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Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / Cllimate change, should we preserve species?
« on: 18/09/2010 07:39:03 »In any case, many threatened species are not 'pretty'.
It depends how you define 'pretty'. In this case pretty for me is... I suppose I could define it as miraculous, profound and nice to observe for that reason. Maybe I'm stretching it a bit here :p lol
I said that because the way i saw it is preserving them for future generations of HUMANS seems to be a purely selfish reason. This is because, again, is there any advantage to the planet to the species if they must be kept in captivity? I don't see that there is. My 'pretty animal basket' is defined by this.
Evie I see your point. Though it may be a little a broad to refer to 'endangered species' as a whole? Surely it would depend upon the finer details of reason they are endangered? Eg, consider the Panda bear, we can grow more bamboo and stop destroying their habbitat at any time. That is, they can be reintroduced to the wild.
I suppose the key part of my thoughts on this really stresses the factor of NEVER being able to live in the wild again. The ice isn't going to come back and the polar bear isn't going to adapt to this in captivity.
As for your last comment, good point. I wonder though if we can really learn all the much from observing them in captivity? What do you think we could learn from them? As Don_1 put forward they would lose their natural behaviours and I suppose that after many generations which ultimately would become rather inbred they would in essence become demesticated?