Comments on: My Humps, My Humps, My Feral Population Jumps

My Humps, My Humps, My Feral Population Jumps

maryh — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 03:51:48 -0800

From far away they came to toil under the scorching Outback sun, and their hardy dispositions and tireless labor helped to create the central Australian railway and telegraph systems. They are the Camels [NPR story w/ audio], and today they are free (well, okay, feral), and they are many (700,000 strong, at least.) While they're no cane toads, they're becoming a bit of a pest. What to do with all those dromedaries? Well, you can race 'em, or you can eat 'em, or maybe you can even try milking 'em. Just get 'em before they get you, mate.

By: maryh

maryh — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 04:05:00 -0800

And best wishes to everone in Oz dealing with the wildfires. Stay safe, you guys.

By: pracowity

pracowity — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 06:14:12 -0800

What you gonna do with all that junk? All that junk inside your tr... Oops! Wrong animal.

By: batmonkey

batmonkey — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 06:17:30 -0800

YAY! Aussie camels! Thanks, maryh!

By: A Thousand Baited Hooks

A Thousand Baited Hooks — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 06:44:27 -0800

That "eat 'em" link may give a misleading impression of how most Australians eat their camel.

By: furtive

furtive — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 07:02:53 -0800

Yet another non-native species.

By: Science!

Science! — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 07:11:44 -0800

Every time I hear about Australia it just seems cooler and cooler.

By: Science!

Science! — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 07:15:21 -0800

And humans are just as native to any given area as any other animal, no matter when we showed up. Now if some aliens picked us up and dropped us there that's another story.

By: tnai

tnai — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 07:39:19 -0800

And humans are just as native to any given area as any other animal, no matter when we showed up. Not when but how. Being picked up and dropped by boats (or planes) is hardly a natural migration.

By: tnai

tnai — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 07:40:21 -0800

(talking specifically about Aus here)

By: Smart Dalek

Smart Dalek — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 07:47:16 -0800

Ah, now we know why kangaroos have been on the rampage.

By: Richard Daly

Richard Daly — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 09:27:02 -0800

Er, I'm pritty sure we were a native species.

By: Rumple

Rumple — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 10:43:15 -0800

tnai: are ignorant of the fact that humans have been in Australia for 60,000 years or so? Because if you aren't, you might have considered making an intelligent post about how, in fact, the arrival of humans around then is associated with widespread extinctions of Australian (Sahulian) mega-marsupials. As it stands though, you sounds like a wanker.

By: Rumple

Rumple — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 10:47:46 -0800

There is also the less well known, and less successful, introduction of camels to British Columbia during the Gold Rush of the 1850s. (more)

By: I Am Not a Lobster

I Am Not a Lobster — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 13:01:16 -0800

Metafilter: As it stands though, you sounds like a wanker.

By: hank

hank — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 17:09:15 -0800

Would someone please, please, capture the audio of that program and put the camel vocalizations into sound files somewhere? I really need a new "you have mail" beep at the office. Not to mention an "AdAwareFoundMoreCrap" sound upgrade.

By: wilful

wilful — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 17:53:20 -0800

Rumple, the weight of opinion is currently against the extinction of the megafauna by homo.

By: Sukiari

Sukiari — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 18:24:23 -0800

Just sic' the cane toads on 'em!

By: Rumple

Rumple — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 22:03:59 -0800

wilful -- I used "associated with" rather than "caused by" deliberately, hoping to avoid implying that humans were wholly responsible for the demise of Australia's giant faunas. The connection is difficult to determine for a number of reasons, not least among them being: 1. human arrival and the relevant extinctions took place around the limits of radiocarbon dating (40-60,000 years ago). 2. it is notoriously difficult to determine when a species went extinct (is this the bone of the last giant wombat? or just the most recent bone that has survived?). 3. there is no widespread agreement when Humans arrived in Australia, with some evidence suggesting 60,000 years ago and other evidence topping out about 41,000. The difference is crucial, as megafaunal extinctions (at least the last wave of them) are concentrated around 44,500 years ago. 4. Climatic changes, said to play a significant role in the megafaunal extinctions, can easily cause range alterations and local extirpations which muddy the palaeontological record. So, for every paper such as this: A review of the evidence for a human role in the extinction of Australian megafauna and an alternative interpretation Stephen Wroe, Judith Field, Quaternary Science Reviews (2006, my copy says in press) which argues for a primarily climate-driven extinction regime, correctly noting some mid-Pleistocene extinctions that are surpassingly unlikely to be anthropogenic, there are others like this: Fifty millennia of catastrophic extinctions after human contact David A. Burney and Timothy F. Flannery TRENDS in Ecology and Evolution Vol.20 No.7 July 2005 Which argues that people are a contributing factor, primarily through anthropogenic environmental change tipping the balance against fragile and naive megafaunal populations. Having recently reviewed the global evidence, it is abundantly clear to me that widespread extinctions are almost always associated with the first arrival of genus Homo in any new land, and while the relationship between these two processes is not always clear, some aspect of human arrival (landscape burning, disease, and, probably least relevant to Australia but most relevant in some contexts such as NZ & Madagascar, overkill by humans) plays a role. (Predation pressure probably played a role in the Americas as well, as Daniel Fisher's mastodon tusk demographics shows, but certainly not at Martin's "Blitzkrieg" overkill levels.)