Sunday, August 21, 2005

Whatever happened to survival of the fittest?

Here is an interesting story that mentions the fact that scientists are working on helping endangered species by means of cloning. I think it is a wonderful thing to have elephants in zoos and whales in aquariums and such; I want my daughter to be able to see these animals in real life. I also believe that we should be good stewards, use our resources wisely and not "trash" the planet on which we live. However, I am fairly certain that most of the scientists working on projects like these subscribe to Darwin's theory of evolution. How do they square environmentalism with survival of the fittest?

I was thinking about this several months ago when I read an article in Natural History Magazine about some trees (I think they were cypress trees) being killed off by some sort of fern. If those ferns are meant to survive and the trees are not, why are humans intervening? Shouldn't we just let nature take its course?

1 comment:

weblogbob83 said...

I think that survival of the fittest is suspended for the sake of efforts to make a perfect life for all life forms on earth - at least for the photogenic life forms, anyway.