Urban Wildlife Trading Card: Human.
Jan. 20th, 2005 12:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
urbpanAs we get close to the Boston Zine Fair, another project to work on is the "Urban Wildlife Trading Cards." These are always a big hit--and a good icebreaker. My tablemates and neighbors probably get sick of hearing me say "what's your favorite urban animal or plant?" but it gets people to stop by the table and think about the question. Then they get a free trading card!
One of the common responses I get is one that I didn't have a card for. Here's my attempt at some trading card copy:
Human
Homo sapiens
Large (100-200 lb) terrestrial ape, originally found in tropical, subtropical and temperate forest edges, now globally cosmopolitan. This species is distinguished by advanced tool-using ability and highly developed social behavior. These traits make it the most successful primate in terms of biomass and distribution.
The spread of this species over the past million years, and its effects on the environment and on other species are almost total. It is simpler to list unaffected species and ecosystems than to catalogue the effects of this one species of ape. Most of the effect has been negative, with thousands of species unable to coexist with H.sapiens and becoming marginal or extinct. A few hundred species were preadapted to living alongside humans, many of these developing symbiotic relationships. Some species such as cattle (Bos taurus) no longer exist outside of this relationship: humans protect the cattle from predation and regulate all aspects of its reproduction, and in turn feed on the cattle and its milk.
Many other organisms are preadapted to the changes humans have caused to the landscape. For example, tropical insects such as houseflies (Musca domestica) and cockroaches (Blatella sp., Periplaneta sp.) survive inside artificially heated human dwellings in temperate zones they could not have spread to otherwise. Vertebrates can thrive within human-changed environments as long as they share the human’s diet of highly processed grain and carrion.
One of the common responses I get is one that I didn't have a card for. Here's my attempt at some trading card copy:
Human
Homo sapiens
Large (100-200 lb) terrestrial ape, originally found in tropical, subtropical and temperate forest edges, now globally cosmopolitan. This species is distinguished by advanced tool-using ability and highly developed social behavior. These traits make it the most successful primate in terms of biomass and distribution.
The spread of this species over the past million years, and its effects on the environment and on other species are almost total. It is simpler to list unaffected species and ecosystems than to catalogue the effects of this one species of ape. Most of the effect has been negative, with thousands of species unable to coexist with H.sapiens and becoming marginal or extinct. A few hundred species were preadapted to living alongside humans, many of these developing symbiotic relationships. Some species such as cattle (Bos taurus) no longer exist outside of this relationship: humans protect the cattle from predation and regulate all aspects of its reproduction, and in turn feed on the cattle and its milk.
Many other organisms are preadapted to the changes humans have caused to the landscape. For example, tropical insects such as houseflies (Musca domestica) and cockroaches (Blatella sp., Periplaneta sp.) survive inside artificially heated human dwellings in temperate zones they could not have spread to otherwise. Vertebrates can thrive within human-changed environments as long as they share the human’s diet of highly processed grain and carrion.
