It's the end of the world as we know it....

[Guest Laurent.]

It's five minutes to midnight...

Doomsday Clock

[Raven Wolf]

It's now PAST the Midnight of the Century...

..."Will there be a dawn?"

[hippyroo]

As someone who lives in Colorado, I can say that you shouldn't let your children play with squirrels, and you should eradicate rats, mice, and prarrie dogs.

[Raven Wolf]

Well, nothing should ever be "eradicated". It upsets the balence of nature, and humans have already done a pretty good job of that.

As terrible as this may sound to say.... such diseases may be Mother Nature's way of "eradicating" US, since humans are the only species on the planet that doesn't seem to have the sense to not outgrow its environment.

[hippyroo]

Hyperbole! I know we could not really get rid of all those nasty rodents. But I don't see portectitin a colony of prarie dogs when there are children living near by. Of course, there are species that would ereadicate humans if they could. I am sure that someday a virus or bacteria will whipe out a large number of people. Those little bugs won't give one thought to destroying us; that's what separates us from them.

[Raven Wolf]

Quite true. And, I read somewhere once just how MANY different species of insects there are in the world. Far more than mammals amphibians reptiles or birds.

[Guest Laurent.]

From Wikipedia:

Estimates of the total number of current species [of insects], including those not yet known to science, range from two million to fifty million, with newer studies favouring a lower figure of about six to ten million.

I'm not sure about how the discussion turned on insects. Virus and bacteria are not insects. And as I said before, I really doubt that a virus or bacteria could kill a large (of course, it depends on your definition of large) portion of the population. Virus and bacteria (all but a few) can usually be killed and the spreading of such an infection can be controlled.

I'd be a lot more concerned if someone developed a biological weapon with prions. Like Peter Watts said in The Time Is Now, prions are composed only of protein, they cannot be "killed" and are all untreatable and fatal.

So we should be a lot more concerned about what Mankind can do with Nature that what Nature itself might do to us. She's usually cool; though I'm not so sure I can say the same about us.

[Guest Laurent.]

And just because it's interesting I searched Wikipedia to find the number of species of the major classes of animals and wanted to share the results:

Mammals species: approximately 5,800 species (including humans)

Insects species (estimate): range from two million to fifty million

Bird species (known): between 9,000-10,000

Reptiles species: approximately 8,200 species

And finally, in case someone was about to suggest that insects could rebel and destroy mankind, be aware that we would be in way over our head if this was the case. Recent figures indicate that there are more than 200 million insects for each human on the planet.

[Raven Wolf]

Yep. That's pretty much what I figured.

Somebody got a flyswatter? LOL

[Guest Laurent.]

Somebody got a flyswatter? LOL

Hahaha! But don't you think it would be pretty hard to swing that thing from under a mountain of 200 000 000 swarming insects?