Saving Sumatran Rhinos from Extinction

Due to intense illegal poaching activities on various wildlife, these creatures are becoming very close to extinction. It is sad to think that the ones who are benefiting most from the resources of the world are the ones who push it to the extremes.

Rhinos are already endangered species, hunted for their precious horns that contain ivory used in manufacturing electrical appliances and equipment as well as piano and organ keys, billiard balls, and other decorative items. But such luxuries are produced at the cost of these animals' lives.

Much worse is the fact that for certain rhinos like the Sumatran rhino, there are only a few that exist. So the government in partnership with various nonprofits have launched a rescue mission for these rhinos.

Yessenia Funes has more on Gizmodo.

(Image credit: Ridho Hafizh Zainur Ridha/WWF Indonesia)


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This is not easy, as your "3 things" are actually many things conflated together, and some of the premises you state are just incorrect. I think it is unreasonable to expect random strangers to write paragraphs to address each point, especially when it looks like you haven't tried very hard to look for answers yourself. That said, I'm waiting some stuff to cure...

1.) Evolution is a natural process that happens with no goal, so what does it mean to "work well?" Is gravity failing to work well when a balloon or airplane goes up?

And why would you not expect some things to go extinct when the environment keeps changing? The composition of the atmosphere, biomes, climate all keep changing, so why would you expect species to not disappear?

2.) You should learn about the concept of local minima/maxima. All sorts of processes are really good at optimizing a situation analogous to climbing uphill to find the highest point. But walking uphill doesn't mean you find the tallest peak, only the nearest one.

For a lot of animals, being slightly smarter at the cost of needing more food or more parenting or fewer offspring is detrimental, making it harder for them to reproduce. They found their little peak, and changing would mean going downhill, even if there is a larger peak in the distance. Changes would need to either be a very drastic jump to another peak (which happens, but rarely) or wait until the topology (e.g. environment) changes. Which peak they climb is also completely up to chance too, so it is possible for a lot of time to pass without a certain adaptation appearing.

That said, there is no highest peak or levels to evolution. There is no absolutely best evolved creature as if it were a title to be won. Despite the lazy analogy of hill climbing given above, evolution should not be thought of as a upward movement with everything moving in a unified direction.

Either a creature is good enough to reproduce in its niche or not. Humans can survive in many environments quite well, but there are many situations that could kill humans without killing things like plants or bacteria.

3.) Doesn't this contradict your #1? Are animals supposed to change or not in your view? You've both complained that animals don't change (crocodiles) and that they do (the ones that disappeared). Some niches change or disappear faster than others, while others have not changed for a long time.

Also, evolution is still on going. There is no evidence that anything is different about the basic process now from 1 million years ago.

You say people refuse to think about these things, but in one way or another a lot has been written on such topics, by people with far better writing and more time than anyone here has. If your opinion is that people haven't addressed such things before, than either you haven't looked at what is already out there, or are choosing to ignore it.

Maybe you should try picking a narrow, specific topic and read more about that? For example, maybe read about the fossil record of crocodiles. You asked why crocodiles haven't changed since the dinosaurs, when they have definitely changed:

Three large groups of crocodylomorphs survived pass the end of the dinosaurs: the dyrosauridae, the sebecosuchia and the eusuchia. The dyrosauridae seem to be very aquatic, and they mostly disappeared at the end of the Paleocene when there was a drastic, sudden change in temperature and ocean circulation. Some branches of dyrosauridae survived until the end of the Eocene when there was a change in temperature in the opposite direction, so they completely disappeared 35ish million years ago. The sebecosuchia were terrestrial and survived until about 11 million years ago when temperatures were dropping. The eusuchia are the group modern crocodiles and alligators belong to, but that group wasn't unchanging that whole time: nostril and skull shapes changed to be better adapted to lurking in water, skeleton and muscles changed to be more about strength than mobility. There is still a long chain of spieces and changes, even if more subtle than what mammals were doing at the same time, connecting Jurassic crocodylomorphs to modern crocodiles and alligators.
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There's 3 interesting things about Evolution that people can't seem to answer, or just refuse to think about.
1) If Evolution is true, than how come over 99 percent of all organisms that have ever lived are now extinct. (Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction) Simply put, if Evolution was real, it isn't working very well. If at all.
2) For hundreds of millions of years, there were other apex predators other than "humans". If evolution is available to all organisms, then how come humans were the only apex predator to evolve to advanced language (English, Chinese, etc.) and advanced structure building (Skyscrapers, Computer Networks, etc.). If you think Evolution is fact, you have to admit it's illogical for only humans to access this level of evolution. In comparison to other apex predators, humans are infantile on this planet.
3) If Evolution is true, then today (December 9th 2018) is the 1 millionth anniversary of 1 million years ago. That means, even if evolution were slow, you would still see evolution happening around us. You can't argue "there hasn't been enough time". Earth is 4.5 billion years old. So technically each day would be a new 1 millionth anniversary, and evolutions would be cascading one after another. The modern day crocodile is virtually unchanged since its time with the dinosaurs. Same thing with mosquitos or anything else. Things might be adapting, but they're not evolving.

So if you have a great argument against those 3 points I'd love to hear it.
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The proportion of female elephants without tusks has doubled to tripled, depending on location. Some species of fish now reach sexual maturity at younger ages and/or smaller sizes. So some animals are changing in response to human hunting.

The process is built on a large amount of randomness though, so it still comes down to luck. The faster the environment changes, the fewer attempts there are for new genes to appear. Even then, if an amazing gene appeared that would protect a species from hunters/poachers, the animals might be screwed if population has dwindled too much anyway, or if there are other compounding problems.
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dude just stop. you're embarrassing. also you might try to educate yourself on the actual scientific definition of the word theory. it does not mean what you think it means.
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