[Taxacom] Killing of zoo giraffe to avoid inbreeding

[Fred Schueler]

Quoting Kim van der Linde <kim at kimvdlinde.com>:

> I think it was the right decision not to take a spot of a genetically
> more valuable giraffe at another institution. The only reason we see
> this outcry is that it was a giraffe.

* it's also that conservation biology isn't seen as a science. If this  
had been a case of veterinary pathology calling for the elimination of  
a herd or animal, nobody would have sqwacked, but because conservation  
biology isn't seen as a science, all the public saw was killing an  
individual of a species not widely held in captivity (I wonder how  
much of the sqwacking was by Danes, and how much by mush-headed folks  
not descended from Vikings?).  We've had this trouble locally with  
limnology and forest ecology - the simplest predictions about the  
relationships between nutrient status and growth of different kinds of  
organisms are *just not believed* - and when the predictions of the  
theories are confirmed by the outcomes, it's denied that the outcomes  
had been predicted.

Physicists have such an easy time whooping their theories!

fred.
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