Yangtze River Dolphin Extinct

[ahoteinrun]

*cough* Lets not turn this into a debate. If you want that, there's a debate board. (which could prove interesting).

Anyways... they may not have been cute, but every animal is important in the food chain. Even us (we are the human animal afterall). I've always had a soft spot for river dolphins. Dunno why, but I have. And this just makes me sad.

[Ric]

I had no idea anything lived in the Yangtze river, but while I was in China, I didn't eat any seafood, because I was told that the fishing methods were not environmentally friendly.

[sily_sicily]

Sad news.
Though I'm not a huge fan of dolphins, such news make me really sad. Why can't people just care more for the world we live in?

[theonlysaneone]

They're so cute.. makes me hate people, we're only concerned about ourselves. Seriously, what right *do* we have to take all the fish out of the ocean when we have other things to eat?

technically the human race was meant to be made up of herbivores, so we shouldn't steal food from other creatures when we should really be growing our own food. I'm not a vegetarian, though I do generally avoid fish

it was??

Nah, not really. Loads of people say that we're supposed to be herbivores, but we have the teeth and digestive tracts of omnivores. Most credible biologists say that we're traditionally omnivores. I say this as a vegan.

However, we're mostly past the point where we need to eat whatever we find. There are alternatives.

Yeah. Instead of eating river dolphin, eat a cow or a chicken. Or a pig. If you want to eat dolphin, go have a tuna sandwich.

[smudgeoffudge]

I think it is really really sad when an animal goes existinct. It is probably all our fault too, for messing up its environment. If animals were a little smarter and better equipped, they'd declare war on humans for stuff like this. But also I think animals are more forgiving than humans, so they'd probably just make us their slaves. Hehe.

[Kitten Medli]

I think it is really really sad when an animal goes existinct. It is probably all our fault too, for messing up its environment. If animals were a little smarter and better equipped, they'd declare war on humans for stuff like this. But also I think animals are more forgiving than humans, so they'd probably just make us their slaves. Hehe.

Thats great. xD

[Ammer]

This is really sad; I actually read it in a news post somewhere and I felt bad because all we're doing is destroying the world for the sake of our own selfish, needs.

I hope this extinction opens the eyes of the world, in saying that we can't take anything for advantage.

This is just really sad and pathetic.

[ahoteinrun]

Extinction will only open peoples eyes when it's cute and fluffy. Take out something like a polar bear or a panda... and it'll get peoples attention. But it still won't be enough in my mind. We've started on a path that we can't back pedal on. We've passed a point of no return with too many species, many are becoming inbred and without enough space to live. In this lowly art students eyes there isn't a lot of hope left for a lot of species.

[SpiraLethe]

Although I don't think that the extinction we "cause" is good, we still don't even know how extinction (on a natural level) even works. For one thing, species go extinct all the time, we just don't notice most of them.

However, it's still pretty sad that the dolphins died out. I'd hate to be the last dolphin roaming the Long River and not finding any one of my kind.

And yes, we're omnivores. Meat (and other high intakes of proteins and other nutrients that comes with meat and marrow) is one of the reasons why we have large brains. Somewhere in our evolutionary history when we turned into omnivores, these nutrients helped fuel our brain expansion.

[ahoteinrun]

I'm not arguing that extinction isn't natural. My point is that what we're doing to the earth is not natural. Us decimating species isn't natural. Of course extinctions happen, but generally they're caused by something like great change on earth not caused by a singular species. Normally caused by say... a meteor... or massive volcanic explosions... or ice ages...

[SpiraLethe]

I'm not arguing that extinction isn't natural. My point is that what we're doing to the earth is not natural. Us decimating species isn't natural. Of course extinctions happen, but generally they're caused by something like great change on earth not caused by a singular species. Normally caused by say... a meteor... or massive volcanic explosions... or ice ages...

Extraterrestrial objects and geological changes contribute to mass extinction. We still don't know what causes regular/background extinctions.

Who says what we do is "unnatural" per se. But like I said, I don't mean to say that what we do is good. We definitly have to monitor our actions since there could be reprocussions that we find most undesirable. And I do agree that we should be more careful about removing (un-intended, but still) entire clades from an ecosystem.

[sily_sicily]

I'm not arguing that extinction isn't natural. My point is that what we're doing to the earth is not natural. Us decimating species isn't natural. Of course extinctions happen, but generally they're caused by something like great change on earth not caused by a singular species. Normally caused by say... a meteor... or massive volcanic explosions... or ice ages...

What I'm thinking :]
But for the Yangtze River Dolphin case, its extinction isn't natural. If we don't overfish or do anything else that spoils the environment/food chain, it won't die out.