This might be stupid but...
- Thread starter MrPeete
- Start date
more than that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Panda
actually there are species, that are much more endangered, with less than 10 individuals left, but they are not so sweet and marketable so you don't hear much about them
not to mention the dozens and maybe even hundreds of plant, insect and other small and lesser known animal species that go extinct every day...
the real problem is not keeping the pandas, it's preserving natural habitats untouched, which is increasingly harder in a world, rapidly approaching 7 bilions...
Unfortunately a lot of it has to do with the "The Cute Factor."
Scientists who study the evolution of visual signaling have identified a wide and still expanding assortment of features and behaviors that make something look cute: bright forward-facing eyes set low on a big round face, a pair of big round ears, floppy limbs and a side-to-side, teeter-totter gait, among many others.
Cute cues are those that indicate extreme youth, vulnerability, harmlessness and need, scientists say, and attending to them closely makes good Darwinian sense. As a species whose youngest members are so pathetically helpless they can't lift their heads to suckle without adult supervision, human beings must be wired to respond quickly and gamely to any and all signs of infantile desire.
The human cuteness detector is set at such a low bar, researchers said, that it sweeps in and deems cute practically anything remotely resembling a human baby or a part thereof, and so ends up including the young of virtually every mammalian species, fuzzy-headed birds like Japanese cranes, woolly bear caterpillars, a bobbing balloon, a big round rock stacked on a smaller rock, a colon, a hyphen and a close parenthesis typed in succession.
[...]
New studies suggest that cute images stimulate the same pleasure centers of the brain aroused by sex, a good meal or psychoactive drugs like cocaine, which could explain why everybody in the panda house wore a big grin.
[...]
Human babies have unusually large heads because humans have unusually large brains. Their heads are round because their brains continue to grow throughout the first months of life, and the plates of the skull stay flexible and unfused to accommodate the development. Baby eyes and ears are situated comparatively far down the face and skull, and only later migrate upward in proportion to the development of bones in the cheek and jaw areas.
Baby eyes are also notably forward-facing, the binocular vision a likely legacy of our tree-dwelling ancestry, and all our favorite Disney characters also sport forward-facing eyes, including the ducks and mice, species that in reality have eyes on the sides of their heads.
[...]
Researchers who study animals beloved by the public appreciate the human impulse to nurture anything even remotely babylike, though they are at times taken aback by people's efforts to identify with their preferred species.
[...]
The panda's distinctive markings further add to its appeal: the black patches around the eyes make them seem winsomely low on its face, while the black ears pop out cutely against the white fur of its temples.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/03/s...d=1&ei=5070&en=cf72337f89cecf53&ex=1177646400
Scientists who study the evolution of visual signaling have identified a wide and still expanding assortment of features and behaviors that make something look cute: bright forward-facing eyes set low on a big round face, a pair of big round ears, floppy limbs and a side-to-side, teeter-totter gait, among many others.
Cute cues are those that indicate extreme youth, vulnerability, harmlessness and need, scientists say, and attending to them closely makes good Darwinian sense. As a species whose youngest members are so pathetically helpless they can't lift their heads to suckle without adult supervision, human beings must be wired to respond quickly and gamely to any and all signs of infantile desire.
The human cuteness detector is set at such a low bar, researchers said, that it sweeps in and deems cute practically anything remotely resembling a human baby or a part thereof, and so ends up including the young of virtually every mammalian species, fuzzy-headed birds like Japanese cranes, woolly bear caterpillars, a bobbing balloon, a big round rock stacked on a smaller rock, a colon, a hyphen and a close parenthesis typed in succession.
[...]
New studies suggest that cute images stimulate the same pleasure centers of the brain aroused by sex, a good meal or psychoactive drugs like cocaine, which could explain why everybody in the panda house wore a big grin.
[...]
Human babies have unusually large heads because humans have unusually large brains. Their heads are round because their brains continue to grow throughout the first months of life, and the plates of the skull stay flexible and unfused to accommodate the development. Baby eyes and ears are situated comparatively far down the face and skull, and only later migrate upward in proportion to the development of bones in the cheek and jaw areas.
Baby eyes are also notably forward-facing, the binocular vision a likely legacy of our tree-dwelling ancestry, and all our favorite Disney characters also sport forward-facing eyes, including the ducks and mice, species that in reality have eyes on the sides of their heads.
[...]
Researchers who study animals beloved by the public appreciate the human impulse to nurture anything even remotely babylike, though they are at times taken aback by people's efforts to identify with their preferred species.
[...]
The panda's distinctive markings further add to its appeal: the black patches around the eyes make them seem winsomely low on its face, while the black ears pop out cutely against the white fur of its temples.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/03/s...d=1&ei=5070&en=cf72337f89cecf53&ex=1177646400
Development is the problem. Not too many countries care about keeping "open spaces" that don't have strip malls, or some other shit, whether it be a home or whatever.
Our country seems to have a large responsibility for development and destruction but there's a lot of other countries that are worse in that regard...well, kind of...
it's not necessarily technology, it's just the kind they decide to develop and use....there were steam engine cars and all sorts of shit 100 years ago, but they went with GAS powered cars.....they just didn't pick the best technology cause of whatever reason...i tend to think the reason is cause they are idiots and money hungry but I wasn't alive 100 years ago.
The News will put ANYTHING on the air if they think it will get to people's emotions and shit....that's what they do...if they have enough time to fit it into the newscast that is.
Our country seems to have a large responsibility for development and destruction but there's a lot of other countries that are worse in that regard...well, kind of...
it's not necessarily technology, it's just the kind they decide to develop and use....there were steam engine cars and all sorts of shit 100 years ago, but they went with GAS powered cars.....they just didn't pick the best technology cause of whatever reason...i tend to think the reason is cause they are idiots and money hungry but I wasn't alive 100 years ago.
The News will put ANYTHING on the air if they think it will get to people's emotions and shit....that's what they do...if they have enough time to fit it into the newscast that is.
