Thursday, May 11, 2006

Of Moose and Men...

For years humans have been maligned for extinguishing the wooly mammoth.

All the while, moose stood quietly by.

Now, it turns out, the moose were responsible for the wooly mammoth's demise.

On behalf of the human species, I expect a full apology from the moose community, as well as significant reparations (which they can just pop in the freezer).

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Mr. Ball, Explain yourself. I was out in Colorado recently where the moose roamed the city, even sleeping in yards and parks.
They were so tame. How in the world could they chase the wooly mammoth off Earth?
Impossible!!!
Betty G.

BallBounces said...

Glad to, Boopchile. I think the theory is that, as the climate changed, they came and ate the food that the mammoths would have been eating.

Here's a concise summary of a recent news article:

"Humans have been blamed for slaughtering woolly mammoths and other large ice-age animals into extinction, but new evidence from Yukon suggests this isn't the case.

Moose were to blame, at least in part, says Dale Guthrie, a researcher at the University of Alaska.

He has found evidence that the climate in Yukon and Alaska was warming between 13,000 and 10,000 years ago. The North was changing from a grassland to a boreal forest and tundra, he says. Moose also arrived, and were better adapted to digest the new, woodier plants that were taking over.

A close examination of the fossil record suggests moose and other browsers probably competed against the mammoths and other ice-age grazers for food, Dr. Guthrie says.

He found that three animals -- bison, an elk-like creature called a wapiti and moose -- all increased their numbers during human colonization.

As people moved in from Asia, Dr. Guthrie's fossil finds show that moose moved with them. They were better at digesting the available food than mammoths and horses.

His work suggests that humans are not to blame for the fact that North America has so few big animals compared with Africa.

BrokenFallenAngel said...

HI MY site is brokenangelspoetry and thanks for the comments but i have read the bible, i own one actually and celtic wiccanism didn't chase me into a demonic portal, I write the way i feel i go to church every sunday i am a christian who likes to exxplore other religions, so please I do not need to be saved so dont worry i know all about god already.

"... nothing intellectually compelling or challenging.. bald assertions coupled to superstition... woefully pathetic"