Quotes About Species

A]ny species that exempts itself from the rules of competition ends up destroying the community in order to support its own expansion.

But on the other hand, there is no doubt that honeybees are a non-native species. It also seems to me common sense that flowers can produce only so much nectar, and that there can therefore be only so many bees in a particular habitat. Something has to give, and that thing is likely to be the local flower-visiting insects.

The fight-or-flight dichotomy is the appropriate set of choices for any creature faced with danger other than that which comes from its own species. When we examine the responses of creatures confronted with aggression from their own species, the set of options expands to include posturing and submission.

The fight-or-flight dichotomy is the appropriate set of choices for any creature faced with danger other than that which comes from its own species.

Many species undergo an additional partial molt each year, involving just some head and body feathers. This most often occurs in the late winter or early spring and is called the pre-alternate molt, resulting in the alternate plumage. Many species, but not all, have an alternate plumage. Because this is only a partial molt (not involving all feathers), the new feathers of the alternate plumage are worn alongside the older feathers of the basic plumage.

One clue, which applies to virtually all species and can be very useful in late summer and fall, is that juveniles, having just fledged, are then in very uniform fresh plumage, while adults are actively molting or showing a mixture of old and new plumage.

The fact is that no species has ever had such wholesale control over everything on earth, living or dead, as we now have. That lays upon us, whether we like it or not, an awesome responsibility. In our hands now lies not only our own future, but that of all other living creatures with whom we share the earth.

The greater the biodiversity, the more secure will be all life on Earth,

For life to truly thrive on this planet, there must be immense biodiversity. Only when billions of different individual organisms make the most of every resource and opportunity they encounter, and millions of species lead lives that interlock so that they sustain each other, can the planet run efficiently. The greater the biodiversity, the more secure will be all life on Earth, including ourselves. Yet the way we humans are now living on Earth is sending biodiversity into a decline.

I think no innocent species of wit or pleasantry should be suppressed; and that a good pun may be admitted among the smaller excellencies of lively conversation.

The notion that we've made vast moral progress and are now a less violent species is belied by our awesome powers of destruction, our military might, police forces as well-armed as soldiers. Without the threat of such violent force behind it, all law would be meaningless. I prefer stories that remind us of that. At its core, history is a story of violence at work. It all comes down to the old saw that, however much you can gain with a kind word, you can gain more with a kind word and a gun.

At the most practical level, a reformed, enlightened, hopeful Catholic Church is essential to the thriving — even to the survival — of the human species.

While we advance exponentially in technological capability, our spiritual or 'biological technology,' our maturity as a species, is still two or three thousand years in the past. This is because many of us live according to ideas that were original and groundbreaking... in 500 B.C. Most people are unwilling or unable to ask the hard questions- as in, why do we do things the way we do, and what will the end results be?" (p.120) Generation Hex

Unfortunately, we are a species with schizoid tendencies, and like an old lady who has to share her house with a growing and destructive group of teenagers, Gaia grows angry, and if they do not mend their ways she will evict them.

The aristocracy and the ordinary people were like different species. A commoner might rarely be elevated to nobility by acquiring great wealth or political influence, but the easiest way into the aristocracy – then as now – was through marriage. Most aristocrats married other ones, but occasionally a commoner might get lucky, just as sometimes happens today. Many

Many thinkers have recognized for a long time now that if we do not eliminate war, war will eliminate us. Preventing violence, then, is simply the necessary prerequisite for the survival of our species. It is a project of evolutionary significance.

I had forgotten the number one truth I had discovered last year in Stockholm, and which should be axiomatic for anyone having to interview or get tangled up with royal persons: it is courtiers who make royalty frightened and frightening; taken neat like whiskey they are perfectly all right. This does not mean that they are as others, but you can get on to plain terms with the species, like an ornithologist making friends with some rare wild duck.

themselves to remember the truth, and not the sentimentalities with which we all shield ourselves from the horrors of which we are capable … in times of war we revert, as a species, to the past, and are permitted to be brutal and cruel. It is for this reason, and of course others, that a great many people enjoy war. But this is one of the facts about war that is not often talked about.

They have not yet evolved into an understanding of their individual selves as merely parts of a whole, first of all humanity, their own species, let alone achieving a conscious knowledge of humanity as part of Nature; plants, animals, birds, insects reptiles, and all these together making a small chord in the Cosmic Harmony

In times of war, as everyone knows who has lived through one, or talked to soldiers when they are allowing themselves to remember the truth, and not the sentimentalities with which we all shield ourselves from the horrors of which we re capable --- in times of war we revert, as a species, to the past and are permitted to be brutal and cruel. It is for this reason, and of course others, that a great many people enjoy war. But this is one of the facts about war that is not often talked about.

Because the children of two people from different races were fertile, Buffon's rule meant that all human beings belonged to the same species.

In fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent than dolphins, and they spent a lot of their time in behavioural research laboratories running around inside wheels and conducting frighteningly elegant and subtle experiments on man. The fact that once again man completely misinterpreted this relationship was entirely according to these creatures' plans.

Some fish were jumping up the beach and into the tree, which struck me as an odd thing for a fish to do, but I tried not to be judgmental about it. I was feeling pretty raw about my own species, and not much inclined to raise a quizzical eyebrow at others. The fish could play about in trees as much as they liked if it gave them pleasure, so long as they didn't try and justify themselves or tell each other it was a malign god who made them play in trees.

I was feeling pretty raw about my own species because we presume to draw a distinction between what we call good and what we call evil. We find our images of what we call evil in things outside ourselves, in creatures that know nothing of such matters, so that we can feel revolted by them, and, by contrast, good about ourselves.