4 ms·

That Bachman's warbler is beautiful. Such a shame. > “The bird had a ‘buzzy’ song, and the song added to the beauty of the bird, and when combined that added t

by bmitc 3y ago

That Bachman's warbler is beautiful. Such a shame. > “The bird had a ‘buzzy’ song, and the song added to the beauty of the bird, and when combined that added to the magic of North Carolina. We lost a little magic when we lost the species. And what’s really sad is that the Bachman’s warbler was abundant at the turn of the 20thcentury, but by 1950 it was noted as one of the rarest birds in North America.” This hurts, especially knowing that it's a story that we've unfortunately told a thousand times in the past hundred years.

m4jor 3y ago
Isn't this just how life on Earth works tho? >Of all species that have existed on Earth, 99.9 percent are now extinct.
- bmitc 3y ago
  No, not really. The rate of extinction has skyrocketed above the baseline extinction rate in the last 100-200 years, and it has a very specific and known cause: human industrialization and spread.
  - ravetcofx 3y ago
    What people fail to grasp is we are a great mass extinction event, and it is a fairly conscious effort that we're not stopping it.
    - queuebert 3y ago
      Hence the term "anthropocene" for the current era.
    - Jensson 3y ago
      Humans already started it when we killed off all the largest land animals outside of Africa 13 000 years ago. You know Elephants and Mammoths were found all over earth before then. Thank humans for the lack of Elephants in America.
      - ethbr1 3y ago
        Still have bison (barely) though!
        bmitc 3y ago
        As far as I know, there's only one group of pure-bred bison. All of the other bison in the U.S. are effectively genetic hybrids between bison and cattle.
        ethbr1 3y ago
        It looks like you might be referring to the Texas State Bison Herd. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison#Texas_State_Bison_Herd https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison#Texas_State_B... There were other, pure bred herds (e.g. Yellowstone, Canadian, etc). And as this points out, the remnants of hybridization efforts were minimal, even in the direct Goodnight, Jones, and Bedson herds: >> "These brief experiments form the basis for the controversy surrounding cattle genetic introgression in bison today. A study conducted for her Doctoral Dissertation by Lauren Dobson of Texas A&M University concluded that bison descended from those herds have the equivalent of 1 percent cattle genetic introgression within their genome." https://bisoncentral.com/advantage-item/ranchers-role-in-bison-restoration/ https://bisoncentral.com/advantage-item/ranchers-role-in-bis... At the end of the day, bison didn't take (genetically or economically) to hybridization, as the hybrids were less hardy than pure bred bison.
        jfengel 3y ago
        Bonus: the near extinction of the bison was deliberate, to eliminate the native American cultures that depended on them. An extinction twofer!
      - hnburnsy 3y ago
        So which humans in the Americas killed off the roaming elephants or mammoths?
        pvaldes 3y ago
  - somenameforme 3y ago
    He's presumably referring to a geologic timescale. This [1] graph is telling. There have been numerous extinction events, even before the existence of humanity. So the survival rate of species looks much more like a sine wave than it does some sort of linear graph. Life, even on a species level, is brief. It creates an interesting balance between humanity and nature. The one solution to this problem is to expand - make life multiplanetary, and not just human life. Human industrialization is certainly causing plentiful destruction, yet it will also likely be the one thing that may possibly save the lives of countless species. So for instance the most popularly known mass extinction event was the dinosaurs, like caused by an asteroid impact some ~15km large. If there was such an asteroid on an impact course today, we could probably detect it a bit before it impacted - but not do a whole heck of a lot more. We could launch every single nuke we have and it would be like throwing baseballs at a semi-truck. By contrast when it lands, it would be the equivalent of hundreds of millions of nukes going off, and the ash of the impact would completely blot out the sky. Those who survived the initial impact would die from either starvation, freezing, or lack of oxygen as all plants and wildlife gradually died off. Anyhow, space tech is important. And we're only able to achieve such thanks to human industrialization and spread. Paradoxical, but such is the nature of all technological progress which invariably brings problems ultimately only solved by even more advances which, again, bring their own problems. It makes life feel like a game, or maybe we just make games modeled after life. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Extinction_intensity.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Extinction_intensity.svg [from the page at] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event
    - bmitc 3y ago
      > He's presumably referring to a geologic timescale. This [1] graph is telling. There have been numerous extinction events, even before the existence of humanity. All of those were caused by global Earth-level geological events or extraterrestrial objects such as massive asteroids. The latest extinction event is caused by a single species. It is absolutely an exceptional extinction event and the only one of its kind. > Human industrialization is certainly causing plentiful destruction, yet it will also likely be the one thing that may possibly save the lives of countless species. Technology will never not create more problems as it attempts to solve problems caused by other technology.
- pvaldes 3y ago
  > Isn't this just how life on Earth works tho? Is more like how dead on Earth works If the goal is returning the planet to their original status of lifeless floating rock for billions of years, we are doing a spectacular job in just a glimpse of time. I can imagine how puzzling this will appear in the fossil record some millions years from now.
29athrowaway 3y ago
-- is ++ was
- dotancohen 3y ago
  In that sentence, "is" refers to the loss. The word does not refer to the species.
heartbreak 3y ago
I wonder what the story is behind the Getty photo of it in that article. It doesn’t look like a photo that could have been taken in the 60s or the 80s. Does that mean it’s misidentified on Getty?
- bmitc 3y ago
  That's an interesting point. I'm not sure as I'm not familiar with the bird. After some searching it seems it could be a different apecies in that photo. It seems the depictions of the Bachman's warbler show it to have more black on top. I have no idea though.
- burkaman 3y ago
  It's a different species, I think a yellow-browed warbler (see here for example https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/yellow-browed-warbler https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/yellow-browed-war...). The Bachman's warbler looks pretty different: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachman%27s_warbler#/media/File:Dendroica_bachmanii.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachman%27s_warbler#/media/Fil.... I can't find that photo on Getty so I'm not sure if it's mislabeled, or the editor just searched for "warbler", or got it from somewhere else and forgot to change the photo credit from an article template or something. Edit: It seems to be from Shutterstock and is labeled correctly https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/yellowbrowed-warbler-phylloscopus-inornatus-on-branch-356073638 https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/yellowbrowed-warble.... My best guess is an overworked web producer was told to find a photo for this article, searched for "warbler" in some integrated stock photo search engine, picked this one and copy/pasted the wrong credit.
  - hm-nah 3y ago
    It looked different.
  - jehb 3y ago
    I went on a microcrusade of sending correction requests last week after a series of articles (coincidentally, also in North Carolina and also about macrobiology) were published about a chigger-borne illness coming to the state, but all of the stories used a lede image of a red velvet mite, not a chigger. The reason? It's one of the first images that pop up when you punch 'chigger' into Google, and it appears to be licensed (and mislabeled) by Getty. Tracking the image back to its original source, it was clearly identified as a red velvet mite. I wish publications wouldn't do this. A completely random lede image would be better than showing a picture of an animal that people will now believe is the one the article was talking about.

by bmitc 3y ago

m4jor 3y ago

Isn't this just how life on Earth works tho? >Of all species that have existed on Earth, 99.9 percent are now extinct.

bmitc 3y ago
No, not really. The rate of extinction has skyrocketed above the baseline extinction rate in the last 100-200 years, and it has a very specific and known cause: human industrialization and spread.
- ravetcofx 3y ago
  What people fail to grasp is we are a great mass extinction event, and it is a fairly conscious effort that we're not stopping it.
  - queuebert 3y ago
    Hence the term "anthropocene" for the current era.
  - Jensson 3y ago
    Humans already started it when we killed off all the largest land animals outside of Africa 13 000 years ago. You know Elephants and Mammoths were found all over earth before then. Thank humans for the lack of Elephants in America.
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      Still have bison (barely) though!
      - bmitc 3y ago
        As far as I know, there's only one group of pure-bred bison. All of the other bison in the U.S. are effectively genetic hybrids between bison and cattle.
        ethbr1 3y ago
        It looks like you might be referring to the Texas State Bison Herd. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison#Texas_State_Bison_Herd https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison#Texas_State_B... There were other, pure bred herds (e.g. Yellowstone, Canadian, etc). And as this points out, the remnants of hybridization efforts were minimal, even in the direct Goodnight, Jones, and Bedson herds: >> "These brief experiments form the basis for the controversy surrounding cattle genetic introgression in bison today. A study conducted for her Doctoral Dissertation by Lauren Dobson of Texas A&M University concluded that bison descended from those herds have the equivalent of 1 percent cattle genetic introgression within their genome." https://bisoncentral.com/advantage-item/ranchers-role-in-bison-restoration/ https://bisoncentral.com/advantage-item/ranchers-role-in-bis... At the end of the day, bison didn't take (genetically or economically) to hybridization, as the hybrids were less hardy than pure bred bison.
      - jfengel 3y ago
        Bonus: the near extinction of the bison was deliberate, to eliminate the native American cultures that depended on them. An extinction twofer!
    - hnburnsy 3y ago
      So which humans in the Americas killed off the roaming elephants or mammoths?
      - pvaldes 3y ago
- somenameforme 3y ago
  He's presumably referring to a geologic timescale. This [1] graph is telling. There have been numerous extinction events, even before the existence of humanity. So the survival rate of species looks much more like a sine wave than it does some sort of linear graph. Life, even on a species level, is brief. It creates an interesting balance between humanity and nature. The one solution to this problem is to expand - make life multiplanetary, and not just human life. Human industrialization is certainly causing plentiful destruction, yet it will also likely be the one thing that may possibly save the lives of countless species. So for instance the most popularly known mass extinction event was the dinosaurs, like caused by an asteroid impact some ~15km large. If there was such an asteroid on an impact course today, we could probably detect it a bit before it impacted - but not do a whole heck of a lot more. We could launch every single nuke we have and it would be like throwing baseballs at a semi-truck. By contrast when it lands, it would be the equivalent of hundreds of millions of nukes going off, and the ash of the impact would completely blot out the sky. Those who survived the initial impact would die from either starvation, freezing, or lack of oxygen as all plants and wildlife gradually died off. Anyhow, space tech is important. And we're only able to achieve such thanks to human industrialization and spread. Paradoxical, but such is the nature of all technological progress which invariably brings problems ultimately only solved by even more advances which, again, bring their own problems. It makes life feel like a game, or maybe we just make games modeled after life. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Extinction_intensity.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Extinction_intensity.svg [from the page at] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event
  - bmitc 3y ago
    > He's presumably referring to a geologic timescale. This [1] graph is telling. There have been numerous extinction events, even before the existence of humanity. All of those were caused by global Earth-level geological events or extraterrestrial objects such as massive asteroids. The latest extinction event is caused by a single species. It is absolutely an exceptional extinction event and the only one of its kind. > Human industrialization is certainly causing plentiful destruction, yet it will also likely be the one thing that may possibly save the lives of countless species. Technology will never not create more problems as it attempts to solve problems caused by other technology.
pvaldes 3y ago
> Isn't this just how life on Earth works tho? Is more like how dead on Earth works If the goal is returning the planet to their original status of lifeless floating rock for billions of years, we are doing a spectacular job in just a glimpse of time. I can imagine how puzzling this will appear in the fossil record some millions years from now.

29athrowaway 3y ago

-- is ++ was

dotancohen 3y ago
In that sentence, "is" refers to the loss. The word does not refer to the species.

heartbreak 3y ago

I wonder what the story is behind the Getty photo of it in that article. It doesn’t look like a photo that could have been taken in the 60s or the 80s. Does that mean it’s misidentified on Getty?

bmitc 3y ago
That's an interesting point. I'm not sure as I'm not familiar with the bird. After some searching it seems it could be a different apecies in that photo. It seems the depictions of the Bachman's warbler show it to have more black on top. I have no idea though.
burkaman 3y ago
It's a different species, I think a yellow-browed warbler (see here for example https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/yellow-browed-warbler https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/yellow-browed-war...). The Bachman's warbler looks pretty different: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachman%27s_warbler#/media/File:Dendroica_bachmanii.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachman%27s_warbler#/media/Fil.... I can't find that photo on Getty so I'm not sure if it's mislabeled, or the editor just searched for "warbler", or got it from somewhere else and forgot to change the photo credit from an article template or something. Edit: It seems to be from Shutterstock and is labeled correctly https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/yellowbrowed-warbler-phylloscopus-inornatus-on-branch-356073638 https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/yellowbrowed-warble.... My best guess is an overworked web producer was told to find a photo for this article, searched for "warbler" in some integrated stock photo search engine, picked this one and copy/pasted the wrong credit.
- hm-nah 3y ago
  It looked different.
- jehb 3y ago
  I went on a microcrusade of sending correction requests last week after a series of articles (coincidentally, also in North Carolina and also about macrobiology) were published about a chigger-borne illness coming to the state, but all of the stories used a lede image of a red velvet mite, not a chigger. The reason? It's one of the first images that pop up when you punch 'chigger' into Google, and it appears to be licensed (and mislabeled) by Getty. Tracking the image back to its original source, it was clearly identified as a red velvet mite. I wish publications wouldn't do this. A completely random lede image would be better than showing a picture of an animal that people will now believe is the one the article was talking about.