Do you agree with David Attenborough?

That is why knowing as much as possible is a good thing, and DA has contributed quite a lot towards that.

It is not new. Prince Phillip has said it as well. Looking at it from the Earth's point of view the human population on the face of the Earth, is like bad acne and will eventually go away. Sorry, I don't know who said that.

Much in what elegran and others are saying. Also worth considering if humans can move around the planet so freely, so can viruses, bacteria, etc...

bags when you say 'to improve their lot' do you include the damage the environment to provide stuff we could live without?
I believe in evolution and so that must include change & adaptation but I think humans sometimes artificially accelerate change. The impact of this does not allow other species time to adapt.

Also if evolution happens 'naturally' does human 'unnatural' evolutionary action put the earth out of balance?

A few years ago I read that there were plans to harvest krill from the ocean. I couldn't believe this, given that krill are at the bottom of the food chain and, take away the krill and everything else goes with it [eventually]. Thankfully it didn't happen, but I couldn't believe that the idea was put forward in the first place.

My son did a painting for his A Level art work at school. In it was a picture of a hand holding a forest with the words; We would say, "The cure for cancer could be out there in the forest and you're about to destroy it". And they would say "Dream on..." [it came from an article in the Observer that he read].

He also has said in the past in answer to the question "what is the most interesting thing on the planet?", ...... A two year old human being as they are so fascinating, like sponges and I agree with him totally.

Agree with him. No animal has ever unleashed so much wanton destruction as ourselves - the supposedly most intelligent animal.

But is our contribution "unnatural" or just part of evolution? All species do whatever they can to survive - but we agonise about what we do and have guilt in our repertoire.

We do not agonise enough!

Don't other species just use the resources they absolutely need to keep their species going whereas humans make /use things that are not necessary for the maintenance of the species..that is what I mean about 'unnatural' as opposed to 'natural'. Scientifically I have no idea if I am right or wrong!

I think you are spot on nanaej because we have learned to use tools, fire, technology and so on to do things that are beyond the scope of our bodies. To control and distort the natural world rather than be part of it.

Absolutely right nanaej look at the recent publicity about the amount of food that is wasted. An animal doesn't tip perfectly edible food into landfill because it doesn't look pretty - it eats it. Now we are told to be careful about buying mackerel because of the quantities being hoovered up. The whole point about the balance of Nature is that it is a BALANCE! As soon as man moves in the balance is lost and profit and machines take over. Eventually someone will go too far and life as we know it will become unsustainable. Take the dramatic fall in bee population. If that cannot be reversed we could end up with crops unpollinated and people and animals starving and most people would have no idea it was happening until it was too late.

Foxes kill chickens and don't eat them - they just mutilate them. Food wastage!

Seems to be the more intelligent predators that do that [eg killer whales]. Although you could argue that foxes go into a killing frenzy because of all of the chickens being cooped together and they can't escape, partly because we have clipped their feathers [I know that from reading a Dick King Smith book!].

Some foxes actually hide chickens that they have killed so that they can find them later to eat. Bit like other animals storing food.

I saw some footage of this on TV yonks ago when we had one, so it's not new knowledge. Might even have been in one of the programmes of the demi-god Attenborough himself, but I can't remember.

If nature really did balance, wouldn't there still be dinosaurs? Surely "nature" bounces backwards and forwards from one extreme to another. I suppose that might constitute a balance on average, but averages can be misleading.

absent, quite. But then the argument will be that nature would balance if it wasn't for bloody great meteorites or volcanoes, or whatever it was that exterminated the dinosaurs. Meteorites and volcanoes aren't part of nature apparently.

Re the fox thing, when our whol flock was killed one night, all we found were feathers. Whatever had killed them had taken them away too, for food most likely.

We didn't clip their feathers. Some of them slept in tres out of the way of foxes but they are not renowned for intelligence, chickens, so I expect the tree-livers came down to see what was going on

Maybe they were bred to have more weight in different places which made it difficult to get off the ground? And became a bit placid. If anyone saw that programme about wild turkeys, well, I wouldn't want to mess with one of those.

99% of all the species that ever existed are extinct - it's all part of the natural order.

A plague of a species occurs when that species becomes very successful - like rabbits and mice in Australia - in the case of the mice, because for a time food was plentiful. When the supply of food dropped to a more normal level, so did the population of mice.

So yes, we are the most successful species and that puts us in a position to be a 'plague. And one day we will go extinct too - and something else will probably occupy our niche, and so on until the planet is a dead cinder (in about five billion years!).

"Some foxes actually hide chickens that they have killed so that they can find them later to eat. Bit like other animals storing food."

Which is why they kill as many as they can, not just for the pleasure of it, but for burying for later provisions for them and their cubs. And when dead chickens are left in the raided hen house, it's because the fox has been disturbed - otherwise they would all be taken.

Surely don't do it to mount the chicken's heads on the wall and show off to their friends do they.

That's making me think of some sort of alternative Beatrix Potter illustration .

Oh well, at least it's hoicked the thread out of the guilt fest it was sinking into. I can cope with an alternative Beatrix Potter