Mother Nature Is Not Really That Good At What She Does

Before Personkind (formerly known as Mankind) took over the responsibility of killing off various animal species on Planet Earth, Mother Nature had that job. Depending on how you look at it, she was very good at eliminating or very bad at preserving Earth’s Creatures.

“It’s astounding that we don’t know the most basic thing about life,” said Boris Worm, who is a marine biologist at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. (Is it not neat that a doctor involved in this kind of work is named, “Worm”?)

Recently, Dr. Worm and a Dr. Mora and their colleagues, based on a new method they have developed, presented the latest estimate of how many species there are. They estimated there are 8.7 million species on the planet, plus or minus 1.3 million.

I understand, “give or take a few” or “plus or minus a couple” but I never thought I would read the phrase, “plus or minus 1.3 million”. That’s a margin of error of 2.6 million.

I can just hear an Expert Really Smart Ph.D’ed Witness testifying, “What I am telling you is absolute fact but, of course, there is a distinct possibility that I am off by 2.6 million”.

Kick this around in your brain...

• Dr. Worm and Company say over 98% of documented species are now extinct.
• Dr. Worm and Company say that in the past 540 million years there have been five major events when over 50% of animal species died.

The Smartfella has this to say about all of this...

The Subject of this blog posting is wrong, if Mother Nature’s job is to eliminate species because she is eliminating them right and left.

The Subject of this blog posting is right, if Mother Nature’s job is to preserve species because she is eliminating them right and left.

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

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