The Sixth Extinction

Biodiversity is a must. We must preserve as many species of plants and animals as we can, or it will hurt our future survival. Because disease has a way of developing in any too high concentration of species, we run the risk of mass deaths of plant and animal species, especially those raised for commercial purposes. This would be death for us too. So it is paramount to maintain species diversity, and viably healthy populations, for our own survival. Also, Nature is beautiful

So we may be in our planet's sixth extinction, on par with the death of the dinosaurs, except this one is of our own doing. With 90 percent of the world's forests destroyed, and heavy pollution of our oceans and fresh waters, and air, we may be faced with our own extinction in the bargain. This would be a bad end to such a great promise of a just awakening consciousness of humankind. We need our animal and plant friends.

Please see the many related links, scroll down at: http://www.well.com/user/davidu/extinction.html
Also, New Scientist artile: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994797

Biodiversity and World Map
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/science/projects/worldmap/

more Biodiversity on Web
http://biodiversity.uno.edu/

KOKO the gorilla said her tooth hurts. Of course, her human caretakers had it extracted. But that is a species jump to make that communications!

Here's the CNN.com article: "Koko the gorilla calls for the dentist"
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/West/08/08/koko.health.ap/index.html

I'm impressed!

Ivan

Children Create New Sign Language

Language? It's only logical!

Monkeys 'grasp basic grammar'

Chimps are logical too!.. sort of.

J

Nets 'kill 800 cetaceans a day'

This BBC science article shows what a tragedy fishing nets pose the whale and dolphin populations of the seas. There are solutions to this, ways to make the nets less deadly. We must do this to safeguard our water friends.

Ivan