Experimental Blog # 207

Notes on "The Story of the World in 100 Species" by Christopher Lloyd

Although Christopher Lloyd is not a scientist himself, he certainly seems to be an excellent science writer most of the time. Besides that, the copyright date of this book is 2009; and the sciences covered in this book are very often being updated.

"The central purpose of this book is to cultivate a richer understanding of all history - not just as chronology - but as seen through the lens of the natural world itself."
"It is ironic, though, to consider that were it not for the successful pursuit of immortality, perhaps begun by viruses at the dawn of life billions of years ago, human history may never have emerged at all."

The original natural world that was formed by "natural selection" began to come to its end, maybe, about 10,000 years ago. Especially, in recent centuries, "natural selection" has been increasingly replaced by the "artificial selection" of the interference of homo sapiens, that is, people. This interference had been true for a long time even before the life and work of Charles Darwin.

"Today, pork is the most widely eaten meat in the world. More than a hundred million tonnes of pig meat is farmed, mostly in intensive warehouses ..."
"By 1830 there were over two million sheep in Australia. Today the continent hosts more than a hundred million, second only to China's 160 million. New Zealand has a more modest 40 million but, < > that represents a staggering ten sheep per person. In the UK the ratio currently stands at about two people per sheep."
"The success of cows is reflected in their present populations. Estimated at 1.3 billion individuals, these are the most well kept, highly bred, populous domestic farm species of all time."
"Today there are an estimated twenty-four billion chickens worldwide."
"Horses are, in fact, among the most sensitive creatures on Earth. < > The upshot is that today horses are another of the modern world's most numerous species. China has an estimated eight million, Mexico 6.2 million, Brazil 5.9 million and the US 5.3 million."
"Camel-herders still survive, however, especially in Somalia and Ethiopia, which between them host as many as half of the world's fourteen million population. While two-humped varieties are in decline{1.4 million}, in Australia wild populations of one-humped camels < > are thought to number as many as 700,000 in the central outback. With their populations growing at an impressive rate of 11 per cent per year, it seems that, like pigs, these are creatures that can readily re-adapt to life in the wild."

"The impact of domestic dogs on human culture therefore reaches far beyond their wide-ranging usefulness to mankind. From the rise of the movement for animal rights to the dark experiments of modern eugenics, these are creatures that have been, like horses, true protagonists in the turbulent history of human civilizations."
" ...domestic cats have recently eclipsed even dogs in terms of their populations, now estimated at 600 million individuals worldwide. < > Unlike other domesticated farm animals, cats do not seem to have been 'selected' by humans for any specific purpose. In fact, cats are just as likely to have chosen to live with humans in a process known as 'self-domestication'."

Obviously, since the book is about "100 species", many other life forms of mammals, invertebrates, non-flowering plants, bacteria, fish, fungus, virus, flowering plants, protoctists, reptiles, and birds are included.