Here's an article posted on NPR's site featuring a creature called a "tuataras" that has been around for 230M years - it may be the closest living link to a bona fide dinosaur. In fact, it's direct relatives are animals that predate the great dinos! That's right. Whatever killed out the dinos didn't take this thing out...
Due to environmental changes, this guy may be running out of track - literally. This creature is an amniotes (comes from an egg), and it's gender is not determined by chromosomal composition, instead, it's gender is determined by evironmental temperature. In the case of the tuataras, cooler temperatures yield more females and warmer temperatures more males. This can be expressed to an extreme whereby anything under 64F will result in all hatchlings being female; anything greater than 72F will result in more male hatchlings.
Based on current climate model predictions for the northern parts of New Zealand, these creatures could become extinct by 2085. To avoid this dismal fate, this week a team of biologists relocated 222 tuataras to the southern, cooler region of New Zealand in hopes the future brings more females to gestate.
A great initiative to keep these little buggers in business... a little while longer. But has this direct intervention with nature become the new burden of mankind? Is it that we feel guilty for an expedited climate change or protracted colonization that we feel responsible to 'help' species that might be affected by it?
Something tells me "it's not these guy's first rodeo."
And it makes me wonder, do we humans know best? Here's a species that has transcended 6 geologic time periods and the better part of two eras. Arguably, being one of the most resilient species of all time. They have survived through numerous (dramatic) climate swings. Namely the one that straddled the jurassic and cretaceous period - some 145 million years ago. You might suppose their greatest virtue is the ability to adapt in an ever-changing world. And continue to persist. By directly meddling with the fate of these creatures, are we not potentially undermining the very mechanism that has brought it thus far?
It's a simple evolutionary notion: survival warrants for a species to adapt to their environment; not the other way around.
And therein lies the crux of the problem. From both sides, really. We're responsible for global climate change, thus exposing these creatures to an immediate peril for survival; to compensate, we're attempting to modify their immediate environment.
Do two wrongs make a right?
So what's better? To be guided by the myopic hand of mankind and possibly forever be indentured to rely upon it for support - or - the blind-eye of evolution, which has provided not only the tools required to be attuned with the environment today, but through gradual adaptations, a natural path toward preparation for the changes entailed with tomorrow.
It's a fine balance I suppose. And perhaps, if I were teetering toward the brink extinction, my outlook might sway differently.
On the other hand, maybe if I were an affiliate of a species that's been around 1000 times longer than humans, I might soon take my chances with the method that's proven to be tried and true...
After all, arguably, who's fault is global warming anyway?
No comments:
Post a Comment