Northern White Rhino

Moving photo of a zoo worker comforting the dying northern white rhino called Sudan, who passed away two days ago aged 45. Sudan was the last male ever - there are just 2 females left, both in captivity. When they are gone, this animal is extinct forever.

And they had to put him under 24 hour armed guard the last few years of his life to keep poachers from shooting him for his horn. Thanks humans... We suck.

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Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies...

Quite a sad thing this happened. I dont know, does cross breeding work for rhinos?

And yes, we do really suck at this!

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Yes it does work. Cross breeding works forall mammals. But extinction is forever. Yep I totally agree, matey, We really effing suck at life. This is so effed up it effing wrecked my effing day the second I saw it, and i was having such a good one too, but I'm pretty sure it wreckedSudan and his wives' day even effingmore!

Such a gorgeous photo, though. I just couldnt stay angry.

There's no evolution without extinction. Think about that.

Here's another species now in red alert & heading for extinction - the Vaquita marina.
Interesting article that explains much about how this is happening. Simply tragic.
We must be a savage species on the whole to cause so much destruction.

https://news.mongabay.com/2018/03/on...groups-report/

In that case the greatest boost to exploring new evolutionary paths would be the extinction of the over-dominant Homo sapiens.

That is true..

FYI, I do think extinction at the hand of humans is very, very sad.

I think what most gets to me is the ephemeral nature of the 'gain' at the cost of something so huge like total extinction. People make so many bucks and then just move on to something else. Meanwhile, thousands, even millions years of years of development are just gone in a few decades.

Likewise, these constructors who trashed an ancient pyramid in Belize for stones for road fill (??) (and they knew exactly what they were doing).
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-22521669

homo sapiens are needed to explore the mysteries of the universe , because they are the only ones with power to think .

And "thinking" has lead us to the annihilation of countless species like this rhino. Life on earth and the universe in general would be better off if we werent "thinking" quite so much. It gives us the illusion of superiority and importance.

Humans need the Earth. Earth doesn't need us.

You westerners are full of self hate. Due to this westerners are declining in population but that would not lead to extinction of homo sapiens. Because other more confident and less self hating cultures are expanding in population.

There are only about 50 Amur Leopards left. It's time is almost up I guess.

I don't think there's any "illusion" of superiority or importance: we are important, and we are superior, and it is precisely these qualities that enable us to be disgusted with our own behavior to begin with.

There's an old saying about how, if you despise yourself, you at least still respect yourself as one who despises. Someone who can still stand outside that bad behavior to critique it. That's pretty much what's happening here. It's meaningless and self-contradictory to think the world would be better without us when we're the only species capable of making the value judgments that underpin words like "better."

Put another way, more in direct response to the original topic:

Humans are not the only species to eradicate another, but we're the only one who ever tried not to, or cared that we had.

I would strongly disagree. We are an arbitrary over consuming johnny come lately on this planet and there are life forms here that have been here long before us and who dominate the planet in comparison to us. And they dont even have any brains. Just because we can build micro chips or write poetry or split the atom or, yes, wipe out other species willy nilly and fret about it, even scramble to save one or two doesnt make us superior or important. At least not by my definition of superiority which is technical I admit and not at all religious.

And I DO exist so therefore I think its just fine to use the word "better" even when the supposition is about our non-existence. Because the comparison can be made after all. Philosophically and scientifically. And anyway its a lot more than about just the white rhino though.

Why would a species' tenure matter in the context of moral value?

Also, when you say "dominate the planet," the only metric I can think of is sheer numbers. But that in no way relates to moral superiority, so I don't know why that would matter, either.

Superior is a relative term, so it needs a point of comparison. What species do we not compare favorably to, and why? You say "save one or two," but that's one or two more than literally any other type of creature.

The things you're dismissing above aren't really related to the reason I gave, which had nothing to do with raw intelligence. The reason I gave is that any attempt to condemn us will inevitably invoke a moral standard we alone value and employ, which is ipso facto proof of our superiority.

The only way around this, logically, is to claim that the standard you're invoking is actually bigger than us or them, and exists independent of either. Which sounds pretty religious to me.

There's no scientific basis for declaring something "better" in a value-based sense. And I can't imagine what the philosophical basis would be; it seems it would necessarily either be self-defeating or exactly as arbitrary as our superiority is.

Which is the other, yods?

That is the most beautiful photo I have seen today!