Tigers Nearly Extinct

[SinisterGehe]

Just wondering, in what way is the existence of tigers important?

I take it you understand how the food chain works, and how it helps maintain the correct balance in nature?

If not, go and read something, or watch the entire David Attenborough back-catalogue.

I know, but I'm asking for some kind of report or evidence that is more specific than "The relationships between animals and ecosystems can be mapped by a food chain."

But it really isn't more complicated than that.

Carnivores eat veg eaters. Remove predators, more veg gets eaten. Veg starts to have a problem recovering from the increased number of veggie animals, therefore starts to fall into decline.

The eco-system is very much like Jenga. Sure you can remove a few blocks without the tower falling down, but it's sure as hell a weaker tower. Eventually you remove one block too many and the tower falls down.

Same theory as deforestation in rainforest areas. You strip a few trees, the vegitation tries to recover, but the daily heavy rain won't allow the smaller vegitation to gain a firm foothold and is stripped away along with the good soil.

Just about everything the human race touches gets fucked up in a big way and it'll take a long time for the planet to recover from us.

I'm not a greenie or tree-hugger, but it's hard to ignore our impact.

There is one truth to the nature too.
When a slot in nature becomes free from other specie some specie of something will take it as their own and flourish.
So, if we kill a specific predator, herbivores will start flourishing in the area (But area can sustain only specific number), when a predator that lives in the next area notices that theres plenty of easy food there, it will start migrating there.
The water of life will always balance itself, it can't stack in to one bowl without overflowing.

 

[Megacherv]

Oh shit.

Why is everything dying?

Because we're not.

Seriously.

Time to start sterilizing poor nations, right?

Maybe force every country to have a one child/birth per female/couple?

We could force medicine making companies to stop creating life saving drugs and procedures.

Make assisted suicide legal.

Create an age limit where you've given X amount of time to 'get your affairs in order' before you're taken down.


------------
All this talk of 'we are bad humans' is stupid.
We're animals and like other animals we breed and take and breed and take until there's nothing left and then die off.

Humans are just doing more damage than other animals, and living longer.

You see, those sound like good ideas to help quell down the population, yet they seem practically dictatorial and, even more importantly, cruel (for instance, I'm the first of three children from my mum (brother and sister are from my stepdad), it would seem cruel for them not to be able to have a second child. And besides, I love my brother and sister more than anyone else.)

EDIT: Actually, I'm quite on the fence on assisted suicide, being slightly more in favour of it being legalised. We're humans, we have a conscience, if it's our conscious decision to end it all, then that should be allowed really. It should be the assistant's choice whether they help them or not.

 

[Thedayrecker]

According to the article, there may be about 3200 tigers left in the wild.

Vladimir Putin will save them.

I'm surprised he didn't just carry it home in his jaws, in order to nurse back to health.

 

[Agayek]

I would love to meet the mammal that can adapt to getting shot in the face with a rifle.

That's easy. It needs to either avoid being seen or develop natural armor strong enough to protect against gunfire (and before you say that's impossible, Rhinos at least, have skin tough enough to block all but the strongest of rifle rounds).

 

[Worgen]

Easy way to fix the situation. Make tigers economically viable.

Allow people to farm them for pelts, meat, and whatnot. It's what saved the bison.

The fact that tigers are economically viable is why they're going extinct. Poaching.

And there's a reason people don't farm big predators, dude.

Tiger is an ingredient in some "traditional" medications. However it's illegal to hunt tiger. Which makes tiger quite expensive. Which entices people to hunt them.

Legalize farming of tigers for such materials and companies will fight for the tiger to survive.

yeah.... that doesnt work, companies will deplete a resource before anyone knows its gone if you let them, the only reason tigers are still around right now is that its illegal to hunt them

really any large mammal, humans tend to render extinct without allot of protections

Why would a company deplete a resource that they can make money on.

to be able to make as much money as they could in as fast a time as possible and given the rarity of tigers, them coming back would only make the product less valuable and depending on the company that might be incentive to prevent them from coming back and to actively keep the numbers low

 

[King Toasty]

I like how they wait until it's almost too late to start. Man, you humans are slow-minded.

I think species-relocation would help, possibly to Northern Canada for some subspecies. Of course, your feeble human minds would consider it too risky. They're almost dead; relocation may be the only solution right now.

Agayek has a point, though. Dealing with new species, however invasive, is a part of evolution. It doesn't mean we shouldn't try, but it's really just adaptation. Look at pandas; they just DON'T want to reproduce. Doomed to die out.

"You humans"? What are you, Penguin-Sapiens?

We are the Ood, but that's unimportant.

 

[Cliff_m85]

Allow people to farm them for pelts, meat, and whatnot. It's what saved the bison.

And there's a reason people don't farm big predators, dude.

Legalize farming of tigers for such materials and companies will fight for the tiger to survive.

You can't farm tigers.

You can't farm wolves. Do you know how expensive that would be? How much.......

*pets puppy*

Yeah, except that a little puppy has as much to do with a wolf as a little kitten has to do with a tiger or a gold fish has to do with a shark. Besides, keeping an animal as a pet and keeping an animal as livestock are two different things, there's a reason why you don't see pastures full of dozens of dogs.

Most animals go extinct.

In fact, I think most biologists would tell you, even before humanity's time here, 99% of all species that have existed on this planet have gone extinct.

Such is life :/

True, but in this case, it's caused by humans: that other species go extinct naturally has no bearing at all, it's like saying "people die all the time for quite a lot of reasons, so there's nothing wrong with me killing people - such is life"

You're wrong for a multitude of reasons, which isn't really a bad thing as our society (I'm guessing you're American or Canadian, excuse me if I'm wrong) tends to shelter us from one of your misgivings.

The wolf is the unmodified version of the dog. We created the dog from the wolf. We forced evolution, basically. As for seeing pastures or cages full of dozens of dogs, we certainly do see that.....in countries that eat dogs. I would've said kennels but we both know that that would be a false analogy. Yes, countries that eat such animals tend to farm them in a fashion. Gineau Pigs in South America, for instance.

Next, your claim of it being worse that humans killed of such animals. I call hokum, really. Animals die out almost constantly, most without us noticing. And each time we are yelled at about how it'll devestate the Earth. Each time it doesn't. Like I said, make the tiger economically viable and we'll be good to go. We've done such with Bison, with snakes, with the African Elephant, and with a multitude of other animals. If you can make money off of it, you'll want to keep 'em alive. If you make it illegal to hunt them and people want to buy a tiger product, they'll go to the black market.

 

[Anti Nudist Cupcake]

This is gonna be the dodo bird all over again.

 

[emeraldrafael]

I dont forsee them doing alot to be honest. The UN is all about countries gathering and look waht they do. We just have to face that we as humans are destructive creatures, and have pretty much topped the evolutionary chart. There's no more survival of the fittest to put us in our places. We're just letting ourselves over populate the species, kinda like deer.

Its a sad thing to say, but theres just as much good to things like Cholera, AIDS, Smallpox, polio, etc. as there are bad.

But to be on topic, its kinda awesome to see the countries putting together and effort, but it wont stop anyhting. Poachers gonna poach.

Did you just... did you just say deadly diseases were a good thing because they kill humans?
Even if we are destructive by nature, do you realise just how McIhateHumankindBecauseImEmoDouchebag you sound by making that statement? Yes, we as humans make mistakes, but we do alot of beautiful things as well.

OT: Let's hope they keep the species alive, big cats are really quite pretty.

I'm not emo, and I dont hate human kind, But I'm serious. Its like deer. There's too many of us for our own good. AIDS in Africa is literally known as population control. Thats what they even say in the college sociology book I'm using for my sociology class. Its a sad thing to say, but its true.

 

[Duskwaith]

Meh. It's unfortunate if they die out, but if they can't survive on their own, it's not something we should be overly concerned about. Species go extinct at least on a weekly basis, it's not a big deal. Hell, it's part of evolution/natural selection.

Yeah because its their fault they dont have bullet proof hides..

They say the biggest market for tigers is China since it is used in various traditional medicines, they should probably tackle that taboo first.

Military protection should be used to protect reservations. The South African army have recently had to do such a thing in order to protect Rhinos.

 

['Aredor]

I'm guessing you're American or Canadian, excuse me if I'm wrong

German, as visible in my profile no problem, though

The wolf is the unmodified version of the dog. We created the dog from the wolf. We forced evolution, basically.

That's certainly true, but my point still stands, since the difference is that a dog is a lot less fierce and dangerous than a wolf, much like a cat is a lot less fierce than a tiger. Unless of course you wanted to say that if we started domesticating tigers now, we'd have less fierce versions that could be easily kept as livestock in a couple of thousand of years, but that'd be a bit of a problem considering the whole getting-extinct-thing, and wouldn't really be what I call a quick solution for the problem. Not to mention that forcing them to evolve into another (sub)species isn't really what I'd call "saving them from extinction".

As for seeing pastures or cages full of dozens of dogs, we certainly do see that.....in countries that eat dogs.

That's true of course, but even they didn't start out with herding wolves, they only began eating them (and putting them into farms) when they already were dogs. And even if they hadn't, there are two huge differences between wolves and tigers: wolves are herd animals, so keeping dogs together on a farm doesn't pose the same problems as keeping tigers (or their less fierce descendants) would pose, who are solitary creatures and defend their territory from others of their kind. And wolves are usually between 30 and 40 kilograms, whereas tigers go between 250 and 300 kilograms, making them a lot less easy to control and require a lot more meat to feed, which makes it less economically viable. (Really only repeating what Christina already said, here, don't quite know, why I have to.)

Next, your claim of it being worse that humans killed of such animals. I call hokum, really. Animals die out almost constantly, most without us noticing. And each time we are yelled at about how it'll devestate the Earth. Each time it doesn't.

Ah well, but we don't cry "it'll devastate the Earth", we cry "it's a damn shame and a flagrant injustice". I agree that tigers going extinct wouldn't have much of an impact on the eco system, especially since their natural prey are going extinct as well (which is actually one of the reasons). Besides: there's not much of a difference between an animal being extinct and an animal being close to being extinct, as far as the eco system's concerned.

Like I said, make the tiger economically viable and we'll be good to go. We've done such with Bison, with snakes, with the African Elephant, and with a multitude of other animals. If you can make money off of it, you'll want to keep 'em alive. If you make it illegal to hunt them and people want to buy a tiger product, they'll go to the black market.

We won't debate that if you could make them economically viable, that'd save them, that's certainly true. But as Christina pointed out and I tried to reiterate above, there's simply no way to do that. You simply can't compare them to herbivore herd animals. You could just as well suggest to breed them as race animals, that would certainly save them as well, and it worked for horses, right? (Not that they ever were in danger of being extinct, but you get my drift)

 

[GothmogII]

I dont forsee them doing alot to be honest. The UN is all about countries gathering and look waht they do. We just have to face that we as humans are destructive creatures, and have pretty much topped the evolutionary chart. There's no more survival of the fittest to put us in our places. We're just letting ourselves over populate the species, kinda like deer.

Its a sad thing to say, but theres just as much good to things like Cholera, AIDS, Smallpox, polio, etc. as there are bad.

But to be on topic, its kinda awesome to see the countries putting together and effort, but it wont stop anyhting. Poachers gonna poach.

Did you just... did you just say deadly diseases were a good thing because they kill humans?
Even if we are destructive by nature, do you realise just how McIhateHumankindBecauseImEmoDouchebag you sound by making that statement? Yes, we as humans make mistakes, but we do alot of beautiful things as well.

OT: Let's hope they keep the species alive, big cats are really quite pretty.

I'm not emo, and I dont hate human kind, But I'm serious. Its like deer. There's too many of us for our own good. AIDS in Africa is literally known as population control. Thats what they even say in the college sociology book I'm using for my sociology class. Its a sad thing to say, but its true.

In which way? You mean, in the kind of 'natural' disease exists to cull the herd kind of way, on the conspiratorial AIDs was cooked up in a laboratory kind of population control? The latter of course is fairly nonsensical, but the former I don't find exactly right either...diseases are still organisms albeit micro-organisms, not some mysterious form of control, and while I can't speak as to the opinions of a virus with regards to humanity, they still share the basic instinct that all organisms do, to replicate/reproduce, it just happens that a virus's way of doing so is also harmful to the host organism.

If we take the tiger example, and imagine that humans are giants, would it then not be rather silly to assume that, if billions of little tigers got into that giant human's body and started damaging it, that those tiny tigers are therefore some kind of preternatural response to an outside stimulus, whether through overpopulation or poor hygiene? Those situations may create the environment suitable for the tiny tigers to propagate, but this is merely the tiny tigers taking advantage of this suitability, and the instinct to do so, rather than any wilful desire to control. Though, of course, that is not to say such viruses or disease can't be -used- that way, or indeed inadvertently cause such control in the normal course of infection, but, I just take issue that it's some kind of act of will rather than a predictable natural occurrence.

 

[emeraldrafael]

Snippity Snip

Its just something that happens. Its disease, like all other diseases, but it does the same thing the plague did in the 1300-1500s. It reduced population in an over populated world. And getting off track. The point is, nothings going to work. on the large scale, more species salvations fail rather then succeed.

 

[Free Thinker]

*Ahem*
May I have your attention please!
In order to save this majestic animal species, I declare that we take a country with the perfect conditions for said animal, and turn it into a sanctuary. Demolish the cities, rebuild the natural environment, and move tigers into said sanctuary. Naturally, we will build a wall around the entire sanctuary. I know this may seem rash, and beyond imagining, but if it's anything PETA has taught us, is that animals take higher priority than us humans.

 

[Cliff_m85]

I'm guessing you're American or Canadian, excuse me if I'm wrong

German, as visible in my profile no problem, though

The wolf is the unmodified version of the dog. We created the dog from the wolf. We forced evolution, basically.

That's certainly true, but my point still stands, since the difference is that a dog is a lot less fierce and dangerous than a wolf, much like a cat is a lot less fierce than a tiger. Unless of course you wanted to say that if we started domesticating tigers now, we'd have less fierce versions that could be easily kept as livestock in a couple of thousand of years, but that'd be a bit of a problem considering the whole getting-extinct-thing, and wouldn't really be what I call a quick solution for the problem. Not to mention that forcing them to evolve into another (sub)species isn't really what I'd call "saving them from extinction".

As for seeing pastures or cages full of dozens of dogs, we certainly do see that.....in countries that eat dogs.

That's true of course, but even they didn't start out with herding wolves, they only began eating them (and putting them into farms) when they already were dogs. And even if they hadn't, there are two huge differences between wolves and tigers: wolves are herd animals, so keeping dogs together on a farm doesn't pose the same problems as keeping tigers (or their less fierce descendants) would pose, who are solitary creatures and defend their territory from others of their kind. And wolves are usually between 30 and 40 kilograms, whereas tigers go between 250 and 300 kilograms, making them a lot less easy to control and require a lot more meat to feed, which makes it less economically viable. (Really only repeating what Christina already said, here, don't quite know, why I have to.)

Next, your claim of it being worse that humans killed of such animals. I call hokum, really. Animals die out almost constantly, most without us noticing. And each time we are yelled at about how it'll devestate the Earth. Each time it doesn't.

Ah well, but we don't cry "it'll devastate the Earth", we cry "it's a damn shame and a flagrant injustice". I agree that tigers going extinct wouldn't have much of an impact on the eco system, especially since their natural prey are going extinct as well (which is actually one of the reasons). Besides: there's not much of a difference between an animal being extinct and an animal being close to being extinct, as far as the eco system's concerned.

Like I said, make the tiger economically viable and we'll be good to go. We've done such with Bison, with snakes, with the African Elephant, and with a multitude of other animals. If you can make money off of it, you'll want to keep 'em alive. If you make it illegal to hunt them and people want to buy a tiger product, they'll go to the black market.

We won't debate that if you could make them economically viable, that'd save them, that's certainly true. But as Christina pointed out and I tried to reiterate above, there's simply no way to do that. You simply can't compare them to herbivore herd animals. You could just as well suggest to breed them as race animals, that would certainly save them as well, and it worked for horses, right? (Not that they ever were in danger of being extinct, but you get my drift)

Well, we are doing such for alligators at the moment. It just takes a different method of farming. We could zoo them up and breed them, it'd just require more protection.

And I never check profiles, I'm too lazy I guess. So I could've easily found that you are german, so sorry. I was actually born in Germany as well. I'm an Army Brat, which is to say I moved almost immediately after birth back to America since my dad was stationed in Germany.

 

[mooncalf]

Domesticate them. Dogs and cats thrive because they're protected by humans as pets, Breed them out of being wild animals, because lord knows there ain't enough wild for them to live in anymore, and none will magically appear for them.

Domesticate them. Really. Sounds great, although the dog and cat thing took a while to achieve, didn't it? Like, THOUSANDS OF YEARS?

So you don't really think it sounds great? Because you seem to have reservations. S'ok, I realise it's not a practical idea, but I stand by it anyway, untill humans die out, other species have to find a way of overlapping if they can't stay out of the way.

 

[spectrenihlus]

Perhaps they will learn something from leopards who are actually thriving in the modern world to help is keeping tigers alive.