[HN Gopher] Loss of animals' shared knowledge threatens their su...
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Loss of animals' shared knowledge threatens their survival
Author : NotSwift
Score : 202 points
Date : 2021-08-13 07:39 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Migration paths were disturbed too. We need connected green
| corridors for animals to travel through that span the continent.
| machinelearning wrote:
| This is the most interesting headline I've read in a while
| TrumpRapedWomen wrote:
| I agree.
| elzbardico wrote:
| What I like in The Guardian is that we are always fucked.
| Everyday a new tragedy
| wombatmobile wrote:
| "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."
|
| -- Anais Nin
| 2dvisio wrote:
| Thank you for the interesting rabbit hole :)
|
| https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/03/09/as-we-are/
| loopz wrote:
| Or we can learn to get unfucked.
| Alan_Dillman wrote:
| But that'll put The Guardian out of business!
| [deleted]
| machinelearning wrote:
| The Guardian is just a distribution channel. Academics and the
| conservation groups that back them stand to benefit by sounding
| an alarm since that helps them raise funds and get grants. Not
| a judgement on the legitimacy of the concern but that's just
| the incentive behind these articles.
| mellavora wrote:
| ok, I'll try a serious answer instead of a snarky one.
|
| You point out the incentive behind these articles, and call
| out the Guardian as a distribution channel for academics and
| conservation groups.
|
| Without a distribution channel, how should academics and
| conservation groups get their message out?
|
| Which message is better for our society, one driven by the
| academics who have been warning us of the danger of radical
| climate change, of mass poisoning of our homes and
| environment, of total ecosystem collapse (birds- down 29%
| https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6461/120, fish,
| down over 70% https://www.geographyrealm.com/study-finds-
| staggering-declin..., amphibians, 40% of species on the edge
| of extinction in 2012 and things have only gotten worse since
| https://journals.openedition.org/sapiens/1406, insect
| populations, down 80%
| https://www.pnas.org/content/118/2/e2023989118, ... shall I
| continue? Do you know what total ecosystem collapse looks
| like?
|
| or perhaps the message of Netflix or Disney? Or the
| message/distribution channel of fake news bent on destroying
| Western democracy? Or the message/distribution channel used
| to keep us calm while we commit mass suicide?
|
| Sorry, I'm ranting. Yes, your charge is correct. The Guardian
| is an important distribution channel for the sources which
| are trying to get us to stop killing our planet, our home,
| our selves.
|
| And perhaps it is good to have such a channel.
|
| -- hey, sorry, just saw that you intended your comment to be
| neutral. Forgive me for letting my grief carry me away.
| lashloch wrote:
| thanks. i was about to send a conservation group money but
| then i learned they might have the ulterior motive of making
| the world better
| machinelearning wrote:
| I don't get the snarky comment, looks like you didn't read
| what I wrote carefully enough
| throwaway8689 wrote:
| I read the parent comment as neutral or good.
| Conservationists need publicity to raise funds to do their
| work.
| machinelearning wrote:
| Yea meant to be a neutral comment. Sometimes raising the
| alarm is justified.
| akdav wrote:
| Facepalm
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| Has it occurred to you that this might be because the status
| quo is actually a really bad situation, the more you look at
| it? Many civilizations have fallen, with the resulting societal
| complexity permanently reduced. Usually, this process is not
| sudden. I suspect each probably had their version of people
| speaking inconvenient truths, and being written off as
| pessimists.
| nullc wrote:
| We didn't start the fire
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| This is an interesting finding. Animals have culture. And it
| can disappear. So can human culture. That's good to know. It's
| part of the human culture that we know that culture can
| disappear unless we try to preserve it.
| ovi256 wrote:
| > At the peak of the whaling industry, in the late 1800s
|
| Yeah, if you start your article with a falsehood that you could
| have easily fixed with a cursory read of any history of whaling,
| I can't trust you enough to know what you're talking about.
|
| Peak whaling was 1965-1970, have a look at
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_whaling#/media/File...
| aquadrop wrote:
| To be fair that chart only starts in 1900, so you can't see
| 18th century here. And in the wikipedia page of this chart it
| says "By 1900, bowhead, gray, northern humpback and right
| whales were nearly extinct, and whaling had declined". But also
| in the original phrase "peak of the whaling industry" speaks
| not just about number of whales killed, but size of the
| industry as a whole, amount of people involved. Because with
| new tech I suppose those massive killings in 1960's required
| much fewer people.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Yeah, that makes me immediately doubt the article.
| js8 wrote:
| I have a theory that belief in authority (and
| conservative/authoritarian political ideologies that build on it)
| evolved because of this pressure, as a way to protect the culture
| and shared knowledge. In this view, hierarchies are a side effect
| of the belief in authority in large-scale societies. (I don't buy
| into the social and sexual dominance theories of hierarchies.)
| machinelearning wrote:
| Authority can also be used to corrupt culture and shared
| knowledge instead of protecting it. In fact, I argue that over
| a long enough span of time, it inherently will simply because
| selection mechanisms will be gamed by people who put their own
| needs over that of the society.
|
| By decoupling power with culture and shared knowledge, you can
| more effectively transmit these things to a broader audience
| while maintaining its integrity. In this setup, a critical mass
| of people in the community act as the immune system that helps
| to refine and develop the shared knowledge over time. I think
| artists, public intellectuals and thinkers of all kinds play
| this role in our society without the corrupting influence of a
| hierarchy.
| SonicTheSith wrote:
| unless a profit can be made...
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| > conservation efforts should consider how culture affects
| reproduction, dispersal and survivorship.
|
| Yes indeed.
|
| > Understanding who holds cultural knowledge in a population can
| be key
|
| Revolutionaries and conquerors understand this too.
|
| > The [matriarch] female's experience of [...] which other social
| units are friendly has a demonstrable knock-on effect
|
| Certainly it's been important in my family.
|
| > However, when a population has lost its cultural knowledge,
| there may be circumstances where it can be reignited.
|
| We can only hope.
| whereistimbo wrote:
| In Siege of Baghdad (1258) [0], "...Mongol soldiers looted and
| then destroyed mosques, palaces, libraries, and hospitals.
| Priceless books from Baghdad's thirty-six public libraries were
| torn apart, the looters using their leather covers as sandals.
| Grand buildings that had been the work of generations were burned
| to the ground. The House of Wisdom (the Grand Library of
| Baghdad), containing countless precious historical documents and
| books on subjects ranging from medicine to astronomy, was
| destroyed."
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258)
| andrepd wrote:
| The destruction of Bagdhad by the Mongols was one of the most
| destructive events in human history. It's hard to believe it
| today but Bagdhad was the cultural and learning centre of the
| world at the time. There's no telling what priceless works were
| lost, plus how many thousands of scholars were killed.
| Knowledge in medicine, astronomy, the classics (which were
| preserved by Muslim scholars), and god knows what else.
| nudpiedo wrote:
| Almost as terrible as the senseless destruction of Alexandria's
| Library in the hands of barbaric Muslims. Supposedly in that
| single event we lost 1/3 of all mankind books and many original
| works like Calculus invented by Archimedes had to be reinvented
| thousands of years later.
| NiceWayToDoIT wrote:
| Reminds me on this as well:
| https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/150901-is...
|
| Also I am not sure from newer history was it Khmer Rouge who
| order genocide of their own population over 40 years old,
| ideology was that they wanted to erase collective knowledge of
| elders.
|
| "Pol Pot then began using intimidation efforts against the
| Chams that included the assassination of village elders but he
| ultimately ordered the full-scale mass killing of the Cham
| people."
| dopkew wrote:
| It is a reminder that a civilization not only needs to
| flourish from within, but be able to protect itself from
| without.
| vector_spaces wrote:
| This article reminds me of another from 2006 about PTSD in
| elephants. In various parts of the world, culling events and
| poaching have killed elder elephants in elephant clans, and
| traumatized the mostly young survivors, who grow up without
| guidance in parenting among other crucial activities. This has
| resulted in a breakdown of the elephant family structure, so that
| these traumatized and directionless young and mostly male
| elephants roam the grasslands engaging in senseless acts of
| violence against other animals and humans (the latter being
| probably more justified).
|
| One of the Ugandan researchers profiled draws parallels between
| what is happening to elephants and what has happened in the
| recent history of her country, with the civil war killing parents
| and grandparents, creating a generation of young traumatized and
| directionless men who similarly engage in senseless violence and
| bloodshed.
|
| It's a really beautiful and really sad article
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/magazine/08elephant.html
| randycupertino wrote:
| I don't think I can handle the article seeing as merely your
| above _comment_ was so strikingly beautiful and sad!
|
| And business-as-usual will just keep churning along, everything
| is fine, everything is peachy. Profits profits profits.
| Exploitation, single use plastics, dead oceans, destruction.
| javajosh wrote:
| The shocking truth is that, even if you exclude empathy
| (which is sadly quite common), this represents a total
| abrogation of humanities collective responsibility to protect
| _ourselves_. Earth and her biosphere is our space-ship and
| our life-support system, respectively, and we cannot seem to
| come to grips with this simple fact.
|
| It doesn't anger me when people act in ignorance. What angers
| me are those who know better, and keep others in ignorance
| with their cynically spent PR money, and those who know
| better and repeat the lies to pander to ignorance and garner
| votes. It is not a message that can be addressed with reason,
| since it appeals to the basest instincts of men: don't worry,
| everything is fine, keep doing what you want, you're
| justified. The ability to doubt (let alone challenge)
| authority when authority is telling you what you want to hear
| is vanishingly rare.
| relax88 wrote:
| Not that I disagree with anything you've said, but I feel
| it's important to acknowledge the often ignored fact that
| the same process of industrialization and capitalism that
| has impacted the environment has also lifted billions of
| people out of poverty and brought about the the highest
| standards of living in human history.
|
| We are only now seeing the structural changes that will
| stabilize the human population after generations of growth
| from the advent of industrial agriculture. Contraception
| has only been widely available in most parts of the world
| for ~30 years and there are still places without it.
|
| It's very different to deliver this moral lecture to a
| Starbucks sipping, SUV driving North American, than to
| someone who lives in a rural village in Mongolia.
|
| Effective environmental altruism must recognize the human
| element as it forms a key piece of the ethical dilemma. You
| will never convince someone who lives in poverty or other
| forms of hardship to make sacrifices to preserve the
| environment, and it may not even be ethical to attempt to
| do so.
| bittercynic wrote:
| For me this is proves the urgency of alleviating poverty.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| Bible says so: "I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting
| the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and
| on the fourth generation".
|
| You might think that is unfair, but that is how it is the sins
| of the fathers affect future generations
| andrepd wrote:
| > visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on
| the third and on the fourth generation
|
| What a repugnant philosophy.
| GlennS wrote:
| I think that's a reasonable response to the phrase taken at
| face value, but...
|
| It's been pointed out to me that this is probably an
| observation of how the world is rather than a commandment
| for how it should be. (Despite the phrasing in English.)
|
| (I probably agree with you about Christianity being a
| pretty odd system of ethics overall, but this bit is
| probably just some obvious wisdom packaged a bit
| strangely.)
| andrepd wrote:
| But it says "I am a vengeful god, therefore", so it
| suggests that it's divine "policy", not just a statement
| of how the world works.
| beardyw wrote:
| I think you will find that comes from the Torah, Jewish
| wisdom. Personally I think if that were still true Christ
| died for nothing.
| GlennS wrote:
| > I think you will find that comes from the Torah, Jewish
| wisdom.
|
| Thanks for the correction.
|
| > Personally I think if that were still true Christ died
| for nothing.
|
| I'm suggesting it's just a rather obvious statement of
| inheritance of circumstance and reputation.
|
| Of course if whoever wrote it really thought that people
| deserve to be punished for their ancestors' mistakes then
| they can fuck off.
|
| But I do think it's what happens in practice.
| beardyw wrote:
| Sorry, not meant to be a correction. It is in the old
| testament. I was just pointing out that it properly
| belongs to the Jews.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > This has resulted in a breakdown of the elephant family
| structure
|
| Recovery from this kind of thing is actually quite quick in
| terms of generations, usually one or two. In this case, that's
| tough to observe, because one elephant generation is quite long
| in human terms.
|
| (And of course, if the old ones keep getting poached, the
| problem will keep being refreshed rather than recovering.)
| NotSwift wrote:
| It is highly unlikely that recovery will be so fast. Some
| things take a long time to learn for a population. For
| example learning which plants are poisonous is quite costly
| for a population. Elephants in Botswana travel through the
| Kalahari desert to get to the Okavango delta. On this 650
| mile migration they travel from watering hole to watering
| hole. It will take a very long time to recover from the loss
| of memories about their locations, because they die if they
| cannot reach the next watering hole in time.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Recovery from this kind of thing is actually quite quick in
| terms of generations, usually one or two. In this case,
| that's tough to observe, because one elephant generation is
| quite long in human terms.
|
| Quite identical to human generations, rather than quite long.
| My mother's oldest brother was murdered 50 years ago, and the
| rest of my aunts and uncles aren't over it, and although it
| happened before I was born it's been something I and my
| cousins know the details of, and still comes up in
| conversation. My generation's children are barely aware or
| not aware. Of course, any knowledge that he had is gone, but
| we're really almost over it. It probably won't have taken
| more than 70-80 years in total.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Really well laid out anecdote, thanks for sharing.
|
| Do you think the 70-80 year number you come up with has
| more to do with 3x generations (3*~25, the length of a
| generation) or 1x human lifetimes (~70 years)?
| bbarnett wrote:
| Quick for core stuff, perhaps.
|
| Crows can vocalize ultrasonic sounds, like many other
| creatures can.
|
| They have been known to use these sounds, especially during
| the rain, to find grubs underground. I have personally
| observed an elder crow, teaching a young crow, how to do
| this.
|
| I wonder how many generations it took, for crows to learn
| this the first time?
|
| I suspect many.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| This is fascinating behavior. Do you have a link with more
| details. I had no idea that cows deliberately hunted grubs.
| I wonder if it is a regional herd "cultural" behavior or
| common to cows worldwide?
| GavinMcG wrote:
| Crows, not cows.
| bbarnett wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYl_d7dc-EY
|
| If you watch, the older crow is making large vertical
| head movements, and if you really crank the volume, you
| can hear part of the sound it is making.
|
| The rest isn't in a hearable frequency.
|
| They noticed me watching, and the older crow didn't
| immediately believe the younger, more excitable crow when
| it called an alert, but you can see him walk over and
| react when he sees me.
|
| More than anything, he seems mad. :P
|
| I have a relationship with crows here, for a variety of
| reasons, suffice it to say, the older crow knows I am not
| a real threat.
|
| Something to be wary of, but not a real threat.
|
| But, would you tell a child, when seeing a tiger, not to
| be worried? Even if you knew that particular tiger wasn't
| a threat?
|
| Anyhow, after I googled, and yup... ultrasonic hunting.
|
| (And as buddy said, crows, not cows)
|
| Yeah video quality sucks, I couldn't get closer, just
| grabbed my phone, did what I could to record it.
| nullc wrote:
| The video is set private-- too bad, I'd love to see it.
|
| We spend a lot of time watching the deer here and they
| have a multitude of extremely complex social behaviors.
| It's very obvious that the adults teach the children
| foraging patterns.
|
| Including things like the descendants of a particular
| line of does knows how to direct their fawns into our
| fenced off courtyard where the adults can't fit and there
| are plenty of delicious planets-- but other deer don't do
| that with their fawns, presumably due to not having had
| the experience themselves as fawns.
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