Quotes About Species

Ecosystems function locally, not globally. Local extinction, the disappearance of a species within, say, the woodlot down the street, or even your front yard, is now predicted to compromise the productivity of that woodlot and your yard.

One small 15 by 15 foot garden in a courtyard in the center of Dover, Delaware, produced 150 monarch adults in a single season by including several Asclepias syriaca plants as one of its species.

If our landscaping choices can rebuild populations of a butterfly thought to be extinct without listing it under the Endangered Species Act and without investing one dime of limited conservation funds—that is, without even trying—imagine what we can do if we include conservation as one of the goals of our gardens.

The history of human use of plants, mushrooms, and animals for their psychedelic effects is far older than written history, and probably predates the appearance of the modern human species.

That was harsh. I didn't think my personality was species dooming. Not necessarily.

According to a report in the New York Times of November 16, 1999, recent research suggests that even without the white hunters, the buffalo would have become extinct. Among the factors involved in the decline of the species:

I define masculinity as that part of a man that equips him to survive as an individual, clan, and species. Without this masculine energy we would have all become extinct eons ago. Masculinity empowers a man to create and produce. It also empowers him provide for and protect those who are important to him.

In the end I came to see that the true prophet of the modern world was Samuel Butler: when he suggested that the machine was an evolutionary development, destined to supersede man as the dominant species and reduce him to greenfly status, the status of machine-minder, homo mechanicus instead of homo sapiens ; and to modify his nature accordingly.

What we call patriotism, in other words, is a calculable force which, released by a predictable situation, will animate man in a manner no different from other territorial species.

Since the war, we're the only intelligent species left in the universe, therefore we think everything in this universe has to conform to our paradigm of what makes sense. Do you have any idea how arrogant that view is and on how little of this universe we base it?

Gods, the pamphlets asserted, were not supernatural beings, but tenuously living things, like ethereal plants, that evolved in concert with the human species. We were simply their medium—our brains and flesh the soil in which they sprouted and grew.

When you reach the point at which even the most trivial acts are punishable by the death of the species, then obviously, obviously, you're at a critical juncture, a different kind of point of no return.

In the evolution of species, protective armor has almost always spelled disaster. Although there are a few exceptions, the shell most often becomes a dead end for the animal encased in it; it slows the creature down, making it hard to forage for food and making it a target for fast-moving predators. Animals that take to the sea or sky, and that move swiftly and unpredictably, are infinitely more powerful and secure.

Let us call the collection of these forces that push and pull at us from deep within human nature. Human nature stems from the particular wiring of our brains, the configuration of our nervous system, and the way we humans process emotions, all of which developed and emerged over the course of the five million years or so of our evolution as a species.

the struggle [for existence] almost invariably will be most severe between the individuals of the same species, for they frequent the same districts, require the same food, and are exposed to the same dangers. CHARLES DARWIN, On the Origin of Species (1859)

evolution is about reproduction, passing on copies of genes.

Stick recording electrodes into numerous species' amygdalaefn9 and see when neurons there have action potentials; this turns out to be when the animal is being aggressive.fn10 In a related approach, determine which brain regions consume extra oxygen or glucose, or synthesize certain activity-related proteins, during aggression—the amygdala tops the list.

Man is the only animal species capable of conceiving the notion of his own disappearance, and the only one capable of the despair that notion brings. What a strange race: so savagely determined to destroy itself, so savagely intent on preserving itself.

Species evolve to meet the environment. An intelligent species changes the environment to suit itself. As soon as a species becomes intelligent, it should stop evolving.

But man, it's a start! said Whitbread. There's got to be a way— I am not a man, and there doesn't got to be a way. And that's another reason I don't want contact between your species and mine. You're all Crazy Eddies. You think every problem has a solution.

How do you tell an antagonized kzin from an unantagonized one?

I just wondered if the puppeteers didn't get their name by playing god with the species around them. They've treated humans and kzinti like puppets; there's no denying that.

It—it ought to be pretty well closed off for an intelligent species, she said. Species evolve to meet the environment. An intelligent species changes the environment to suit itself. As soon as a species becomes intelligent, it should stop evolving.

I try to avoid eating endangered species, let alone mythical ones. You