph than he is for producing a species. So say hello to Lonesome George, and then say goodbye to his kind.

Have fun on vacation!

The next time you ride the rides at Disney World, everyone's favorite theme Park, maybe you'll feel some remorse. Just another reminder of tragedy. A subspecies of the Seaside Sparrow, known as the Dusky Seaside Sparrow, once lived in Florida. But many things were against this little bird. Disney World took away habitat, the space program disrupted nature around it, and finally a mosquito control project flooded the forest where it nested, wiping out every nest of the now rare species in one year. Five were left. All male. No females survived. They were brought to Disney World, where in June of 1987 the last Dusky Seaside Sparrow died of old age, barely clinging to existence, to the sounds of thrilled screams and laughter of amusement rides in the air......

It hasn't ended yet.....

The Pyrenean Ibex was a subspecies of the Spanish Goat. It once held a vast range, but over kill would reduce it to one National Park by the turn of the last century. And poaching still ensued after the species was protected in 1973. In 1999, there was one individual left, her picture is here. Just one. The species was extinct as it was. Just one. Do you know what just one is? It is hopeless. It is without fate. And it lives as a relic, as if trying to show the world as long as it can, that it's kind was once here. The animal was captured in 1999 and a tissue sample was taken to clone the animal in case of the worst. And on January 6th, 2000, the new millenium, a new start for mankind, the worst came true. A land slide felled a tree, that crushed the skull of her. And she was found, not just dead, but extinct. The biggest conservation failure of our century. What a way to kick off another thousand years of the degredation of earth. And without male tissue, a true cloned species may be very impossible.

Let me tell you a story. It is not that long ago, but we must place ourselves in a separate time, and a different logic. This is the thylacine, better known as the tasmanian tiger. It was the last great marsupial predator, survived by the cat sized quolls and tasmanian devils. But when I say "last" and "survived", I mean not prehistory, after all, where would this photo come from? No, it lived and hunted in tasmania until not so long ago. Early in the islands settlement, the new coming pioneers saw the tremendous value that tasmania had in it's rolling terrain: herding and grazing. Sheep by the thousands came streaming off the boats, with disease and stow-away rats that reaked havic with the native wildlife. The wombats, the marsupial mice, have all been decimated. But a different fate lay ahead for our character beast. As tasmania became one giant sheep farm, the thylacine found it much easier to hunt stupid sheep that do not run away, than kangaroos that are so much harder to catch. And quickly, they became an agricultural nuisance. The ranchers and herders began killing them by hundreds. Soon the tasmanian government went as far as to put a bounty on tasmanian tiger skins and heads. The only good tiger, was a dead one. And they were killed by thousands. Many were brought to Zoos. But they never aclimatized well. Soon there were very few left. And some naturalists developed a concern. They did some research, and by the year 1936 a law was passed to protect the thylacine. That year, a female tasmanian tiger nicknamed Benjamin, died on September seventh at the Hobart Zoo. And with her last breath, the thylacine went extinct. You can watch video footage of Benjamin and other thylacines on certain websites.
I told you this story, to tell you another, that today, with the great technology of genetics and cloning, with the help of a preserved thylacine pup, it may be possible to ressurect this long lost species, and amend the hole in nature. It is a project spurned by curiousity, love, guilt, and most of all the ecological decay that is happening across our planet. Few people know the thousands of species that have gone extinct since the year 1500, the Dodo is famous, the toolache wallaby, the moas-birds up to 13 feet tall, the quagga, the audubon bighorn sheep, the passenger pigeon, the carolina parakeet, the bali tiger, the laysan rail, the blue buck, stephen's island wren, the lesser stick nest rat, and the O'o to name a few. But someday, we may use the fragments of existing DNA to bring the species we have butchered back to this earth. And it is by evolutionary theory, that the thylacine project has gotten as far as it has. Not by creation science. I doubt wondering how to spontaneously create life would help in finding suitable egg cell recipients of related species, such as the eastern spotted quoll, or the genetic markers that determine what makes a thylacine, or the ecological adaptations that proved which environments the thylacine would have lived in. But go ahead and believe what you want. Because evolution has saved your life, in every pill you swallow, and in the upcoming genetherapy that may cure your disorders. But evolution is the silent hero, scorned by those it helps, and loved by those it makes into social martyrs in this wonderful advanced country. My name is Ben. And I am studying to be an evolutionary biologist, and someday, maybe you'll see the facts as I do.

wisdom is not always subtle, and not always obvious

Anger is as breath, we must inevitably take it in. That is not what matters. What matters is what we do with it, before we let it out.-

Metamorphosis is everything

Well, there are changes of all sorts from here to there. I'd like to tell of one such interesting organism that does a lot of changing in its life. This is the life cycle of the slime mould.
It is an amoeba, a single celled creature. This amoeba eats bacteria and fungal spores on decaying logs. It is sort of the anti decay. When the amoeba is starving it excretes a cellular chemical picked up by neighboring amoeba. these amoeba then join it as one multicellular organism. This is the pseudoplasmodium. This stage is when the mass of cells breaks down cell walls, and becomes a massive plasma membrane with multiple nuclei. This mass eats away until it too starves. when it starves the cells become individuals again with varying size, but work as a single organism of multiple cells to move to open air. Once in the open this slug starts fruiting, and out of dying amoebas grows a stalk full of spores.

These spores then are released into the air as sex cells. When the spores land, they release a new single celled amoeba. This will however stay a single amoeba unless it comes into contact with another amoeba. Once this happens, the life cycle will start again.
The evolutionary relevence is this, it shows that individual cells can become a unit to work together. What if the slime mold never fruited, and continued as a multicellular organism? What if the spores released multiple celled amoeboids? It is a simple way of saying, single cells can become multiple celled organisms. That's pretty cool.


We all undergo changes. In personality, of mind, in philosophy. Is it so hard to say that biology does too?

life is so much more interesting, when seen in bigger view...
So click on my picture for a larger sight, and gaze in wonder at the history that is not written by man, but within our cells, and our earth.....