A bird flies through the grass at the Old Course at St Andrews in Scotland, July 10, 2005. (Max Rossi/Reuters)
Posted on 08/19/2005 7:27:07 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
LONDON (Reuters) - Europe's rarest songbird is facing extinction, despite being the most promiscuous and energetic lover in the avian world, and concerned scientists are looking urgently for ways to save it.
The male aquatic warbler is described as "continuously ready to mate" and able to indulge in record-breaking mating sessions, which in turn gives the females ample opportunity to sample and select the best mates.
However, numbers have slumped to less than 20,000 in the past century -- a decline of 95 percent -- and its range has shrunk from continent-wide to isolated strongholds in eastern Europe as humans have ravaged its habitat.
"It is officially listed as 'vulnerable' and it faces the prospect of extinction unless things get better," Ed Parnell of BirdLife International told Reuters Thursday.
Scientists from across the continent are meeting in Spain for the first top-level international conference to save the randy songbird, whose habitat is disappearing as marshlands are drained and farmland is expanded.
The male bird plays no part in nest-building or raising chicks and spends most of its time hunting for willing females and mating at length.
"In contrast to most birds, which get the business over in a mere one to two seconds' sexual contact, aquatic warblers spend up to 35 minutes copulating," according to one paper at the conference in Palencia, northern Spain.
A bird flies through the grass at the Old Course at St Andrews in Scotland, July 10, 2005. (Max Rossi/Reuters)
I always find it amusing when my fellow biologists fail to realize the implications of evolution as well as the inherent contradiction of their outrage at human intervention with the environment on the one hand with the desire to intervene against a natural process like extinction. Survival is the exception for species, not the rule.
.. BirdLife.org
I warble better after a beer or two, meself. :)
cool
Also, perhaps the very prowess that they admire in this bird is also his problem. He's so busy being a metrosexual bird and taking 35 minutes to get the job done instead of being efficient and moving on to spread the love!
Maybe that's why it's going extinct.
Start with cutting back on immigration.
That probably IS why it is going extinct.
With other birds, the female gets some help caring for the young, and that helps them raise their replacement population just a little easier. That gives them a competitive edge over this bird that foolishly chose not to take care of the young.
They don't call it survival of the fittest for no reason at all.
A cautionary tale.
I always was attracted to that kind of man bird. A lot of women of my generation were. They seem to be extinct now what with these young fathers doing so much of the raising of children.
I still like the love em and be lazy otherwise birds.
Not randy enough - I save let them die off.
I seem to recall- though its been a long time since my bio student years- that the purpose of human intervention in preventing extinction was to maintain as broad and diverse biological gene pool as possible with the hope of better overcoming ever-changing selection pressures. Pretty abstract but, if it gets you tenure, go with it.
I think I found the problem- he's supposed to be an aquatic warbler and he's hanging around a golf course (I, on the other hand, am supposed to be a golfer & spend all my time in water hazards).
Well, but I find the irony to be that it is these same people who rail against human intervention as ruining the natural world. Yet, they see no problem in trying to circumvent a process that's been going on for over 2 billion years.
Shooting blanks?
The good-intentioned intervene, their critics interfere.
Why do we always forget that survival is a personal thing; to the present actor, his stage has room only for himself.
My bet is that the Eurinals meeting in Spain will blame Bush, the war in Iraq and global warming for this birdy's decline.
Abstract, Hell; stupid is more like it, might as well hold back the tide.
And that Big Gene Pool Theory is about to become extinct with genetic engineering and genome mapping, etc. BTW, all my old bio profs are dead.
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