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Orcas that hunted alongside humans might be extinct

livescience.com

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Re: Orcas that hunted alongside humans might be extinct

#21

Post by datameta »

3seashells wrote: post #16
datameta wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're suggesting we killed them off? Source?

Can we stop this childish games, please? Wherever humanity appears large mammals and birds dissappeared, either directly or indirectly. In this case by predation ofthe food source. And this whole "what extinction, by what humans" is the "what Armenians" of developmental history of our species. The whole rhetoric device is just so boring, the dialog tree looped. It's just a sound of denial now, not really worth engagi…

I'm well aware of the anthropogenic effects on various animal populations especially megafauna, but it's a particular kind of claim to lump an oceanic apex predator with a flightless bird relegated to its island environment. Thanks for the paper, I'll be giving it a thorough read!

Re: Orcas that hunted alongside humans might be extinct

#22

Post by JumpCrisscross »

nend wrote: post #20
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we've been unable to escape this cycle for thousands of years Modern agriculture produces varied, nutritious and plentiful foodstuffs. It also produces nonsense filler. But it’s simply not correct to claim that we’re stuck in the tradeoff our ancestors made when they settled down to farm.

>But it’s simply not correct to claim that we’re stuck in the tradeoff our ancestors made when they settled down to farm. I mean we are because if we go back to hunting/gathering billions of people would die. The point is that that at the time, farming produced worse nutrition, but despite that we couldn't go back once we started. There's a whole lot of other variables today that obviously prevent us from going back…

> if we go back to hunting/gathering billions of people would die

And those who survive wouldn’t be much healthier. This isn’t a tradeoff. It’s a net gain. The original tradeoff was a worse but more-stable food supply. Today we can reliably produce nutritious food. No tradeoff.

Re: Orcas that hunted alongside humans might be extinct

#23

Post by Paianni »

wolverine876 wrote: post #18
Paianni wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can be effective stewards but the civilised world has dug a grave we don't know how to escape from.

> the civilised world has dug a grave we don't know how to escape from We do, but politics is a part of reality - in every situation - and needs to be dealt with. Saying 'we'd solve the problem but for the politics' is like a ship captain saying 'I'd sail but for all that water'. The worst tactic for dealing with politics is to say it's somehow static and hopeless, though political opponents love it.

We don't know how to remove the incentives to wreck ecosystems.

Re: Orcas that hunted alongside humans might be extinct

#24

Post by yieldcrv »

marcosdumay wrote: post #13
yieldcrv wrote: post #11

I gather that global orca populations have a variety of spoken treaties they uphold, so only they pass this information on to each right now While the humans don’t know them anymore, except in a couple small hunting populations Following this theory, I found a similar treaty as the “law” mentioned in this article, amongst some of the Salish people in the Pacific Northwest, a lot of the indigenous groups with their ow…

Well, they seem to innately be disgusted by we as food. They also seem to have some "respect" for we as hunters or something like that (but then, this one is easy to acquire). And differently from almost every other predator on Earth, that "respect" doesn't innately lead to fear. Since both of those are reciprocal, it's as much an innate relation as you can get with thinking social animals.

and yet thats not what we see right now, after a millennium of something different in some regions

there isnt so much collaboration only more of a truce

Re: Orcas that hunted alongside humans might be extinct

#25

Post by quesera »

civilitty wrote: post #15
marcosdumay wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they seem to innately be disgusted by we as food. They also seem to have some "respect" for we as hunters or something like that (but then, this one is easy to acquire). And differently from almost every other predator on Earth, that "respect" doesn't innately lead to fear. Since both of those are reciprocal, it's as much an innate relation as you can get with thinking social animals.

Their usual source of food like seals taste better because they have much more fat to keep them insulated and mariners are generally leaner people. Once they get a taste of the average sedentary American and their corn fed blubber, I’m sure they’ll acquire a taste for manflesh.

If the Orca can get their evolutionary efforts in gear, there's good eatin' to be had.

I'm open to the idea of another species demonstrating a higher position on the food chain. We've been resting on our laurels for too long, ready for an injection of new energy.

Re: Orcas that hunted alongside humans might be extinct

#26

Post by yieldcrv »

quesera wrote: post #25
civilitty wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their usual source of food like seals taste better because they have much more fat to keep them insulated and mariners are generally leaner people. Once they get a taste of the average sedentary American and their corn fed blubber, I’m sure they’ll acquire a taste for manflesh.

If the Orca can get their evolutionary efforts in gear, there's good eatin' to be had. I'm open to the idea of another species demonstrating a higher position on the food chain. We've been resting on our laurels for too long, ready for an injection of new energy.

if someone genetically modifies octopus to survive sexual maturity, we’d probably have a contender

they have a mutation where their digestive tract closes as soon as they can mate, but they reproduce so thats the only thing optimized for in natural selection

fix that and we can see where that cognition goes

Re: Orcas that hunted alongside humans might be extinct

#27

Post by faster_harder »

nend wrote: post #12
Paianni wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can be effective stewards but the civilised world has dug a grave we don't know how to escape from.

I can't remember the name of the book I read this from so grain of salt/do your own research, but it was on the topic of why farming replaced hunting/gathering/migratory patterns. One of the reasons mentioned was because despite hunting/gathering generally providing better nutrition (due to the variability in food), farming produced more calories. So the decision became (these number are made up) "we can farm and pro…

Perhaps the book was "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari? It is a great read!

Re: Orcas that hunted alongside humans might be extinct

#28

Post by acestus5 »

datameta wrote: post #4
acestus5 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They went the way of the Dodo. Wildlife that is not afraid of seamen get killed for food.

You're suggesting we killed them off? Source?

Yes we killed orcas like they were pests, with machine guns and depth charges. We did it for food and fishnets. https://www.sciencenews.org/archive/naval-war-declared-again...

Re: Orcas that hunted alongside humans might be extinct

#29

Post by wolverine876 »

Paianni wrote: post #23
wolverine876 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the civilised world has dug a grave we don't know how to escape from We do, but politics is a part of reality - in every situation - and needs to be dealt with. Saying 'we'd solve the problem but for the politics' is like a ship captain saying 'I'd sail but for all that water'. The worst tactic for dealing with politics is to say it's somehow static and hopeless, though political opponents love it.

We don't know how to remove the incentives to wreck ecosystems.

Again, people love to spread despair! In fact, without much thought probably all of us can remember many examples of doing exactly that.

(And even if we had never done it, that is not a barrier.) The only thing we have to fear is despair. We are wealthy, young, capable and powerful; we can accomplish enormous things. No wonder the status quo loves to spread despair - they have no other defense: Imagine if people left behind all that despair and started acting!

Re: Orcas that hunted alongside humans might be extinct

#30

Post by raffraffraff »

datameta wrote: post #4
acestus5 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They went the way of the Dodo. Wildlife that is not afraid of seamen get killed for food.

You're suggesting we killed them off? Source?

You won't find documented evidence for all of the species we've killed off, but that doesn't mean we haven't been doing it since prehistoric times. Within living memory (and just outside of it) humans have made many species extinct simply for fun. Buffalo had an extremely narrow escape. We've killed off species by not managing their numbers. We've killed off yet more because we saw them as pests. We've also killed off species to make way for others, or to kill a food source for a species (or race) that we didn't like. Extinction is something were fucking good at. Demanding documented evidence for it is a bit like the "clearing the decks" logical fallacy. I would err on the side of assuming that extinctions are caused by humans, rather than assuming that they're not.

However, if there is documented proof it would make interesting reading, so...

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