Hannah Schramm
Endangered Species,
More then We Think
The idea of giraffes being more
then one species was talked in this article. It explained that with the involvement
of DNA research on animals, scientist found that there are in fact four
distinct species of giraffes. Scientist first did the research on the giraffes
to increase the amount of help giraffes get on the endangered species act.
Knowing that there are in fact four different species means that the populations
of giraffes are increasingly small. With the size being smaller compared to
what they wanted. Scientists hope that much more involvement will be made to
get the giraffes off the endangered list. They also found that the species in
fact do not interbreed in the wild. The four different kinds of giraffes are
located in different areas of Africa keeping the species separate.
With the
knowledge of the giraffes we now know that the breading in zoos to bring the
giraffes population up could be harming it. The idea of increasing the
population of giraffes with the breeding could result in the giraffe species
not keeping the species that have just been found. With this finding the way we
look at and try to help giraffes will change. Zoos will have to do research
before breading the giraffes so they do not intermingle the different species
that are living now. Making it more time consuming to the zoos that want to
increase the populations. This one
change though will help the species and make it so all the different species
will thrive.
The research into endangered
species could make us find more animals. We could see how many species of
animals there really are on planet earth. Finding the different kinds of
animals would make it possible to save more animals that are alive before they
die off. Doing the research while we have the time will make it so we can keep
the animals as they are in the wild without making them different. The whole point
of the endangered animals list is to keep the species alive. If we do not do
the proper research into the animals different species could die off. It is a
good thing we found out about the giraffes in time before they were all lost.
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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWhat are some of the main risks of interbreeding different species of giraffes? What precautions are zoos taking to ensure that species are only mating with those of the same kind?
ReplyDelete-Sara H.
I think this would be a great example of what we learned about today in class. When a species becomes it's own species, they usually can't breed with each other, more particular reasons. I don't think the zoo needs to do too much to ensure interbreeding, since nature will do most of that for itself. C.W.
DeleteHow do they test to find out that these giraffes are different species? Could this be true of other animals?
ReplyDeleteB.C.
livescience.com offers some more information on this topic. According to them, "The study researchers collected and analyzed DNA from skin samples representing 190 giraffes from across Africa, the first such analysis to include data from all nine formerly accepted subspecies."
DeleteIf scientists were faced with a question relating to the species of an animal they could do a similar test and obtain the results they needed to draw a conclusion.
-S.L.H.
After reading your blog post about the research of different types of giraffes, I am left with a few questions. How are the giraffes different from one another? And why would interbreeding the different types of giraffes be so detrimental to their survival? I am curious about these questions because I don't understand why breeding the giraffes in captivity would continue endangering them.
ReplyDeleteB.N.K
According to Giraffes World online, their are 4 types of giraffes: Masal, Rothschild, Somall, and West African Giraffe. They are different from their patterns, height, weight, and location. I don't think it is so much about life or death, because Zoos have been mating giraffes for a very long time, and no reports have shown that giraffes have died because they mated with another giraffe with different patterns. I think it is more of keeping the original species alive and not making new ones. I relate this like breeding dogs. Dogs are dogs, but what makes them different is how they were breaded. If someone wanted to keep the chocolate labs alive they would mate them strictly to other chocolate labs, but if they mated with other dogs, then obviously it would create a different type of dog. If giraffes are mating with other dogs it's creating different types of giraffes. That is just my opinion. (:
Delete-A.G
We were able to learn a little bit about this today in class. To become your own species, you have to have some difference than your ancestor. For the most part, species can't interbreed with other species, even when they are similar animals. For example, all fireflies species have different light patterns, but in order to mate, only those that give off the same light patterns will mate. There are several prezygotic and postzygotic inhibitors that could occur, preventing the mating of 2 species. (behavioral, temporal, mechanical, viability, fertilization.) C.W.
DeleteIf giraffes from 2 different species were to mate, would they have fertile offspring? and if so, why are they considered different species? Why would it be such a huge issue if they did interbreed? then there could possibly be just a large super breed and help get them off the endangered list!
ReplyDeleteKH
I read a previous blog post about the discovery of the different types of giraffes, but what I didn’t realize at the time was what this meant for the breeding of giraffes. As you mentioned, breeding them without knowing which species they are from could potentially decrease the giraffe population and cause them to be more endangered. I believe this was an important find for scientists, however, I must say I’m a little shocked that it took them this long to figure out that there were four different species of giraffes.
ReplyDelete-Mindy C.
I love this idea of trying to help save animals and preventing species from growing extinct. I believe we need to support our environment, and take care of our Earth. That said, when we discussed evolution, I was wondering how involved we should be in trying to prevent a species from growing extinct? To me, it seems to be life, that if a species is going extinct ( other than for poaching reasons) that there is not much we can do for it. If our environment isn't supporting the animal, or it's breeding into a different type of giraffe, at what point do we feel like we need to step in and help? Do we sit back and call it evolution and natural selection ? Or are we obligated to keep around species as we know them?
ReplyDeleteR.T.
When I read this article I thought about a Giraffe-Zebra hybrid that I learned about recently. It is a mix of the two animals. Scientists did not think the animal was possible until they found one roaming in the wild. They are call Okapis.
ReplyDeleteSkyler H.