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Originally Posted by valentine89
I never heard of that. And no, you arent exactly going off the tangent as it is another kind of people vs nature episode. It's these kinds of things scientists are trying to find an answer to. I know that people with sickle cell anemia are protected against malaria as the blood cells pop before maleria can infect it. Sickle cell anemia, if you don't already know, is an inherited disease caused by a recessive allelle, which alters the shape of the cell, altering how it carries haemoglobin around the blood. People with one allele this condition (heterozygous), if they live in countries threatened by malaria, they tend to live longer than those who dont. They could try something with this idea. Dont worry if you cant understand my babble, i learnt it in AS biology a few months back.
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An interesting fact about sickle cell anemia... in the human DNA strand only 13 little "blocks"(or pieces that make up the strand I guess, I forget the proper terms) have to be out of place for the condition to occur. That's 13 out of well over a million, kinda makes you think. But what are you saying exactly? That maybe we should intentionally try to give people in malaria threatened areas sickle-cell anemia? For me to attempt to speculate on this I'd have to research the symptoms of each condition, because that may or may not be a good trade-off until a cure or vaccine can be developed. Interesting idea though...
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Originally Posted by valentine89
This leads me back to fox hunting. If foxes contineued to be shot for sport, and by farmers who just shoot them wherever they see them, what would happen to the ecosystem? Foxes do not just eat farmers chickens. They are inportant animals in the world as they are apex preditors, which eat all kinds of animals which need to be controlled. They also scavenge dead animals, much like the hyenas of africa (just prettier, quiter, less smelly and nowhere near as dangerous). If we didnt have them, then look at what the state of the natural areas would be in. Taking a local area into consideration, The New Forest. If it wasnt for foxes, there would be millions of rabbits and carcases of ponies and badgers would be more frequent. Not a nice sight for locals, visitors, or park rangers who have to maintan the area.
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I could be wrong about this, but I'd think that if the fox population began to dwindle, the other predators of these animals would become more abundant, taking up the slack. If nothing else, humans would do so by increasing their predation or hunting of all these rabbits and other animals. Although the fox would be the apex predator of the area, a secondary one such as a bird of prey would quite possibly become the new apex predator. However, I am not familiar with the area in question, nor with the different predators/animals that inhabit it.