Quotes About Species

Ten percent of the big fish still remain. There are still some blue whales. There are still some krill in Antarctica. There are a few oysters in Chesapeake Bay. Half the coral reefs are still in pretty good shape, a jeweled belt around the middle of the planet. There's still time, but not a lot, to turn things around.

The real threat to whales is whaling, which has endangered many whale species.

What we should really be thinking about is what it would look like for a truly intelligent technological species to be interacting with their planet's atmosphere.

Crime takes the pulse of a culture. It tells us the truth about us as a species.

In our lifetime, we're going to see fifty percent of the world's species go extinct. We're already seeing this radical rise in the world's temperature that was predicted.

Of all the species of literary composition, perhaps biography is the most delightful. The attention concentrated on one individual gives a unity to the materials of which it is composed, which is wanting in general history.

Biologists will teach us that the survival of the species depends on cooperation, not competition.

The fact is that Legalman's financial survival depends upon his ability to kill deals, and the creatures who spawn those deals are more often than not salesmen, businessmen, and entrepreneurs. Where Legalman is concerned, we're talking about a literal life-or-death matter here. After all, if every deal closed smoothly, he could become an endangered species.

It does create an odd dynamic," said Hollus. "Violence is required for intelligence, intelligence gives rise to the ability to destroy one's species, and only through intelligence can one overcome the violence that gave rise to that intelligence.

Neanderthals are human," said Mary. "We're congeners; we all belong to the genus Homo. Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo antecessor—if you believe that's a legitimate species—Homo heidelbergensis, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo sapiens. We're all humans." "I concede the point," said Krieger, with a nod. "What should we call ourselves to distinguish us from them?" "Homo sapiens sapiens," said Mary.

That natural selection can produce changes within a type is disputed by no one, not even the staunchest creationist. But that it can transform one species into another — that, in fact, has never been observed.

It may be that in the long run, patriarchy has not been a successful adaptation and will lead to the extinction of the species. As we look around the world at the threats to the ecosphere from unsustainable human systems deeply rooted in patriarchy's domination/subordination dynamic, that's not only plausible but increasingly likely. That suggests that patriarchy is an evolutionary dead-end. Human

In the 200,000 years of the species Homo sapiens, patriarchy accounts for less than 5% of our evolutionary history. If we consider the 2.5 million years of the Homo genus, our direct ancestors, patriarchy is less than 0.5% of our history.

Every species, from the blue whale to the fruit fly, will struggle, with every fiber of its being, to preserve its own existence. And the more I studied them, even the single-celled diatoms, the more beautiful they all appeared to me. Life is a miracle—an absolute fucking miracle—in every form it takes, and I just never felt right again about taking any of it unnecessarily.

human beings are a species splendid in their array of moral equipment, tragic in their propensity to misuse it, and pathetic in their ignorance of the misuse.

Contact with the skin of a dead animal made it possible to communicate with all other animal species. It was the lingua franca of metamorphosis.

it is a melancholy truth that the behaviour of many among us might serve as the severest satire upon the [human] species. It has been a compound of inconsistency, falsehood, cowardice, selfishness and dissimulation.

on the Neanderthals. Then

And, indeed, the most obvious lesson of the work as a whole, for statesmen and others alike, is the sobering one that as long as our species remains, we must reckon on a human nature that will again and again, when given the chance, overpower the fragile restraints of law and justice.

Today we call our subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens, or "Wise, Wise Man.

The nobility of the human race lies in our drive to know, and our uniqueness as a species is reflected in the success we've achieved, after millennia of effort, in deciphering the puzzle that is nature.

I am a member of a fragile species, still new to the earth, the youngest creatures of any scale, here only a few moments as evolutionary time is measured, a juvenile species, a child of a species. We are only tentatively set in place, error prone, at risk of fumbling, in real danger at the moment of leaving behind only a thin layer of of our fossils, radioactive at that.

Animals have genes for altruism, and those genes have been selected in the evolution of many creatures because of the advantage they confer for the continuing survival of the species.

As evolutionary time is measured, we have only just turned up and have hardly had time to catch breath, still marveling at our thumbs, still learning to use the brand-new gift of language. Being so young, we can be excused all sorts of folly and can permit ourselves the hope that someday, as a species, we will begin to grow up.