- #1
Tiger Blood
- 50
- 11
Recently I saw a video from a Christian creationist who was trying to debunk evolution with an argument that if evolution gives us new species all the time why would we make an effort to preserve those that are going extinct.
So I was thinking a little bit about it and these are my conclusions, and I am interested if someone can tell me how correct am I, if there are some mistakes, etc.
At the first glance, this even seems to make sense—that is if you only know evolution superficially, but if you know a little better — it doesn't make sense. The main thing is, there are several reasons why species go extinct. One way is because they are being replaced by new species of animals (their distant offsprings) because they are better adapted, especially if it is due to a slower climate change and they out hunt them, the prey that they are hunting gets better evolved,
But there are extinctions during (major) disasters when animals suddenly become extinct no matter how they are adapted to the environment. For example, at the end of the Permian period (250 million years ago), 70% of terrestrial vertebrates became extinct due to strong and sudden volcanic activity. Or a more famous catastrophe that occurred in the Late Triassic (60 million years ago) when an asteroid struck and 75% of all animal species became extinct.
Something similar is happening today, that is, we humans are that catastrophe for animals. We simply kill them because we need their territory to build settlements, plant arable land, and similar. For example, if there were no people protecting gorillas, all wild gorillas could be killed off in an instant because they live in oil-rich areas, so it is in the interest of many businessmen for gorillas to "disappear" (see more about this problem in the documentary "Virunga" (2014)). Moreover, it always seemed that way: Europe and America used to be full of animals like the Serengeti in Africa: with elephants, horses, gazelles, lions, rhinos, buffaloes… but whenever people showed up, these animals would just disappear because our ancestors hunted them down — and/or a combination of hunting and climate changes. With the only exception of animals in Africa who survived because they evolved with us, and thus adapted (though not to the modern man with technology).
So I was thinking a little bit about it and these are my conclusions, and I am interested if someone can tell me how correct am I, if there are some mistakes, etc.
At the first glance, this even seems to make sense—that is if you only know evolution superficially, but if you know a little better — it doesn't make sense. The main thing is, there are several reasons why species go extinct. One way is because they are being replaced by new species of animals (their distant offsprings) because they are better adapted, especially if it is due to a slower climate change and they out hunt them, the prey that they are hunting gets better evolved,
But there are extinctions during (major) disasters when animals suddenly become extinct no matter how they are adapted to the environment. For example, at the end of the Permian period (250 million years ago), 70% of terrestrial vertebrates became extinct due to strong and sudden volcanic activity. Or a more famous catastrophe that occurred in the Late Triassic (60 million years ago) when an asteroid struck and 75% of all animal species became extinct.
Something similar is happening today, that is, we humans are that catastrophe for animals. We simply kill them because we need their territory to build settlements, plant arable land, and similar. For example, if there were no people protecting gorillas, all wild gorillas could be killed off in an instant because they live in oil-rich areas, so it is in the interest of many businessmen for gorillas to "disappear" (see more about this problem in the documentary "Virunga" (2014)). Moreover, it always seemed that way: Europe and America used to be full of animals like the Serengeti in Africa: with elephants, horses, gazelles, lions, rhinos, buffaloes… but whenever people showed up, these animals would just disappear because our ancestors hunted them down — and/or a combination of hunting and climate changes. With the only exception of animals in Africa who survived because they evolved with us, and thus adapted (though not to the modern man with technology).
