90% of Tasmanian Devils have died. Extinction likely.

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Feyokien
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05 Oct 2015, 9:10 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
Feyokien wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
glebel wrote:
Feyokien wrote:
I saw a show a few years back that talked about prehistoric predators of Australia. They put forth the theory that the introduction of the dingo by the Aborigines tens of thousands of years ago led to their extinction on the mainland but not on Tasmania. You have to wonder why, as surely they introduced dingoes into Tasmania. Complicated system, life is.


You're not making any sense. When Europeans discovered Australia there were dingoes on the mainland,and there were no dingoes in Tasmania. The most likely reason for their absence from the island is that they never made it there.So what's to "wonder" about?


Read it again, they are referring to aboriginals bringing Dingos to Australia when they migrated to Australia 40,000 years ago.


Why you are parroting back to me what I myself just said?


Oops that one accidentally posted, I was confused by your misuse of quotations, attributing what glebel said as what I said. Disregard it



Aristophanes
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05 Oct 2015, 9:15 pm

Feyokien wrote:
Oops that one accidentally posted, I was confused by your misuse of quotations, attributing what glebel said as what I said. Disregard it


I think it was a simple mistake in deleting excess quotations on natural plastic's part, but you two should still fight it out-- to the death.



Feyokien
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05 Oct 2015, 9:19 pm

Aristophanes wrote:
Feyokien wrote:
Oops that one accidentally posted, I was confused by your misuse of quotations, attributing what glebel said as what I said. Disregard it


I think it was a simple mistake in deleting excess quotations on natural plastic's part, but you two should still fight it out-- to the death.


:skull: My body is ready :skull:



naturalplastic
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05 Oct 2015, 10:29 pm

Fight to the death? I throw a punch a Glebel and it hits F by accident? And you want F to break a chair over my head like in old western movie? And then the whole saloon breaks out in a fight!

Okay! If thats what you want!

Yeah somehow F's name got attached to Glebel's words while I was trimming down the quote balloon.

There is some kind of failure of communication here. So let me recap.

When European's discovered Australia there were humans living on both the continent, and on Tasmania.

There were dingoes on the mainland, but there were no dingoes on Tasmania.

And there were marsupial "tigers" on tasmania but not on the continent.

Dingoes probably were introduced to Australia by early man.
But early man apparently did not take them as far as Tasmania.

But dingoes probably did drive the native marsupial predators to extinction on the mainland.
They did not do that to the marsupial tiger on Tasmania for the simple reason that dingoes never reached Tasmania.

Nothing mysterious about any of that. But Glebel seems to have somekind of problem with it!




Humans reached australia 40 thousand years ago at least. If not 60 thousand years ago. But according to Wiki just now DNA studies of dingoes shows evidence that dingoes only arrived 10 thousand years ago at most, and some evidence suggest maybe only as recently as 3000 years ago.

So people arrived in prehistoric Australia first. Dingoes seemed to have come much later (but still in ancient times).
Which helps to explain why humans were in Tasmania, but dingoes were not when the place was discovered by Europeans.


Humans likely brought the dingo via canoe across the sea from New Guinea. Dingoes were like primitive semi domesticed dogs that reverted to being wild once in Australia. Dingoes likely gradually spread from the tropical north coast of Australia southward to the temperate south coast. And did that spreading on their own without human help because they had reverted to being wild by that time. And dingoes were never taken on the final step:the sea crossing that would have brought them to Tasmania in the extreme south. Dingoes were not loyal pets like modern fully evolved dogs. They had become wild rival predators competing with man. So there is no particular reason to assume that stone age humans would have wanted to ferry them to Tasmania.

And on top of that...they ate my baby!



traven
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06 Oct 2015, 3:25 am

bumbumbummmmmerrr & skip that
http://www.tassiedevil.com.au/tasdevil. ... F7001EF257

let the ignorants fight their righteous fights
and illusionists play illusions,
opportunists get helpings of opportunities
and monks spread diseases,
back to the future, holy crap!!



naturalplastic
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06 Oct 2015, 10:03 am

^What is THIS "bla bal" about?



Last edited by naturalplastic on 06 Oct 2015, 11:03 am, edited 1 time in total.

Jacoby
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06 Oct 2015, 10:20 am

That's pretty crazy, makes me wonder if this could happen to humans.



QuantumChemist
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06 Oct 2015, 10:31 am

Jacoby wrote:
That's pretty crazy, makes me wonder if this could happen to humans.


Yes, we could have this situation happen to humans someday in the future. As the world overpopulates with humans, the risks of diseases increases due to larger amounts of human interaction. We, as a species, are not quite as indestructible as we would like to believe. Likely it will be our own fault though. I can think of several ways that it could play out.



SonicMisaki
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06 Oct 2015, 10:43 am

>Fancy that, an extinction not caused by humans...go figure

Not cool. Looks like we should all play the Tasmanian devils' advocate more than the devil's advocate. Losing such an interesting species to such a powerful disease will be horrible, and we don't want that happening. Hope the DFTD immunization comes to light real soon...


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glebel
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06 Oct 2015, 10:59 am

You missed (or chose to ignore) a significant point I was trying to make, naturalplastic. By jumping to easy, convenient conclusions, people frequently do more harm than good. I see and hear about it all the time. I have run into a fair number of customers who, when they see a problem with their plants, proceed to hurl fertilizer and water at them, which frequently is the wrong thing to do. Going on a knee-jerk reaction when you have insufficient information is often destructive. You end up killing what you were trying to save.
If you are basing your conclusions on scientific studies, bear in mind that these people live in ivory towers, and the way to get is a degree is to answer the questions with what the professors want to hear, not with the truth. I know, I have two degrees. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. I can cite two grand examples :
1) I have a copy of Jepson's Guide to California Plants. It is a very good reference source except for when they talk about the rarity of a number of plants. They claim, for instance, that Kennedy's Maricopa Lily is endangered. BS.I not only have a number of them growing all over my property, but I see them everywhere in the proper season (early summer).
2) The USDA Plant Data Base lists Baby Blueeyes (Nemophila menziesii menziesii) as not present in Kern and Ventura Counties, but they show it being present in all the surrounding counties. I see them up here all over the place. I reported this fact to them, they said no way, and I said " Come up here and look". They obviously did, or, more likely they took my word on it, and they corrected this mistake.
The 'experts' can't be bothered to get out of their air-conditioned offices to actually look at what they talk about. Most research is done by their students ( including me at one time) who may or may not be looking at things with a clear eye.


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Last edited by glebel on 06 Oct 2015, 11:02 am, edited 1 time in total.

naturalplastic
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06 Oct 2015, 11:01 am

Jacoby wrote:
That's pretty crazy, makes me wonder if this could happen to humans.


Indeed.

I, for one, had never even heard of a "contagious cancer" before I saw this thread.

Apparently (from the video) the scientist heading that program to save the devils invented some kind of software for detecting this thing in Tasmanian devils thats now also being used to help keep track of cancer in humans. So there are already side benefits to this conservation program that go beyond saving the devils.



glebel
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06 Oct 2015, 11:03 am

naturalplastic wrote:
Jacoby wrote:
That's pretty crazy, makes me wonder if this could happen to humans.


Indeed.

I, for one, had never even heard of a "contagious cancer" before I saw this thread.

Apparently (from the video) the scientist heading that program to save the devils invented some kind of software for detecting this thing in Tasmanian devils thats now also being used to help keep track of cancer in humans. So there are already side benefits to this conservation program that go beyond saving the devils.

All cancer is is abnormal tissue growth. Why can't a cancer be contagious?


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naturalplastic
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06 Oct 2015, 11:09 am

glebel wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
Jacoby wrote:
That's pretty crazy, makes me wonder if this could happen to humans.


Indeed.

I, for one, had never even heard of a "contagious cancer" before I saw this thread.

Apparently (from the video) the scientist heading that program to save the devils invented some kind of software for detecting this thing in Tasmanian devils thats now also being used to help keep track of cancer in humans. So there are already side benefits to this conservation program that go beyond saving the devils.

All cancer is is abnormal tissue growth. Why can't a cancer be contagious?


I didnt say "cancer cant be contagious".

I said "I never heard of cancer being cantagious before".

If anything- I am surprised that more cancer isnt contagious.

An infectious disease is an out side cell invading your body. Cancer is essentially one of your own cells going rogue and acting like an invading microbe. So if infectious diseases can be contagious you would think that cancers would be more like infectious diseases and would also often be contagious. But for some reason you rarely hear about cancers being contagious.



Aristophanes
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06 Oct 2015, 11:43 am

glebel wrote:
You missed (or chose to ignore) a significant point I was trying to make, naturalplastic. By jumping to easy, convenient conclusions, people frequently do more harm than good. I see and hear about it all the time. I have run into a fair number of customers who, when they see a problem with their plants, proceed to hurl fertilizer and water at them, which frequently is the wrong thing to do. Going on a knee-jerk reaction when you have insufficient information is often destructive. You end up killing what you were trying to save.

That's just pure ignorance on the growers part...over fertilization creates a toxic environment and over watering suffocates the plants just like it does mammals. I have a decent sized outdoor hydroponics garden ~1 acre and a small indoor setup. If I see problems that I can't identify my first step is always cutting back the nutrients. It's a little different for soil (only did 3 years worth of soil growing when I was younger), but the principle is still the same-- too many nutrients will kill plants, too little only slows growth, so it's much better to cut back than add more. You're experienced so you know this, this little infomatic is more for the lurkers who may not.

What plants do you grow btw?-- plant growth may be the only thing we agree on, lol.



QuantumChemist
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06 Oct 2015, 11:54 am

naturalplastic wrote:
glebel wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
Jacoby wrote:
That's pretty crazy, makes me wonder if this could happen to humans.


Indeed.

I, for one, had never even heard of a "contagious cancer" before I saw this thread.

Apparently (from the video) the scientist heading that program to save the devils invented some kind of software for detecting this thing in Tasmanian devils thats now also being used to help keep track of cancer in humans. So there are already side benefits to this conservation program that go beyond saving the devils.

All cancer is is abnormal tissue growth. Why can't a cancer be contagious?


I didnt say "cancer cant be contagious".

I said "I never heard of cancer being cantagious before".

If anything- I am surprised that more cancer isnt contagious.

An infectious disease is an out side cell invading your body. Cancer is essentially one of your own cells going rogue and acting like an invading microbe. So if infectious diseases can be contagious you would think that cancers would be more like infectious diseases and would also often be contagious. But for some reason you rarely hear about cancers being contagious.


It depends upon what causes the cancer in the first place. There are cancers that are caused by viruses and they can be spread by contact with infected individuals that still have the virus in them.

(see http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercaus ... er-viruses for specific examples).

Cancers caused by radiation and chemicals are usually not contagious (human to human contact) if the source of the DNA damage has been removed. Some cancers are strictly genetic in origin and are not naturally prone to spreading to other people who do not have those genes present.



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06 Oct 2015, 12:03 pm

I forgot to add in that viruses are adaptable to changes within their environment (ie. in vivo). In other words, they can mutate their genetic coding during the reproduction process, which makes them much harder to predict sometimes. For example, each year new strains of the flu virus occurs. Scientists have to do an educated guess on which ones they are going to be to formulate a flu shot that works for the majority of the population. Most of the time it is correct, but there have been times where it was a total different strain that was expected, which happened last year. It would only take a strain like the one that happened in 1918 to do considerable damage to the world population if we miss the correct formulation for it. Granted, there are individuals who will have natural immunity to most flu viruses, just like there are people who have little or no natural immunity, so it will not affect everyone exactly the same.