By Dan Wylie
Aristotle characterised the elephant as "the beast which passeth all others in wit and mind" and the animal has lengthy figured in cultural artifacts, even on continents it hasn't ever inhabited. Now Elephant presents an enticing examine the elephant's lengthy legacy.
clone of the elephant are available all through global cultures as an emblem of intelligence, power, and loyalty. Wylie attracts on a wealthy array of examples to record that symbolic energy, starting from symbols of the Hindu god of knowledge, Ganesh, to the cherished children's works Dumbo and Babar the Elephant.
Turning to the elephant's organic background, Wylie describes the 3 last species—the African Bush Elephant, African wooded area Elephant, and the Asian Elephant—and the debatable efforts for elephant conservation. With ivory poaching and human encroachment into the animal's normal habitats, Wylie argues that we are facing a uniquely poignant conservation challenge within which elephants and people either unsustainably devour constrained usual resources.
A compelling new access within the Animal sequence, Elephant can be invaluable for each animal lover's bookshelf.
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1997). We make new discoveries every day about ways in which biodiversity benefits humans. For example, scientists recently discovered that the saliva of the Gila monster (Heloderma suspectum) contains a compound that may serve as a model drug to counteract the debilitating effect of diabetes (Nielson, Young, and Parkes 2003). Biodiversity provides invaluable ecosystem services, or the ecological processes that sustain life on Earth, including decomposition, nutrient cycling and soil formation, pollination, filtration of pollutants from water, regulation of global temperature and precipitation, and flood and erosion control.
CONSERVATION RECOMMENDATIONS The question that conservationists must grapple with is: If not “here,” then “where”? It is neither sufficient nor responsible to oppose sprawl without supporting an alternative. Development can bring important benefits when done with a healthy regard for environmental resources, economic impact, and social consequences. S. population is expected to grow by another 100 million people before the middle of the twenty-first century. How and where are these people to be accommodated?
Although this may be beneficial for humans, our everyday activities create novel disturbances and impacts to the landscape. Even seemingly small-scale or short-term recreational activities, such as walking through the woods, bicycling, and off-road vehicle riding, take their toll on plant and animal species, even when these activities are confined to designated trails. These activities occur with greater frequency in natural lands that are adjacent to development. Trails affect the distribution, abundance, and reproductive success of bird species (Miller, Knight, and Miller 1998).