A chicken beat me in Tic-Tac-Toe

reply to post by darkhorserider


The good of the many outweighs the good of the few. They completely use up whatever resource is there before moving on to the next one, giving the others time to grow, reseed and replenish.

...just my theory on it anyway.

Since they are cultivated, not growing in the wild, they don't replenish the way they would in the wild, so you have to end up replanting.

reply to post by darkhorserider


No matter how large your turtle pen is, it is still a pen.

As far as your dog, he is not even related to nature, he is a domesticated animal of a breed that doesn't exist in the wild.
So no, his behavior isn't natural.

Chickens are not wild either. They are domesticated animals of breeds that do not exist in nature.

So their behavior isn't natural either.

Oh and don't feel bad about the tic tac toe chicken. I had a 12 yo beat me at connect four.

You guys make some good points, and I was just being lazy in not finding more sources for species that devastate their environment in the wild. I didn't want to think that hard over the weekend.

Here are some facts for wild species that devastate their environment:

10 Invasive Species that devastate their Ecosystem

Just one of the examples

Wildfires have long plagued forests in the western half of the United States, but these trees face a much bigger threat that's far less visible but even more deadly: mountain pine beetles. For example, in 2007 these little buggers knocked out a staggering 3.9 million acres (1.6 million hectares) of trees across the states of Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and Utah. On average, fires burn down 3.4 million acres (1.38 million hectares) each year

A "ghost forest" of dead and dying trees in Southern California. Native pines are being wiped-out by exploding populations of several species of bark beetles.

Animals behaving worse.

Since then, its population on the island has exploded to approximately 13,000 snakes per square mile. This rapacious predator has eliminated most of Guam’s lizard and bat species and has brought 10 of its 13 native bird species to extinction, including the flightless rail.

10 animals that are bad for the environment.

The Blueberries should be back next year and the added nitrogen from the bird poop will make the plants a lot better. You may not get many blueberries for a year but they should produce big crops in the future.

What we think of as beautiful is not what other animals think of as beautiful. Maybe there is also something wrong with the food you are feeding the turtles, roots contain caffeic acid sometimes and that is an antidote for aflotoxins of certain kinds. Throw a dandilion root into the turtle area so they can get the antidote they need.

reply to post by rickymouse


Thank you, I'll try that!

Last year, I did plant some dandelions and clover in their cage, and they wouldn't eat the clover, and the dandelions didn't transplant well, and they died.

I'll try to get the dandelions growing again this spring. The turtles love all yellow flowers, so dandelions should be a great treat for them.

The blueberry bushes are now protected, so the chickens can only get to the stuff that protrudes through the chicken wire. I think the bushes that are left will survive and do well, but they have to have a chance to keep some foliage. We got quite a few blueberries last year before the chickens got big enough to be voracious, LOL!

reply to post by darkhorserider


I would like to see some population reduction. However not in the form of genocide. The earth can't sustain 7 billion people indefinatly, and the more children we have the worse there future is going to be. So would you rather have children and have them live a #ty life, or have a restriction on the number of kids we can have so that those that are alive in a comming generation can actually have a viable place to live.

reply to post by openeyeswideshut


Yep, I agree with you that genocide is of course not the answer, but overall population control could be beneficial. The problem becomes how to choose. The Chinese haven't done a very good job. You can't judge a child based upon the parents, some of our most instrumental figures in history have come from the most dire of environments. So, how could any kind of population control be designed to be fair, and to benefit the race as a whole?

Nature can be and is unapologetically cruel, dispassionate, brutal, and indifferent to our human conceptions of compassion and empathy.

The sad thing, to me anyhow, is that human beings are the only species on the planet with the capacity to override these tendencies in themselves, to regulate them, potentially even to suppress or eliminate them entirely (or nearly so,) and yet... we are availing ourselves of that capacity to the degree I believe we potentially could be.

reply to post by AceWombat04


This I entirely agree with.

Humans do have the potential to be much, much better than the animals, and much, much better than we are currently being!

I think we are making progress, but it is two steps forward, one step back type of progress. For everything we do, there are unintended consequences, and there are more and more of us walking the planet day by day.

Still, I think we are making valiant strides, and we'll eventually figure it out.

I could have done another thread about the misconceptions of Native Americans and their interaction with the environment. They get a lot of undeserved credit for being environmentally conscious as well, LOL!

reply to post by darkhorserider


Don't mistake ecology with devastation. Things swing out of balance, and then come into balance again. For example, the beetles kill the trees, dead standing trees make great nests for birds, then the birds will have a boom and eat the beetles and it levels out.

the difference is that the beetles are only picking on a particular tree, a pine. ONly in the enviornment that they exist, North america.

The difference between humans and any other "destructive species" is that humans wreck all plant life, all animals, in all environments.

That all being said, beetles shouldn't be out of control for more then a year or two. Since this has been going on for six years now, this is evidence of global warming, as it has been too mild in the winter to kill the bugs off.

See how that works???

reply to post by darkhorserider


You are right about the Native Americans. EAst coasters think they were the first hippies, one with the environment and the Great Spriit. They have had a few atrocities themselves, and still do.

reply to post by nixie_nox


Was it here at ATS or somewhere else that I read about the Native Americans almost being wiped out by sickness before the first settlers even came and that was really why it was so easy for them to "move right in"?

The Native population had dropped dramatically and those left were spread out so it was easy for the group to move right in on the lands that weren't being used due to the many deaths that were suffered.

Originally posted by Ghost375

So, it is oft-repeated on ATS that humans are the only animals that devastate their own environment.

You're confusing the word destroying/devastation with eating.

I'm sorry but turtles never added poison to the land and water.
They never destroyed the rainforest on a whim.
They eat plants, that's much different from destroying plants.
Their actions never made holes in the Ozone layer.


There's a BIG difference.

edit on 3-11-2012 by Ghost375 because: (no reason given)

edit on 3-11-2012 by Ghost375 because: (no reason given)

edit on 3-11-2012 by Ghost375 because: (no reason given)

edit on 3-11-2012 by Ghost375 because: (no reason given)

I hate to be "that guy" but technically if you eat something in it's entirety it has rather effectively been destroyed as it can't grow or multiply. Also technically if you sh!t were you live then you are poisoning where you live. Which is effectively what all animals do to some degree. Granted we might be guilty of more then animals, in a sense the op does maintain a point.