The Human Impact

Through a sort of loopty-loo of events, my son has settled recently on the topic of endangered and extinct animals. For a week or two, thanks to the movie Ice Age, we were all about the Dodo bird. We read websites. We checked out books from the library. We watched videos and talked ourselves in and around the topic.

Our research eventually led us to looking at other animals, both past and present. We’ve learned a lot about using the fossil record to build theories and have discussed how theories change over time as new evidence is collected and as we have better tools to interpret the clues. We switch between books written with an adult audience in mind and books written with a younger audience in mind and he eagerly absorbs all the information. It’s interesting to see him put the stuff he’s learned back out there. Sometimes it’s all in fun – his “silly willy” interpretations and stories of the way things are, were, or will be. At other times, however, his commentary is entirely logical and it’s apparent that his understanding runs pretty deep.

As often happens, I am struck by how much my awareness grows from the subjects my kids become interested in.

One book was explaining mass extinctions. We tend to think of the end of the dinosaurs as one big event, but in fact there have been many periods throughout history where many animals died out at the same time. The end of the dinosaurs was not even one of the largest extinctions (scientists believe there have been at least five sizeable mass extinctions).

We are currently in the midst of a sixth mass extinction. Since humans have arrived, and thanks to humans, many animal species have died out in a very short span of time (as opposed to previous mass extinctions, prompted by natural events, taking place over much greater periods of time).

Humans are barely a blip on the ole’ timeline… but we sure have certainly made our mark. Kaman says it’s really too bad that people have to be so mean.

Self-centered and self-important might have been words I would have come up with, but in general, I have to agree.