john@nmtsun.nmt.edu (John Shipman) (01/14/90)
Kehaar (R. Cody Buchmann, rcb33483@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu) writes: +--- | ...I was a teenage birder... +--- (-: This is a new horror film, no? :-) +--- | But I also showed a career interest in birds, so I was | the target of a tremendous amount of abuse.... Perhaps | the secret of getting more teenaged birders here is to | look for outcasts... +--- Your remark about outcast birders is probably true in lots of situations, but in some circles it is not treated as such a silly thing. Also, I don't have much respect for people who let the trendy people tell them what to do. Not only would the world be a pretty boring place if everyone conformed, but I think we'd be in big trouble as a species. As a student of biology, you can appreciate how important diversity and flexibility are for survival. Birds who become too well adapted to a specific situation, like flightless rails on small Pacific islands, are in trouble if the situation changes: many island birds have been wiped out by the introduction of cats or rats. Birds that can live in a wide variety of niches, like crows and mockingbirds, are widespread and still spreading; they would probably be in good shape to survive a major catastrophe like a large meteor strike. Species and habitat diversity is one of the most critical natural assets (that we're squandering). Similarly, I think our species is better off tolerating or even encouraging lots of different lifestyles and philosophies: it's just good biology---we never know what sorts of strategies might be more useful in the long run, so let's try a lot of them out, and let's try to be more tolerant of people who don't act, dress or act like we do. (-: I just can't STAND people who are intolerant. :-) -- John Shipman/Zoological Data Processing/Socorro, New Mexico USENET: ucbvax!unmvax!nmtsun!john CSNET: john@nmtsun.nmt.edu ``Let's go outside and commiserate with nature.'' --Dave Farber