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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!rutgers!seismo!mimsy!prometheus!pmk
From: pmk@prometheus.UUCP
Newsgroups: talk.origins,sci.bio
Subject: Re: mass extinctions
Message-ID: <621@prometheus.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 7-Apr-87 00:00:26 EST
Article-I.D.: promethe.621
Posted: Tue Apr  7 00:00:26 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 11-Apr-87 14:08:48 EST
References: <3366@udenva.UUCP> <1415@cybvax0.UUCP>
Reply-To: pmk@prometheus.UUCP (Paul M. Koloc)
Organization: Prometheus II, Ltd., College Park, MD 20740-0222
Lines: 33
Keywords: Adaptablity
Xref: utgpu talk.origins:515 sci.bio:261

In article <1415@cybvax0.UUCP> mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) writes:
>In article <3366@udenva.UUCP> agranok@udenva.UUCP (Alexander Granok) writes:

>> It's the same sort of thing with coyotes and wolves today.

>No it's not.  Wolves have been exterminated by humans, because when their
>normal food sources were swept aside to make room for domesticated animals,
>they adapted by eating the domesticated animals.  It has been cost effective
>for humans to wipe out wolves (for assorted reasons), but not coyotes.

Actually, fences discrimminated in this process of eliminating food sources
from wolves.  Cattle used to be grazed in SMALL fenced pastures, and now 
are fed in feed lots and barns.  In the past, rotated pasture/cropland were 
all fenced.  Those fences have come out, and the farmers plow the ground 
from ditch to ditch.  

The open range has allowed the wolves back in.  I ran into my first wolf 
while hunting in Iowa!  Impressive!  Very long legged, huge feet, teeth 
as long as fingers all crowded toward the business end of a very long 
mouth.   I took a theatening stance, and backed out of his path.   Beastie
took what seemed like a few leisurely loping steps and was gone into a 
thicket a half mile (1 kilometer) away.  It stopped momentarily and looked 
back, and then vanished from sight.   A solitary "outer limits" experience 
that I will never forget.   It was in an area about three or four miles
north of the line between Fayette and Wadena along the Volga River, in 
Fayette county, just in case any one has some time to kill and wants to 
see a zone where wilderness has returned in just a decade or two.  

+---------------------------------------------------------+--------+
| Paul M. Koloc, President: (301) 445-1075                | FUSION |
| Prometheus II, Ltd.; College Park, MD 20740-0222        |  this  |
| {mimsy | seismo}!prometheus!pmk; pmk@prometheus.UUCP    | decade |
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