The above link is to an article in the Washington Post. A popular bird can, at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, has been turned off for this year because of idiots who don’t realize nature is red of tooth and claw.
They don’t seem to realize that there’s at least a 50% mortality rate, on the average, for hatchlings.
animals aren’t people. why aren’t people smart enough to realize that?
When the ospreys cannot bring in enough fish to feed their young, the lesson people should be learning is that we’re screwing up the local ecosystem, so that ospreys cannot find enough food. Instead, they want someone to help THESE PARTICULAR birds, and to hell with the ecosystem.
People are dumb.
We should only save the nice animals.
If only there had been a freezing bison calf abandoned by its mother around for the ospreys to feed upon.
Here in Topeka there are plenty of pigeons downtown for the peregrine falcons to feast on. Pigeons, squirrels, rats and mice, who is upset about them being eaten?
BTW, the website for that falcon cam downtown reminds people that there is usually a high mortality rate in these birds, that they are wild, and not tame, animals.
There’s a falcon pair that nests on City Hall in San Jose. They turned off the camera one year when Mrs Falco ripped apart someone’s pet budgie to feed her eyasses. The City issued a press release, reminding people to keep pet birds inside.
From the OP article - offered without comment.
Also from the OP article - with actual comment by Me, Your Correspondent
Which, when you think about it, is also nature. The great thing about wildlife cams is that they offer a chance for humans to see something that is usually hidden. But seeing the hidden is stressful and not everyone can handle it when the hidden sees us back.
:dubious: So…before humans, everything was lovey-dovey and no osprey ever starved? I think you’re being a bit optimistic about the natural order.
Let’s note, for example, that by nature a population grows. The area of the globe does not.
Some species grow at a faster rate, some at a slower rate, but they all grow. The human population, for example, just keeps on growing. At some point, we’ll reach a point at which there isn’t enough surface area to grow enough food to feed mankind.
As intelligent creatures, we can respond to that by using contraceptives or enforcing one child policies. All the other animals on the planet can’t. They just keep trying to grow their population past what the world will naturally support. That’s physically impossible, so the animals must die of starvation or by being eaten by those who haven’t starved yet. Which means that all natural animals basically live on the brutal boundary of Hell on Earth, regardless of how lush and giving nature may be. That was true before humans and that is true today, because it’s just the way the system was set up to work.
Outside of periods where the land has become more lush for some reason, giving a brief respite, all animals in nature will live on the edge of famine.
Agree. Even in the best of times, for most wild species, there is a very high infant mortality rate, and it’s pretty rare for any injured or aging animal to live very long. That’s how “survival of the fittest” works: only those best adapted to the situation manage to become ancestors. The rest become lunch.
They covered this in an episode of This American Life, well worth listening too.
Some folks need a life.