What of the voles:
Long ago (http://www.nobabies.net/Population%20cycles%20among%20herbivores%20in%20Europe.html)
I reported that I had found an article showing the damped oscillation of vole populations in a number of sites over a number of years in Europe. I was really excited. The voles were following the same trajectory as the fruit flies in my cage and the computer simulation I had done.
Oddly, the pattern is that of a post-zygotic mechanism. Humans and Australian mice follow a pattern of mixed post-zygotic and pre-zygotic mechanisms leading to extinction. That was odd, but I eagerly wrote the authors to point out that they were pretty much in line with similar evidence elsewhere – which should have been a feather in their cap, validating their work. They never wrote back of course. I’m sure I’m ignored because I’m not politically correct (which is a bum rap, I really am politically correct you know) and what I say is scary (which is an understatement) but voles. What’s wrong with talking about voles?
All right, the voles are well adapted to their environment, and when they go through a population bottleneck they have some way of responding that protects them from the fate of mice and men. Mice in Australia are newcomers and not well adapted, and of course humans aren’t well adapted anywhere except maybe Africa, where we came from.
But why the bottlenecks? The paper never says. But now it has become clear in a letter. (Hunted Predators: Charisma confounds Science vol. 346 no. 8254 September 18, 2015 page 1294) They’ve been poisoning those voles. Aw. Apparently voles have no charisma, so they aren’t valued by the public and can be exterminated at will.
I tell you people have no hearts; why do I try to save them? Sorry to have to give you a link; I used to be able to copy images but no more (see previous sentence).
There have been 103 visitors over the past month and YouTube has run “Babies Triumph over Evil” 149 times.
