At the moment, yes.
The pendulum swings, Avatar.
Have no doubts that religious fanaticism will once again blight your fair land once more as well.
Bushmeat poses threat of simian retrovirus transmission to humans
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At the moment, yes.
The pendulum swings, Avatar.
Have no doubts that religious fanaticism will once again blight your fair land once more as well.
It is impossible to exterminate all the primates. Many are used in medical laboratories, many are in inaccessable areas of the world. They are small and feisty, they climb trees and hide very well. To access them and kill them, you would expose more people to a potential virus than if you left them alone.
Anyway, you are ignoring the benefits of disease, we need to get sick in order to develop immunity. Perhaps a developed immunity to a monkey disease will protect you from bird flu. We can't live in a bubble.
Anyway, you are ignoring the benefits of disease, we need to get sick in order to develop immunity. Perhaps a developed immunity to a monkey disease will protect you from bird flu. We can't live in a bubble.
Besides, it's like closing the barn door after the cows are gone. We already have AIDS in the world, and it can mutate any time.
Oh. Come now. Do you realize how huge a bite that the death of all primates would have take on their native environments? All species live in an intricate web of codependence and primates make up a large part of their ecosystem.
To destroy them all would practically wipe out their ecosystem.
Sure. It would adapt given time.
But that time would be a tough time.
How far would the effects spread? There's a sticky question. But. It would be a disaster and that's no doubt.
Well. Of course, it was a joke.
But. Vegetarians are generally slender of frame. And thus is Avatar.
Thus inaccesable for monkey eaters too
HIV and simmilar viruses destroy the immune system as it stands. That's exactly why it's so dangerous, there is no immune system left.
invert:
An ecosystem in a land far away. It won't affect Europe, Australia, Americas or anything of importance.
edit:
I was such before stopping eating meat. I work out regulary and eat little.
But. Can you be sure?
Do you know where many of our hardwoods come from?
Do you know how interdependent these trees are upon the species that live in them?
We live in a global ecology.
Our dependence has grown world-wide.
As I said, the sticky question would be how far the effects would spread, but the possibility is strong that they might spread world-wide in a variety of ways.
Only one way to find out. And then it's too late.
I should mention that there are also primates in South and Central America. They are perhaps not as diverse as the African primates but they are there.
Edit:
Just giving you shit, my man. I don't like all the local girls drooling over you so I kid.
(I'm hideous. And a rabid carnivore.)
They are genetically further away from humans as the african ones and thus not so dangerous. Of course I would like a biologist to speak on this, but that is my current knowledge.
I bet the effect would be less than that of aids now.
But that is just my bet, nothing more.Avatar,
Ice age.
Greenhouse effect.
Take your pick.
Wiping out the primates might push us over the edge to one or the other.
There is also a chance that wiping out the population might actually allow some species to proliferate that is even more damaging to human life. That can pass diseases to humans. Who knows?
The flu goes through pigs, you know. Pigs and humans are seperated pretty damn far on the evolutionary bush.
As I said. There's only one way to find out. And then it's too late.
Anyway, I still stand by my ape-men butler statement. All we need to do is train them to shit in toilets and to stop flinging their shit at us.
The thing is that the rain forest ecosystem is delicate. Our world is already on the precipice of an ecological disaster.
Ice age.
Greenhouse effect.
Take your pick.
Wiping out the primates might push us over the edge to one or the other.
There is also a chance that wiping out the population might actually allow some species to proliferate that is even more damaging to human life. That can pass diseases to humans. Who knows?
The flu goes through pigs, you know. Pigs and humans are seperated pretty damn far on the evolutionary bush.
As I said. There's only one way to find out. And then it's too late.
Anyway, I still stand by my ape-men butler statement. All we need to do is train them to shit in toilets and to stop flinging their shit at us.
The flu doesn't affect our immune system, which hiv is able to do because our dna is so simmilar with the other primates (~3% dif. with chimps).
At this point I am tempted to bring up from the dead my "Bring back the colonial regime in Africa" thread.
The flu kills precisely because it overcomes the immune system.
There is a difference, hiv doesn't overcome, it destroys the immune system, there is none left. Humans die from common diseases (cold) simply because they have no immune system left, they don't die from the virus, the virus makes all other non-lethal diseases potentially lethal.
Mhhh, it appears that tigers feed on some monkeys, and there are monkeys in Asia.... Yea Avatar, your idea seems uglier with each google search result. And just try me with that "Africans are inferior" shit....
Aw, I'm still waiting to see invert's pic.
Aw, I'm still waiting to see invert's pic.
Killing primates would have next to no effect on almost any ecosystem. As omnivores, primates fill a niche that could be filled by a myriad of other organisms. That having been said, the idea of killing all primates must be considered a joke. Not that it couldn't be done - we are easily and inadvertently accomplishing this right now - except for a few species such as the colobus. It is simply that the biology of humans and non-human primates are so incredibly similar that it would be useless to do so.
Take, for example, the fact that we use the mouse for almost all our biomedical research - an organism that is separated from us by about 90 million years. This organism is still so similar that almost all of research in the murine model (mice) is applicable to humans. Keeping this in mind, non-human primate biology can be said to be virtually identical to human biology.
The idea of similarities in biology is important. The more closely similar the biology, the greater the likelihood that two different organisms will suffer a disease in the same way. Why do you think that mice and rats are carriers of so many horrible diseases (read - the black plague)? Their biology is sufficiently different from ours that an innocuous disease in rodents is a deadly disease in primates. Given the fact that mammals progress very slowly, evolutionarily (remember how similar mice are to humans), it is extremely unlikely that any primates harbor diseases that would be fatal to us. Their biology is just too similar. And even in the case of SIV/HIV, it can be said that this is not really a fatal disease from an evolutionary standpoint. Since the majority of HIV transmission occurs sexually, and AIDS does not show up for 10 years, that means 10 years in which the (obviously) sexually active host of HIV can be reproducing.
The likelihood that non-human primates are now harboring a disease with the impact of HIV borders on nil, given the similarities in biology. You would do much better killing the rodent vermin than the much more similar primates. And besides, they're our cousins - doesn't blood mean anything?
Take, for example, the fact that we use the mouse for almost all our biomedical research - an organism that is separated from us by about 90 million years. This organism is still so similar that almost all of research in the murine model (mice) is applicable to humans. Keeping this in mind, non-human primate biology can be said to be virtually identical to human biology.
The idea of similarities in biology is important. The more closely similar the biology, the greater the likelihood that two different organisms will suffer a disease in the same way. Why do you think that mice and rats are carriers of so many horrible diseases (read - the black plague)? Their biology is sufficiently different from ours that an innocuous disease in rodents is a deadly disease in primates. Given the fact that mammals progress very slowly, evolutionarily (remember how similar mice are to humans), it is extremely unlikely that any primates harbor diseases that would be fatal to us. Their biology is just too similar. And even in the case of SIV/HIV, it can be said that this is not really a fatal disease from an evolutionary standpoint. Since the majority of HIV transmission occurs sexually, and AIDS does not show up for 10 years, that means 10 years in which the (obviously) sexually active host of HIV can be reproducing.
The likelihood that non-human primates are now harboring a disease with the impact of HIV borders on nil, given the similarities in biology. You would do much better killing the rodent vermin than the much more similar primates. And besides, they're our cousins - doesn't blood mean anything?
geistkiesel
Valued Senior Member
Avatar said:
I think we should have classes in the earliest grades to teach the children not to have sex with monkeys and other wild animals when they grow up. Monkeys, like cats, are only cute when very young.
Geistkiesel