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[Carlos del Vaca]

Since Wombat demands entertainment...

This is a giraffe.


Elvis officiates at the Las Vegas Wedding Chapel.


"If you didn't want cat hair on it, you shouldn't have left it here."

[wombat]

Cats. Can't live with them, can't live without them.

I think we have an obligation to try to save species since right now, we are the ones wiping them out. It is simply the general principle that you should clean up your own mess. If you're going to pave over someone else's habitat, you need to at least do something about finding them someplace else to live and getting them there.

And the people who come later might be mad at us about having left them a much less interesting world. I am really mad at the people who killed off the last thylacines and passenger pigeons.  I want to see one, and now I can't.

But basically, for me, it's a totally selgiraffe impulse. I don't want to live in the world that has fewer species of frogs.

Other people can make that 'we might find drugs that save people's lives' arguments if they want. Someone I interviewed lately told me all about how much science had come out of studying the skin of frogs. Also, they are a pretty critical link in the ecosystem, being food for lots of things, and eating lots of bugs that presumably might eat crops or cause disease, etc.  But I can't make those arguments with much conviction because I would want there to be frogs in the world even if they were useless aside from being interesting. Like, say... pandas.

[jay-ell]

Did you know it's The Year of the Frog? Go give money!

I would, but I'm ranidaphobic. 

Sadly, I'm not kidding. 

[wombat]

Seriously? I have never encountered someone with such a phobia. That's interesting.

Of course, if you give money, they're going to take those frogs away from where you might accidentally run into them, and put them in breeding tanks at zoos where you'll never see them.  Doesn't that sound good?

Hey!  Is there such a thing as pandaphobia?

[Victoria Waterfield]

I'm going to ask this in a neutral tone, I really want some response on this question: What is the gain in preserving various animals through captive breeding programs and such? What is potentially being preserved here other than a species? What benefit is there?

My brain is all in generalities on the topic, like "Uhhh, preserving a species is the right thing to do. There may also be some future benefit or knowledge if they are preserved and studied further." Can someone point me to some information or define it a little sharper so my usual response to that kind of fuzzy generality [So what?] can be replaced with education?

Most of the species so far that have been saved from extinction through captive breeding (the California Condor, Przewalski's hoss, Arabian Oryx, European Bison, Pere David's Deer, Round Island Boa, Pink Pigeon...) don't benefit us in any real monetary sense. Obviously the parts of Arizona and California that have wild California Condors now get birdwatchers travelling there and spending mad birdwatcher bills who otherwise would have one less reason to go there, and I assume there is actually a measurable effect on having Pink Pigeons and Mauritius Kestrels and Mauritius Parakeets on the tourism revenue of Mauritius. But if you're looking for purely utilitarian justifications for captive breeding, there really aren't any. I don't think any of the species saved through captive breeding thus far are important enough to their ecosystems that their extinction would cause those ecosystems to completely collapse. That said, quite a few top predators (tigers in particular) may end up requiring captive breeding to survive; their loss probably would have a pretty significant effect on their ecosystems.
The reasons that Wombat gave are basically all the reasons why captive breeding is done, and I think that they're pretty damn good ones. There is also the purely aesthetic consideration - these animals are beautiful, and thus worth preserving. Gerald Durrell compared letting a species go extinct to destroying artworks like the Sistine Chapel or the Mona Lisa. We pay money to preserve those, even though there are very nice copies that give you a far better idea of the original than photographs of extinct animals ever could. And, while the Sistine Chapel took Michaelangelo years of work, the extinction of a species like the Carolina Parakeet or the Thylacine represents millions of years of evolution, of one particular way, one set of talents and tricks for surviving in an environment, gone. I'm extremely happy that there are enough people around who think that preserving Pink Pigeons and California Condors is a worthwhile endeavour. It also makes me very sad, and also angry, that we weren't able to save Steller's Sea Cows and Passenger Pigeons and Great Auks. And Dodos. I really want to see a dodo.

[melack]

This is a piece of driftwood we found camping last summer. It looks exactly like a hoss head.



We had to burn it:



Oh, but before we burned it we dressed it like a homeless gangster:



That was a fun camping trip.

[theinevitable]

Me, my brother, and my aunt during my senior year. I look almost the exact same as then, he looks... a ton older. He is now several inches taller than me.


My cousin. He is 2, but he was younger in this picture I think. They were playing a game which terrified and delighted him where he would put the hat on his mom and she would pretend to be a witch and cackle, so he would grab the hat back off while squealing in horror.


Sun Bears are beautiful. This is at the St Louis zoo.


Gorillas are scary up close.


The largest delivered pizza in the United States. delicious.


My friend took this picture to make fun of our artsy friend who was doing a project on objectification of women. I like it, because it makes me seem stylish as all get out. (Un)fortunately those are my baggiest jeans, so there isn't any fun in the picture.


I forget what the theme of this party was.

[melack]

That last picture looks like Rivers Cuomo had sex with a fairy and a boy scout and... out came you.

[theinevitable]

yeah. that is basically what I was going for.

OH! now I remember. The party was "naughty or nice" and so I was "nice."
boy scout uniform over a dress shirt with a tie, super-thick reading glasses.
Then I put on my girlfriend's fairy wings because... I wanted to.

[Doc]

I don't have any pictures at work but I wanted to totally vouch for frogs as a drug source. More drugs are still developed starting from natural products than from de novo development.
Whether you think giving drug companies more stuff to market or not is up to you of course.

[linnea]

That last picture looks like Rivers Cuomo had sex with a fairy and a boy scout and... out came you.

Hahahah, that is pure gold. Tiny can for both of you. theinev, those are great pictures. Melack, I also like the driftwood bonfire pics.

[wombat]

I don't have any pictures at work but I wanted to totally vouch for frogs as a drug source. .

I think now it's time for Keith to come by and tell us about hallucinogenic toad-licking.  And then for Paul to post some pictures of the time he did it.

[jaydub]

I'm not a fan of steel shot, but I was willing to go along with the restriction in Condor ranges - but now it seems the law applies to .22cal as well!??  WTF?  There's no such thing as non-lead .22 rounds.  Nor is there likely to be.  There's just not enough mass in any other material for bullets of that size to be effective.  Maybe we should make them out of depleted uranium.  That would be popular.

[KeithHernandez]

I am trying to figure out how to put pictures here.  However, about the frog, someone put that npr story about the dog who licks toads on here.

Also, how do I put pictures up?

[melack]

Copy the URL of your image of choice, hit the button that looks like a picture frame (between the red circle and the globe with a file on it). Paste the URL between the two bracketed sections. Ta-da! We've been goatse'd! Also, please don't post goatse.