Polar Bear Swims 426 Miles

[Thecatman]

[lucky.bastard]

not a city boy but i like to fly fish..., the story that stuck with me about the wolf being "re-introduced" was that the big wildlife ( deer, elk, bison ) had gotten so use to having no predators around that they spent all day on the river banks, killing the small trees that provided shade to the river which kept it's tempature low enough for trout to flourish...,

i've never come across a wolf in the wild but i have come across bear, boar, moutain lion, alligator, bob cats, sharks...,

i hope we can all meet somewhere between starving yourself to death hoping japan will stop hunting whales and using Rino horns for viagra

[Here and there]

Well,,,, by the logic of modern science, I hereby declare Osama Bin Laden EXTINCT!

Uh, huh. If looking and looking and looking and not finding any members of a species isn't considered a good reason to think that the species isn't around, any more, what exactly would be? Are we to think that maybe a few velociraptors might come by at any moment, riding wooly mammoths no doubt, with pixies on their shoulders? What, you're saying that there aren't and never were any pixies, based on nothing more than the mere fact that nobody has ever seen one? Surely you aren't succumbing to the logic of "modern science"?

Next thing you know, you'll start hanging around with people who know that Occam's razor (aka Ockham's razor) was first conceived in the Middle Ages, and not modern times. At least until those people notice you, and ask you to leave.

Even should Bin Laden still be alive, there will only be one of him. He will not propagate and create more Osama Bin Ladens, until the landscape is covered with Bin Laden clones. He certainly isn't going to manage to be in many different places at the same time. But members of a species of wild animal will reproduce, with the result that a species will be there to be found in multiple locations at the same time. If the members of that species should wish to hide, wild animals don't really have the same resources at their disposal when they try to hide that a terrorist leader would. Bin Laden can hide in a cave, and send somebody out to get food, who isn't Bin Laden. It seems more than a fair bet that if some animal that hasn't been seen alive for a long time - say, the dodo - decided to hide in a foodless location like that, and have some member of another species go get takeout for it, just to fake out the humans and let those silly apes think it was extinct, that it would be out of luck.

Meaning that what you've offered is a stupid comparison, and you're a fool for having made it.

Please name one animal which has gone extinct in your lifetime?

Not knowing how old the person to whom you're responding is, I'll settle for mentioning a few animals that have gone extinct in what would generally be considered to be "living memory", some of which Isotopia has already mentioned. I'll throw in the listed dates of extinction.

The Passenger Pigeon (1914) might be pushing it, as one would have to be 97 to have seen one, even as a baby, but the Thylacine ("Tasmanian Tiger"), the last large carnivore in the entire marsupial line, was last seen alive in 1936, and has presumably been extinct since them. That was 75 years ago. People who are old enough to have seen those aren't just alive, but I know at least one of the them who I went out hiking with a few weeks ago. Not recent enough?

The Caribbean Monk Seal, 1952, 58 years ago. Still too long ago? Not a problem.

The Pyrenean Ibex. 2000, unless one counts a clone which died a few minutes after being born. That was 11 years ago. To be old enough to have seen one of these alive, one only has to be in the 7th grade.


Some others: The Golden Toad 1989

Amphibians, especially frogs, have been heard hit in recent years, I understand. A web reference which I was able to find in seconds, using Google:

http://www.endangeredspeciesinternation ... llery.html

You do know how to use Google, don't you, Trishntek?


The Javan Tiger 1979
The Tecopa Pupfish 1981
The Baiji (Yangtze River Dolphin) - 2006

For those keeping track, that's five years ago.

The Bubal Hartebeest - another one for you old timers. 1923.

Those were all listed in one of the first pages I pulled up. If I haven't sufficiently beaten this point to death yet, I'm sure that this gentleman will be glad - and able - to do so, himself:

http://www.petermaas.nl/extinct/

They are so very cute while eating birthing Bambies out of their mother's wombs are they not?

You know what's even more cute? The "bambies" starving to death, en masse, because lacking predators, they've grown so numerous that they've wiped out their own food supply. Or - and this is even more adorable - idiots being allowed to go into populated areas with guns, because there are no more predators, and taking out local residents, some of them in their own backyards, because they'll fire without being able to clearly see what they're firing at - and then getting off in court, because they feel awful, just awful about having accidentally gunned down somebody's wife, and a bunch of their fellow inbred yahoos on the jury "understood" how they felt.

Deer, of course, are browsing animals. What's even more adorable is when grazers lack predators, because unlike deer, they can pick a landscape clean. Live in a mountainous state? Can you say "erosion"?

edit: My reasoning comes from being raised in rural environments where hunting and fishing was a daily way of life.

Your reasoning comes from being a self-absorbed jackass. Being from the Midwest, I do know what a "good ol' boy" or a "peckerwood" is, and you seem like a prime example, which is why I will resist the urge to ask to please sit down and shut up, before putting your idiocy on further display. Why wouldn't you put it on display when, like good ol' boys everywhere, you're proud of it?

[Trishntek]

Your reasoning comes from being a self-absorbed jackass. Being from the Midwest, I do know what a "good ol' boy" or a "peckerwood" is, and you seem like a prime example, which is why I will resist the urge to ask to please sit down and shut up, before putting your idiocy on further display. Why wouldn't you put it on display when, like good ol' boys everywhere, you're proud of it?

Ooooooh I just love it when a conversation turns personal,,,, it's just so,,,,, edifying!

[Here and there]

Your reasoning comes from being a self-absorbed jackass. Being from the Midwest, I do know what a "good ol' boy" or a "peckerwood" is, and you seem like a prime example, which is why I will resist the urge to ask to please sit down and shut up, before putting your idiocy on further display. Why wouldn't you put it on display when, like good ol' boys everywhere, you're proud of it?

Ooooooh I just love it when a conversation turns personal,,,, it's just so,,,,, edifying!

Truth hurts, doesn't it? I didn't just call you an idiot, I made the case that you were an idiot, as you no doubt still are. There is a difference, even if you are unwilling or unable to get it.