Where did all the animals go?

Some of the great things about modern archelogical and paleontological research are the increasing depth and accuracy of dating coupled with the evolutionary study of fossils linked to specific period in time. 

But suddenly (well, in the past 10 years or so), another layer has been added to their research, and it comes from completely different fields of study: zoology and genetics. 

For over 400 years, the perfect example of extinction of a species has been the dodo bird, hunted in a brief 80 years to extinction by 1662. This flightless bird only lived on one island, an island seafarers stopped at to replenish their fresh meat supply. There were so many dodos that it was thought they were inexhaustible. 

Similarly, the American carrier pigeon was so numerous before the arrival of firearms that the entire sky was blackened for hours as a flock passed. One hundred years after the first guns reached the West, there were no more.

So? We have ample proof that man can obliterate a species. Call it careless, call it necessity that tipped over to over-harvesting — whatever you call it, there is no doubt extinction can and has been achieved by man. And achieved by man in an incredibly short period of time.

But what happens when you begin to unravel the evolution and extinction of those fossils of the Pleistocene era, 2.5 million to 11,700 years ago? Then add genetic evaluation, and the depth of understanding begins to amaze. 

First, let’s look at the evolutionary aspects of creatures on this planet. Bigger survives better than smaller (by and large, let’s not get to absolutes). The bigger whale does better than the smaller whale. All whale fossils show that all whales have increased in size, slowly, over the millennia, over millions of years. Same with elephants, giraffe, apes, mankind, tigers and so on.

Now, stop for a second and read this: Across Asia, Europe and America as recently as 15,000 years ago, there were hippos, mammoths, giant bears, hyena, wooly rhinoceros, giant deer, 600-lb. saber tooth cats, cave lions and giant antelope. 

And want to know the real trick here? In studying the exact time of the fossils found, in studying the exact arrival times of humans in region by region, in knowing the evolutionary pattern (species get bigger not smaller) — all these show that the arrival of man coincides with the decimation of the largest animals. 

Take the woolly mammoth for example. His only enemy was really the saber-toothed tiger, and even then the mammoth had to be young or ill. At full size, any healthy elephant in Africa today can easily crush the largest lion or lion pack attacking. But archeologists find ancient elephant bones used as tools and elephant traps in cliff gaps where the herd was herded to slaughter later…. Tie it all together and the demise of the mammoth was man’s doing. 

So too, the giant antelope, the hippo, the wooly rhino. And in the end, with no large-scale prey, the largest cats became extinct too. Ever seen a lion go after a bunny? No contest, the bunny wins.

And today? Biologists have found that the Earth is losing mammal species at 20 to 100 times the rate of the past. Africa is wholesale slaughtering species (apes, quadrupeds and birds) for what is exported as bushmeat, finding its way into cat and dog food and, yes, human processed food chains around the globe. 

And it is not just Africa. Australia is eradicating the kangaroo, Russia is wholesale slaughtering bears and deer from Siberia to Kamchatka — meat going to China. Japan is harvesting 40% of the krill needed to feed the largest whales. The list seems endless.

What’s the lesson here? In every case in the Pleistocene Era of large mammal and bird extinction, the extinction only happened after man arrived on the scene. On Wangel Island in the Russian Artic, mammoth survived until 4,500 years ago — long after the last Ice Age ended — and then they died out within years of the arrival of the first humans.

Where Did All The Animals Go? Following that Pete Seeger refrain, the next lyric would be “Gone to extinction everyone. When will man ever learn, when will they ever learn?”

Peter Riva, a former resident of Amenia Union, now lives in New Mexico.