Chapter 11 - Admir Basic

In Chapter 11 of The Sixth Extinction, the author visits a zoo in order to see an endangered rhino species. The rhino in question is named Suci and a doctor has been unsuccessful to artificially inseminate the rhino in order to save the endangered rhino species. Prior attempts to captivate endangered rhino species failed due to diseases and an insufficient diet. Rhinos cannot eat dry hay as many livestock and rely on fresh leaves as a diet. The doctor that attempted to inseminate Suci was able to inseminate the parent of Suci, Emi. Rhino conservation is vital since humans have driven them to the brink of extinction along with other large mammals like elephants. The author gets the experience to pet Suci and is amazed by her “playful (page 223)” attitude. The author is also mystified about why extinct species were much larger than animals of today and why they went extinct. Kolbert visits a fossil site in order to observe the remains of extinct species. Scientists argued that large mammals died off because of climate changes and others argue that humans are the culprit behind their demise. However, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that humans are to blame for large mammals dying off. First off, large mammals have survived drastic climate changes before the evolution of modern humans. The fossils do not suggest that insufficient food was the culprit behind the demise of large mammals. There is evidence however that mammals died off slowly as opposed to suddenly from an environmental disaster, suggesting humans are to blame for their demise. According to page 230, “The megafauna extinction...did not take place all at once...it occurred in pulses. The first pulse, about forty thousand years ago, took out Australia’s giants. A second pulse hit North America and South America some twenty-five thousand years later.” [(R) A drastic change in climate conditions would not have acted in pulses rather it would occur as a one-time event extinction. The modern human took thousands of years to disperse across the entire world. After humans landed on one continent, they would drive the large species there to extinction and would move on to the next continent thousands of years later. This connects to the APES theme that humans alter natural systems because in this case, humans have had an impact on the ecological fitness of large mammals for millions of years.] Proponents of the claim that humans drove large mammals to extinction cite the fact that humans could not have been as dangerous as today to natural systems. However, scientists like Alroy found using “computer simulations (page 233) that nomadic humans could have effortlessly wiped out the large animals.” The chapter closes off stating that “it would be nice to imagine there once was a time when man lived in harmony with nature, it’s not clear that he ever really did.”