Comment by rmunn
25 days ago
Cute title; I thought I was about to read a contrarian ecologist saying "a species that is so very specialized in its diet and finicky in its reproductive behavior doesn't deserve, evolutionarily speaking, to survive". (Seriously, it's seriously freakin' difficult to get pandas to reproduce in captivity). And while my knee-jerk reaction would be "maybe, but we should still preserve them because we can", I was prepared to see if the author had a serious argument to present.
Instead it's a cute bait-and-switch title, and the article tells you upfront that it's actually about the Python `pandas` library. Which I think I've encountered maybe once in my entire career (I'm not in the data-science field), so I don't have much meaningful to say about the article itself. I just want to commend the author on fooling me with the title. This is the kind of "clickbait" I can respect and actually wish there was a little bit more of sometimes. A nice chuckle, then a real article.
There is indeed a whole book about ecosystems and charismatic megafauna called "Do We Need Pandas?: The Uncomfortable Truth About Biodiversity"[1]. And there is debate among naturalists [2]
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9656950-do-we-need-panda... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/sep/23/panda-ex...
> Seriously, it's seriously freakin' difficult to get pandas to reproduce in captivity
It is impossible, and has been tried many times by many people, to reproduce Octopus vulgari in captivity. Their reproductive behaviour looks also quite weird for us (the mother always die). Yet they thrive in the wild unless over fished.
because breeding intelligent creatures generally requires keeping them happy. When treated like a farm aniaml, many high cognition anaimals will refuse to reproduce, just look at how bad life has become for average humans, and predictably, humans are starting to refuse to reproduce.
My point was that "captivity reproduction" should not be a key point in the viability of a specie. Octopus can live in captivity (albeit stressed!), but for some reason their larva don't survive. Do they deserve to go extinct for that? They were able to survive for 500 million years, through some massive extinctions, looks good enough to me.
Birth rates fall as prosperity increases.
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That's more true in some locations than in others. There are places where the reported quality of life is quite a bit higher than others. I see comments like yours a lot on HN, and I'm starting to suspect that the average HN commenter is more likely to be living in some of the poorly-run big cities than in the better-run small-to-medium-sized towns. (Specifics can, and will vary. But on average I've found I'm much happier living in a medium-sized town than in a megacity, and I've also found the city governments of medium-sized towns to be more likely to be competent. Perhaps I've just been lucky in the medium towns I've lived in, though; I'd need far more data before I was certain of the thesis).
Point is, if you're miserable in the place where you are, consider whether moving to a different town is feasible for you. It's not always an option for many people, for many varied reasons. But it's definitely something to consider. If it turns out you can do it, sometimes taking that risk can pay off in the long run.
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Apologies for not rewarding your trust ;)
Would be very interested to read an article on the literal interpretation of my title.
Also just wanted to say thank you for this comment - made my day :)
Yeah I wanted the controversial panda article. Can someone write that instead?
I was expecting a diatribe about the (UK) police: "Next week, right, I'm going to blow up a panda in Croydon".