Sunday, June 21, 2015

Would you be willing to give up your car and go on foot to save the environment?



I bet you wouldn’t, neither would I probably.

 However, if every single human being did something to help the environment everyday it would be a better place to live in. It wouldn’t take much. Less soap and detergents down the drain, less waste of clean drinking water, by taking less showers or quick showers.

Help by not polluting the grounds in your back yard with pesticides. Just because a little bug is sitting on your patio or because you have aphids on your flowers doesn't mean you have to pollute the whole area. There are environment safe products you can use that can do the job. For instance, use tobacco tea and spray your plants.

On Google +, many people add some beautiful pictures of animals and exotic rain forests. It helps us forget what it really is like out there and gives us hope for the future generations. Yes, there are still some Gardens of Eden but I truly fear for the future of mankind and the animal kingdom. 

Mankind would need to learn a lesson in order to realize how much damage he has caused to his environment in the last century. We would need a global shut down for a few weeks to make us realize that we can’t take mother earth for granted. 

Imagine for a moment, that you have,

  •  no running water coming from your water tap in the house,

  •  you have no lights because the electricity grid is shutdown,

  •  no Internet,

  • no gasoline for your car, because the pumps don’t work, I could go on and on.

What would you do?

If you lived in the country and had a vegetable garden,

  •  you would plant more potatoes, cabbage, and beets to stock the root cellar for the winter months.

You would be one-step ahead of the others,

  • if you were handy around the house, and you learned how to make candles by harvesting the capping from your beehives,

  • if  you made soap from your ashes in the wood stove.

  • if you had a wood stove, you would keep warm even if there were a total shut down.

  • if you were clever enough to have installed a water turbine in the small waterfall that you hooked up to a generator or  had a water wheel.

If our ancestors survived so could we.

If you lived in the city, you would be in big trouble.

No wood stove, no running water, not even a stream nearby, no heat, just chaos and cement. Most people would not survive.

Mankind is not evolving; there is a regression in course, an involution.
Involution as in retrogression; restoration of a former state.

Mankind is going backwards not forwards.

Every day on the news or on the Internet, we hear about animal extinction. Today we hear about the African elephants, tomorrow the Polar bears, soon, we will be an endangered species.

Today’s headline: The African forest elephants are being massacred into extinction. As usual, mankind is not kind at all. Why is it that profit always gets in the way no matter what?

I learned in Environmental Economy that mankind wants to

  •  be rich now,

  •  his interest now, is making money so he can live a leisure life now,

Why wait for tomorrow, who cares about what will happen 20 yrs or 40 yrs from now.

Many industrialized countries are taking advantage of the weak, poor, and sick populations.

 In the end, the under industrialized countries get nothing but a handful of dust once the Biggies have finished exploiting their land.

We are exploiting too many of our resources.

The black gold oil and its products have been poisoning our environment and us for the past century not to mention the wars behind it.
Soon, we will have global blue gold water wars .   .

Because of man’s thirst for money, and the frequent environmental disasters, our water, air, and food are polluted.

I was reading an article about a contest on vertical farming. It’s called vertical farming design challenge.

Vertical farming is the future seeing that there is not much land left to farm because of desertification.

The main cause of desertification is human activity and an over populated planet.

Jacque Cousteau warned us about birth control 60 yrs ago.

According to his first book, The Silent World: A Story of Undersea Discovery and Adventure, he was in favor of human population control and population decrease. The planet would not be able to sustain such a demographic boom. 

In 1953 the average annual growth rate was 1.77% in 2014 the average growth rate was 1.14%.

In just 100 years World population increased from 1.5 to 6.1 billion, we have now reached 7.3 billion. Experts say that the World population growth rate is falling. I hope they are right.

Instead of researching vertical farming, why don’t we try to pitch in and try to save what’s left.

For instance, if we ate vegetables and fruits that are healthy for us, instead of meat, we would have more farming land. Without intensive animal breeding, there would be more space for healthy farming and less CH4, methane in the atmosphere. No need for O.G.M. and pesticides there would be enough food for everyone. No more farming land for animal forage plants, because we don’t eat meat anymore, remember.

Thus instead of growing corn for chickens, we grow corn for human beings.

This was my thought for the day.

What do you think we could do to help our planet and ourselves?
How could you start to prepare yourself ahead of time in case there was a major shut down? How could you survive?

Think about it, what can you do to save the planet.

Sunday, June 14, 2015

What would happen if mankind disappeared, would our domestic animals survive without us?



Few domestic animals would survive and the less adapt would not.

Survival would depend on various factors. 


  • ·         their ability to adjust to their environment, (capability of adaptation)



  • ·         size, race, specie



  • ·         the capability of avoiding or protecting themselves from lurking danger



  • ·         problems they would need to solve to survive and reproduce



  • ·         the struggle to survive and thrive – from predation, competition, parasitism, and climate change


I do believe that some of our domestic animals would survive well in Italy, perhaps because of the climate; I wouldn’t be too sure about Alaska if I had a Toy poodle.

For instance, I received a tiny rabbit as a gift, Holly, a female. She arrived in a big cage where she ate, slept and did just everything poor thing. I couldn’t stand for that, therefore the first two years she lived on our spacious tiled bathroom, because she would chew the furniture and any wires hanging around the house, which is normal for a rabbit. Please bear in mind that,


  •        Rodents are animals with front teeth that grow all the time.


·         Therefore, our pet rabbits must always have something to chew on. If not, their front teeth will grow too long for them to chew food normally.

In the evening, I would pick her up and pet her, then settle her on the couch in the living room. She would play by jumping up and down from the couch, or thump her hind legs on the rug when she was face to face with our kitten. She was so sweet when she ran in circles on the rug, leaping in the air while contorting and twisting her body like an acrobat.

To make a long story short, I built Holly a three-story condominium outdoors and laid it on the lawn in the shade. I added some of her litter in a corner so she would feel safer. When I put her in the cage, she investigated her new habitat. Soon she started digging holes in the bottom of the cage, and then the next day she would cover the hole up with hay. 

Soon after, my husband and son brought home Biru, a Lionhead rabbit they found wandering the busy streets in town. It was a male but it seemed to us that he had been sterilized. 

NOPE.

We decided to put him in the cage along with Holly. Well, in no time at all they mated. After a few months I couldn’t find Biru in the cage, he had disappeared, I panicked, had the children left the cage door open?

 No, a few days later, I saw Biru coming out of a hole in the ground and…three little rabbits were hopping around on the first floor.

Biru and Holly had been very clever in hiding their nest. She had three litters during that summer before I even realized they had a litter. It had seemed strange to me that Biru and Holly were eating so much, I guess - with all the little ones they had to feed.

That summer the kids did leave the cage door open one evening and the next morning the rabbits were roaming the grounds, jumping and twisting their bodies in joy. I didn’t have the courage to put them back in the cage. Besides the fact I couldn’t catch them, only Holly was tame enough to approach but she didn’t appreciate being back in the cage, she chewed her way through the floor and stayed outdoors free once again. 

I had cut out a door for them on the ground floor so they could go back inside to eat and have a safe place to go back to in case of predators. 

Now we have quite a few rabbits hopping around the grounds, digging holes here and there then covering the entrance with debris. Biru disappeared; he probably migrated to another area in the woods nearby. He was a runaway when we found him so it’s possible that he likes to wander around. 

They all survived the winter and snow, they adapted very easily to their new environment. A few little rabbits are missing, but there are predators out there in the wilderness. The worst are cats, we occasionally have a fox in the spring that does come around, but the rabbits are very swift. 

I know that to some people it may seem unfair to free the rabbits but if you ever happen to have a chance to observe these beautiful animals in the wilderness, you wouldn’t think twice in freeing yours. 

You could take into consideration of fencing up an area and free your rabbits now and then, so they could dig up their little domain. It would make them very happy I assure you.

Therefore, this is one example, in case we humans disappear from the globe, which could prove that our little domestic animals could surely survive without us.

 I am writing a book on animal behavior and more precisely on my domestic and rescued wild animals.

 Over the years, I have been able to observe animal behaviors, which in some cases are very similar to human behavior.

Now, try to imagine what would happen if we were all to disappear.

 Give me your opinion on the subject; do you think your Doberman could survive without you? How about you’re Chihuahua?

 For more information on animal instinct and behavior check out the links below.

I love Darwin and read most of his books on the subject.


RECORD: Darwin, C. R. 1859. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray. [1st edition]

CHAPTER VII.
INSTINCT.
I will not attempt any definition of instinct. It would be easy to show that several distinct mental actions are commonly embraced by this term; but everyone understands what is meant, when it is said that instinct impels the cuckoo to migrate and to lay her eggs in other birds' nests. An action, which we ourselves should require experience to enable us to perform, when performed by an animal, more especially by a very young one, without any experience, and when performed by many individuals in the same way, without their knowing for what purpose it is performed, is usually said to be instinctive.



For more information about Rabbit behavior check out the following website.

 Binkies, Nose Bonks and Flops: Rabbit BehaviorExplained.

Abi Cushman is an expert on the subject.