Diet and evolution

[Pajarita]

Very interesting! Especially the theory that omnivorous species started out as specialized which, over time, kept on adding new items to their diet until they became omnivorous.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 084737.htm

[seagoatdeb]

Very interesting. the more adaptable any family or species is, the easier to survive with human encroachment and climate changes.

[Pajarita]

Yes but, unfortunately, the 'changes' we make to their natural habitats are so radical and in such a short period of time that the species don't have enough time (generations) to either move territory or evolve enough to be able to adapt to a new diet...

[seagoatdeb]

yeah i know, it saddens me when humans arent being good caretakers of the earth.

[Wolf]

Humans have never been good caretakers of the earth.

I am somewhat surprised that the omnivorous birds are more prone to extinction than are the more specialized species as one would think that having a wider variety of foods to choose from would contribute more to their survival than it appears to. Well, it seems that it does, but only during those times of quickly changing habitat and food supply, Quickly, as in geological time frames and not the current human induced changes.

[Pajarita]

It might have something to do with the fact that, usually, omnivorous animals don't need a large territory while specialized ones do. I mean, if you eat only a couple of things, you will need to go far to find them but if you eat all kinds of things, you don't, right?

[seagoatdeb]

it does have some to do with that Pajarita, but a lot comes down to how adaptable the species is. using the expample of Chernobyl. There are no humans that live inside the dangerous area where it happened but some animals have made a comback and have been able to live there. They are able to have offsping at a young age and even when they die early they have left offspring there. Being on the top of the food chain like we are, and taking 12 years or more to be able to have children, will make us less adapatable in the end. The greed of those in power, are hurting all of life. But some of the strongest will probably survive. in pockets somewhere now matter how bad it gets. Unfortunately for us the ones that adapt the best, are the insects.

it is stated a lot that parrots are not domesticated, but it is their adaptability that will keep some species alive. They do adapt to living in our home. if we were uprooted from the way we live and had to eat a completely different diet from our natural, with our breeding interupted, our hormones out of balance, we would be much less adaptable, I think. We are subject to the care we have taken of the planet, infertility is at all time high for humans, cancer, heart disease, etc.

Humans need to be the caretakers of the earth, even for our own survival. I only hope to give my parrots the best quality life I can. They are really happy parrots right now and are eating a real variety of foods and nutrition. I think i have a nice easy time for a while untill Sunny hits Puberty anyway....lol.....

[Pajarita]

Well, I don't think that Chernobyl is a good example of adaptability. I did see the UGA study and pictures but all they saw was that there were animals living in it (especially predator species), they all agreed that they need to do more studies to determine survival rates.

And, actually, parrots are not really considered adaptable - especially the mainland tropical and sub-tropical species (apparently island species are marginally more explorative due to lack of predation and abundance of unexploited dietary resources). The tropical and sub-tropical environmental conditions range is small (temperature, humidity) and it's easy for an organism to maintain homeostasis under such stable parameters so, usually, these species are not high on phenotypic plasticity (think polar bears - the more 'steady' the conditions in the climate they evolved to live in, the less adaptable the species is). Of course, there are also the unquantifiable microevolutionary shifts but I would not count on them to keep the species from extinction.

[seagoatdeb]

i saw a documnetary on Chernobyl now. They followed a ferrral cat that had her kittens in that area, and showed all the animals thats lived in there. Many predator birds were there too because where there is prey on the ground there are predators in the air. My example was to show that even in an extreme area some animals can exist.

We loose many species of all kind of animals all the time, some day the ony animals left will be in areas we dont want or in our homes the way things are going.

[Pajarita]

Yes, but radiation and climate change have completely different consequences. In one we are talking about slow poisoning and the ability of the species to survive long enough to procreate even if the offspring is genetically defective, in the other we are talking about environments disappearing and the ability of the species to adapt -which parrots are not good at.

And you are right that things are not good for animals (or the Earth, for that matter) at this point in time but there are people who are working at it and I have hopes that, on day, humanity will evolve enough to realize that we don't hold dominion over the Earth but that we are just its guardians.