Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 1:45 pm Post subject: Re: Awesome documentary on the Great Auk
Master_Pedant wrote:
Very good doc.
Much obliged!!
If you find other doc's please post them.
Thank you. _________________ Since the birth of civilization, masters have controlled the masses.Our Masters rule over every nation and no one can defy them.They will attain Absolute Power as we reach the Singularity. Any who resist will be destroyed.I will not resist.
I liked the doc about the great auk, most of it. I guess extinct animals has been a special interest of mine (but I didnīt know I was an aspie then, does that count?).
As mentioned, I like most of it, but: The tv company, as usual, makes a big deal out of the collecting of dead animals. The scientists in the documentary explain that hunting for meat and feathers had diminished the species to a few birds. Furter there is one guy who elaborates about the fact that they probably were communal breeders (would only reproduce if there is a lot of them, like the passenger pidgeons). So would they really have surrived if the last pair had not been sampled? probably not! (insert here: more biological theory on bottleneck populations, communal breding etc.).
I know that it makes the story more dramatic and tv people like the simple and colourful explanations - but it is not nessesarily the right explanation.
The last Great Auk to be seen in the UK was killed in 1840, so the very last one was just 4 years after. In the biggest museum in Glasgow (Kelivingrove), there's a display paying tribute to the bird. There's an electronic storybook, telling the story of the last encounter in the UK, which kids seem to love although it's very tragic. The last sighting was on an islet off St Kilda, the remotest part of the British Isles. According to the story, the men thought it was a witch and that it had caused a great storm, so they killed it. _________________ "We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiatic about." Charles Kingsley
Thanks! _________________ Since the birth of civilization, masters have controlled the masses.Our Masters rule over every nation and no one can defy them.They will attain Absolute Power as we reach the Singularity. Any who resist will be destroyed.I will not resist.
