Meaningful

[poliphilo]

Rabbits are nature's fast food. Everything with a taste for meat- and big enough to take them on- treats them as prey. 95% of all kits never make adulthood. I learned that from Springwatch. Also on Springwatch I saw graphic footage of kits being killed by a magpie. A magpie, I ask you!

Call it the Great Chain of Being. Call it an Ecosystem.

All that energy- bubbling up from wherever it comes from - passing from life-form to life-form by way of predation. Sounds meaningful when you put it like that.

Comments

[idahoswede.livejournal.com]

Magpies are NOT to be messed with.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Smart little critters.

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

Magpies are quite ruthless. But they are also super at survival.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I like 'em.

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

We don't have them in southern Spain and it always delights me to see them when we go further north.

[wyrmwwd.livejournal.com]

My personal theology is based upon the fact that all life is descended from a single living cell... which gathered up random proteins and sugars until it got too big, so it divided into two. All living creatures are based upon that system. Even you and I are communities of cells that are joined together for the specific purpose of gathering sugars and proteins, then dividing. So, in my mind... we are all One Living Thing. We are all That Cell, continuing with the work of That Cell. Therefore, when I eat a chicken, me eating a chicken is an illusion. Cells from that colony are interacting with the cells of this colony to perpetuate the continuance of Life. Our separateness is an illusion. We are all just parts of the One Living Thing, continuously growing and feeding Itself.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think much the same thing, but in rather more nebulous terms. I like the way you anchor it in physical science.

[wyrmwwd.livejournal.com]

My first two years in college I was actually a Life Science major.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I found science mystifying as a kid and couldn't see the point of it. Now I wish I knew more.

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

Which episode was that leporine tragedy featured in? I'd like to catch up with Springwatch, but I wouldn't want to see that. I've already seen a thriving warren shattered by myxomatosis a few weeks back, nearby, and that's haunting me enough.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I can't remember now. Two, three weeks ago? In retrospect it all runs together.

Springwatch can be gritty. If predation happens while the cameras are rolling they don't turn them off. There was a particularly disgusting episode this year in which we watched bitterns cannibalising a dead chick.