October 13, 2006

BLAH

Lileks has a good bleat today and a link to an article called "Imagine Earth Without People". Take a deep breath and dive in. Now, I'm no biologist, but you know what else earth probably wouldn't have if it didn't have people? Pandas.

Posted by Sarah at October 13, 2006 09:24 AM | TrackBack
Comments

Pandas? What are you talking about?

Posted by: Will at October 13, 2006 06:55 PM

Panda females reject their young. Humans have to force pandas to mate and then keep the infant panda alive with great effort. Pandas don't breed well on their own, but we want to keep them alive because they're cute and fuzzy.

Posted by: Sarah at October 13, 2006 08:23 PM

Wow, that's pretty dumb Sarah. How do you think Pandas have existed for hundreds of thousands of years?

The worst part about this post is now I have to think about humans forcing pandas to mate.

Posted by: Will at October 14, 2006 03:54 AM

And like the article hypothetically daydreamed, if all humans disappeared right this second, there'd be about 1000 pandas who fight when they mate and reject their infant young and spend 14 hours a day eating bamboo instead of mating. Maybe their numbers could bounce back eventually, but zoos are the ones fighting to keep panda numbers up right now.

http://www.fws.gov/species/species_accounts/bio_pand.html
http://www.usaweekend.com/01_issues/010624/010624panda.html

So maybe my offhanded snide comment wasn't 100% perfect, but it's not entirely without merit.

Posted by: Sarah at October 14, 2006 08:05 AM

Yeah, it's too bad we've nearly driven them to extinction. If I were a right-winger trying to back up my position, I'd just say that all the animals would be dead anyway if it wasn't for Noah and his ark. Now there's some hypothetical daydreaming you can sink your teeth into.

Posted by: Will at October 14, 2006 05:01 PM

Will, that last comment makes absolutely no sense. Wanna try again?

Posted by: piercello at October 14, 2006 05:30 PM

Sorry I don't fit into your stereotype, Will, but I don't believe in the Ark.

Posted by: Sarah at October 14, 2006 06:00 PM

It's hard to pigeon-hole you Sarah... I hate that... it makes your blog way too addictive.

Posted by: Will at October 14, 2006 07:43 PM