Mbwuto

So last night I got to see Richard Leakey give a speech at my school. For those of you who don't know him, he's a ridiculously famous anthropologist and environmentalist.

He brought up an interesting point about bio diversity. The earth is warming(we can all admit this regardless of the why), and in such times animals naturally migrate to more hospitable climates. Only...they can't anymore. Sure birds can fly, but mammals can no longer relocate. Be it cities or fenced in farmlands animals no longer have the ability to migrate properly.

The other interesting idea he brought up was the notion that without sympathy and cooperation humans wouldn't have been able to survive up until now. Why? Bipedalism. If you have four legs and wound one, you can get around alright. If you have two and wound one...well you're out of luck. He described bipedalism as a disadvantage from an evolutionary standpoint. How many here have broken a leg or an ankle? How many are in wheelchairs or use canes? In pre-historic times, unless someone cared for you, you were good as dead. His argument, never explicitly stated, seemed to be that sympathy developed, in part, as a survival mechanism for the race as a whole. He gave his own case as an example. If no one had pulled him out of a plane wreck, after his legs were severely wounded, he would be dead right now. Instead someone stuck around in the crash to save him.

So my question to the masses is, how do we keep bio diversity as the earth warms? Do you care?

Do you think cooperation and sympathy are signs of intelligence or evolutionary responses?

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- people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of life and given up trying to be normal or decent.

George Orwell