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Quotes About Species

Emergence and spillover are distinct concepts but interconnected. "Spillover" is the term used by disease ecologists (it has a different use for economists) to denote the moment when a pathogen passes from members of one species, as host, into members of another. It's a focused event. Hendra virus spilled over into Drama Series (from bats) and then into Vic Rail (from horses) in September 1994. Emergence is a process, a trend.
~ David Quammen
Saying no to the inevitable is one of the few precious ways our own species redeems itself from oblivion- or at least tries to.
~ David Quammen
The order Chiroptera (the "hand-wing" creatures) encompasses 1,116 species, which amounts to 25 percent of all the recognized species of mammals. To say again: One in every four species of mammal is a bat. Such
~ David Quammen
Bats come in many, many forms. The order Chiroptera (the "hand-wing" creatures) encompasses 1,116 species, which amounts to 25 percent of all the recognized species of mammals. To say again: One in every four species of mammal is a bat. Such diversity might suggest that bats don't harbor more than their share of viruses; it could be, instead, that their viral burden is proportional to their share of all mammal diversity, and thus just seems surprisingly large.
~ David Quammen
It is a conflict between man and his parasites27 which, in a constant environment, would tend to result in a virtual equilibrium, a climax state, in which both species would survive indefinitely. Man, however, lives in an environment constantly being changed by his own activities, and few of his diseases have attained such an equilibrium.
~ David Quammen
Not only are islands impoverished relative to the mainlands, but small islands are more severely impoverished than large ones. That bit of insight became famed as the species-area relationship.
~ David Quammen
the most serious outbreak on the planet earth is that of the species Homo sapiens.
~ David Quammen
We are disclosing animals, wired for unburdening. It's what we do as a species. When I am being told, I listen, mindful of the honor, remembering all the while that the shore would be mistaken to believe that the waves lap up against him because he is so beautiful.
~ David Rakoff
Bletchley said, sweating freshly in the heat of the bus. 'Some of the species adapt, others don't. In effect, when coal is acquired by wholly mechanical means or perhaps isn't even needed at all, people like Batty and his brothers, and Stringer, won't have a function. And when the function ceases so does the species, or those parts of it that can't recognize or create a further function.
~ David Storey
Human domination over nature is quite simply an illusion, a passing dream by a naive species. It is an illusion that cost us much, ensnared us in our own designs, given us a few boasts to make about our courage and genius, but all the same it is an illusion.
~ David Suzuki
We can't see around walls, we can't see heat or cold, we can't see electricity or radio signals, we can't see at a distance. It is a sense so limited that we might as well not have it, yet we have evolved to depend so heavily on it as a species that all other perception has atrophied.
~ David Wong
The female of the species is just as prey to the passions of the flesh as the male, and with greater cause, as it is her responsibility to propagate
~ Deanna Raybourn
Intelligence is the ability of a species to live in harmony with its environment.
~ Paul Watson
I absolutely don't think a sentient artificial intelligence is going to wage war against the human species.
~ Daniel H. Wilson
All the things that made us basically nasty, rapacious, competitive as a species are not necessarily hard-coded into whatever passes for the DNA of artificial intelligence.
~ Robert J. Sawyer
If we consider the superiority of the human species, the size of its brain, its powers of thinking, language and organization, we can say this: were there the slightest possibility that another rival or superior species might appear, on earth or elsewhere, man would use every means at his disposal to destroy it.
~ Jean Baudrillard
If there is a species which is more maltreated than children, then it must be their toys, which they handle in an incredibly off-hand manner.... Toys are thus the end point in that long chain in which all the conditions of despotic high-handedness are in play which enchain beings one to another, from one species to another--cruel divinities to their sacrificial victims, from masters to slaves, from adults to children, and from children to their objects.
~ Jean Baudrillard
Life is neither static nor unchanging. With no individuality, there can be no change, no adaptation and, in an inherently changing world, any species unable to adapt is also doomed.
~ Jean M. Auel
Clusters of distant lights was the view of Mankind that he liked the best. The lights had the archaic charm of little fires on a plain, and the frailty about them, if it did not excuse anything, at least explained a lot of Man's stubborn ruthlessness. Mankind had not started the mess that was life, after all. And on the whole, it had been an interesting species to be a part of, the girls especially, as long as you remembered to watch your back.
~ Jean-Christophe Valtat
La divergence entre l'Homme et les Chimpanzés, ou entre l'Homme et le couple Chimpanzé-Gorille, ne date que de 7 millions d'années environ
~ Jean-Jacques Hublin
Dans les régions du génome où les séquences d'ADN des deux espèces peuvent être alignées (95 % de l'ADN), 98,8 % du génome de l'Homme et du Chimpanzé sont semblables. Notre humanité réside dans 1,2 % de nos gènes.
~ Jean-Jacques Hublin
Les spécialistes reconnaissent de six à onze espèces d'Hominines antérieures à l'homme.
~ Jean-Jacques Hublin
Le développement de l'encéphale s'est surtout accéléré au cours des derniers 500 000 ans pour donner à Néandertal le plus gros cerveau qu'un hominine ait jamais possédé. Les 1 400 à 1 500 cm3 du cerveau de nombreux néandertaliens dépassent les 1 350 cm3 de la moyenne actuelle.
~ Jean-Jacques Hublin
That all species are related in the flow of life and death is a keystone of evolutionary theory. The grandeur displayed in this view of life is ecological in character.
~ Elizabeth A. Johnson