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23 comments to "3 Animals We Ate To Extinction."
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Jimbo
April 27th, 2007 at
7:53 am
That’s why they call it a food chain.
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NeonCat
April 27th, 2007 at
8:34 am
I feel bad for such creatures - humans can be damned short-sighted, but you can as easily blame nature for not introducing predators that would have caused more survival oriented evolution.
It is hard for me to imagine non-domesticated creatures who aren’t at least wary of humans.
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Walter
April 27th, 2007 at
10:36 am
It is my understanding that the expansion of the modern humans species, in the last 20,000 years, to the furthest reaches of the globe, was accompanied by similar extinctions. If this is true, it is not just the Europeans with relatively modern technology, who transformed the fauna, but all humans.
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hubs
April 27th, 2007 at
11:26 am
let us not forget the Moa too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moa_(bird) -
brandon
April 27th, 2007 at
11:30 am
how sad. but gee, thanks white people! for getting rid of all those pesky critters.
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randomfool
April 27th, 2007 at
12:08 pm
RE: passenger pigeon
From what I have read, the large numbers of PP’s in the early days of NA settlement (by europeans of course) were a result of a LARGE population boom in response to the large population drop of Native Americans due to European diseases.
Basically, Native Americans preyed on PPs until disease wiped out 60-75-80% on the human population allowing PP pop to skyrocket, and leading to the assumption they were always that numerous.
Just my 2 pennies.
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K
April 27th, 2007 at
12:49 pm
Whiteys from Europe and North America…….
And you’re telling the Asians to stop eating? Pathetic!
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holycrapper
April 27th, 2007 at
8:53 pm
Everytime an animal goes completely extinct I die a little on the inside. It’s one less experience I get to have. Eating them I mean…
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rustysmoove
April 27th, 2007 at
9:00 pm
Am I the only one that got hungry reading this.
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ekrabs
April 27th, 2007 at
9:50 pm
I feel bad for these species as well….
On the other hand, we are also a part of the planet’s ecosystem, and well, these species are extinct because they could not survive a highly aggressive and hungry predator.
So, perhaps in a sad sort of way, natural selection reared its ugly head here.
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sd
April 28th, 2007 at
12:05 am
While its unfortunate that some things will never be able to be seen by future generations, extinction is a completely natural process. Natural and artificial selection has ALWAYS been a part of nature. The stupid, the slow, the tasty die off. Or, even just the dumbER, slowER, tastiER have and will die off. As well, more median species will too die off from events like meteor impacts and global climate shifts.
It’s the unbridled attempts of humans to be PC and try to preserve the Earth in some form of stasis so as to deny the natural changes in nature that are unnatural. While we may be changing the planet, thats not unnatural to do. Its a part of our evolution as a species and the planest evolution as it supports new species. If we change the planet too drastically we’ll die off and the Earth will go on. I would bet that we would not take all life as we know it down with us when we do, either, and plants and other animals and organisms will remain and continue on without us reverting the Earth back to a lush overgrown place sans humans anyway. We’re power tripping to think we can destroy the Earth for eternity. -
Bobby
April 28th, 2007 at
2:34 am
The current theory surrounding the extinction of Hydrodamalis gigas (Steller’s Sea Cow) is that is was not directly caused by hunting of that animal.
Unlike manatees and dugongs, sea cows fed on kelp, common cold water algae in the north pacific. Sea urchins are extremely efficient at feeding on kelp as well. Sea otters more or less keep sea urchin populations down, as sea urchins and other hard shelled invertebrates comprise the majority of their diet. Decline in the California Sea Otter has been linked with steady decline in kelp forests along the CA coastline.
Sea otters were evidently a very important resource for natives, and have been depleted from their original range, starting with the first humans migrating into north america. So, the decline in sea cows was probably caused by harvest of sea otters by native americans/asians in prehistory. So, when Steller (Not Bering) discovered these things, they only inhabited shallow water around two small islands. They were definitely long on their way out when they were discovered.
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lou
April 28th, 2007 at
7:14 am
Lots of rationalization going on here. Obviously you have guilty consciouses. These are just 3 examples caused by Europeans in the last couple of hundred years. There are many other species that were hunted to extinction earlier. I think there is enough evidence to convict the first humans in north america of hunting the wooly mammoth to extinction. In Florida, the giant sloth was gone even before the first europeans showed up.
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sam
April 28th, 2007 at
10:01 am
yeah im white, and its my fault all these animals are dead? I haven’t killed any personally, but you’re welcome! Animals have been going extinct before humans ever even existed. thats just how it goes so cry about it.
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coopreme
April 28th, 2007 at
2:41 pm
dam i feel bad for the pigeon… the rest deserve to die… jk!
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layosh
April 29th, 2007 at
12:38 am
The Dodo was not edible. Had a depressingly fat and repulsive meat. It is just a myth that we grilled it to extinction. The more plausible explanation is that the rats that settled in the land eat the eggs and the young chicks, and the Dodo could not compete with the
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david
April 29th, 2007 at
1:58 am
Someday humans will be found to be stupid and tasty. It all comes around.
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subcorpus
April 29th, 2007 at
3:53 am
am sure these are not the only animals we have eaten to extinction …
i wonder what’ll happen to us if david is right and suddenly someone took an interest in hunting and eating us humans …
shudder … -
internet television
April 29th, 2007 at
6:49 am
Nice article. I knew about the Dodo, since I was to Mauritius and saw it in the museum there and I wondered if I will find it on this list, and it is the first one
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mommyberich
April 29th, 2007 at
7:50 am
Umm, sea cow is not extinct.
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Motorcycle Guy
April 29th, 2007 at
9:38 am
Wait rats could kill dodos? I don’t want to see those rats.
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Amanda
May 31st, 2007 at
1:45 pm
This is so sad. SAVE THE ANIMALS!
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Joshua Whitt and Travis Fitzgerald
April 24th, 2008 at
9:10 am
These white are not the damn reason for this
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