Comments on: Argentinian gulls are eating whales (or at least bits of whales)

By: Jimmy Cracks Capricorns

Jimmy Cracks Capricorns — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 16:12:11 +0000

The gulls are now behaving just like a parasite.

By: Alan

Alan — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 19:18:34 +0000

The world has long ago stopped being a “natural” place. Man has wrought such profound and dramatic changes to the natural ecosystem, we can no longer assume anything is “natural”. With such a profound impact on the world, with so many human beings on this planet, we must resolve to accept responsibility. The world is no longer a wild place ruled by natural selection and evolution. It is our backyard. It can be a trash dump or a garden. the only way it can return to a wild “Eden” is if we disappear entirely or at least return to living as the native americans did, and in tiny numbers. A garden takes planning, management, and hard work, a lot of it.

By: Brad

Brad — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 22:51:33 +0000

Let natural selection work it’s magic. Let this happen for 100,000 years and the whales and birds will adapt competitively, if it’s a big enough problem for the whales, and enough of a boon to the gulls.

We don’t need to intervene any more than we need to intervene to protect dunes. The natural world doesn’t need our help. Heck, if people who wanted to kill these birds were around long enough ago, humans never would have evolved, because they would be too busy preventing any change from ever taking place.

By: Steve Cripe

Steve Cripe — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 21:30:29 +0000

LOL @ Old Geezer! Yep, every time we get involved in solving nature’s problems, it all turns out just right!

By: Ignacio

Ignacio — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 14:00:50 +0000

Hi,

A couple of clarifications.

First, the CONICET is the Argentinean equivalent of the NSF in the US. So stating “Ana Fazio from CONICET, a Patagonian natural sciences institution…” is not exactly right:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Scientific_and_Technical_Research_Council

Second, regarding the picture, the right spelling is: “Instituto de Conservación de Ballenas” instead of “Instituto de Conservacion e Balenas”

[Thanks Ignacio. Corrected. - Ed]

By: Henrique Niza

Henrique Niza — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 18:40:48 +0000

“In 1974, just 1 per cent of whales had gull-inflicted wounds. By 2008, 77 per cent of them carried such injuries.”

Can’t that be a reflection of a much larger whale sample rather than an increase of such behavior?

By: Sibylline NGO

Sibylline NGO — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 17:18:48 +0000

The only means to protect whales without damaging birds is to bring in a falconer to deprogram the behavior of attacks (as already successfully done in France), on one hand, and to treat the open-air discharges, on the other hand. It’s time for the human being to face up to its responsibilities !

By: ortzmet

ortzmet — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 06:47:31 +0000

How can we be certain that early exposure to gull-born bacteria isn’t bestowing these whales with the robust immune system necessary to cope later in life?

By: Old Geezer

Old Geezer — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 20:50:24 +0000

Everything’s going to be fine now. Humans are going to start “managing” the problem. What could possibly go wrong?

By: Chris Lindsay

Chris Lindsay — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 14:05:14 +0000

It’s like Hitchcock’s “The Birds” but Tippi Hedren et al. are whales instead of people. Oh the whalemanity.