Comments

  1. CCP says

    Yes! And in addition to the Mary River turtle http://www.deh.gov.au/cgi-bin/sprat/public/publicspecies.pl?taxon_id=64389
    there is at least one more species of exceedingly rare side-necked turtle threatened by these damns: http://aerg.canberra.edu.au/reprints/2005_Thomson_etal_Burnett_Elseya.pdf

    By the way, the brief news article linked by PZ mentions the astounding ability of some of these pleurodiran chelonians to stay submerged for hours to days by breathing water through their butts…for the Straight Dope on this, see:
    http://www.straightdope.com/columns/011116.html

  2. G. Tingey says

    This is Australia!

    Do you realise what their ebvironmental record is?

    Have you seen their alternative NAtional Anthem?

    Here it is …..

    Our ancestors were criminals
    Sent far across the sea;
    Their recreations alcohol
    And bestiality;
    The perfect Sheila’s four foot tall,
    Flat-headed,with no hair;
    I rest my lager on her head –
    Advance, Australia fair!

    We sodomoise the bandicoot,
    We rape Kaola bear;
    No furry creature’s safe with us –
    Advance, Australia fair!

    Our cultural diversity
    Goes on and never stops:
    We may have killed the Abos, but
    We’ve let in Greeks and Wops;
    We rule not just the swimming-pool,
    Nor yet the cricket-square;
    We top the melanoma leagues –
    Advance, Australia fair!

    We mount the duck-billed platypus,
    Pork-sword Echidnas rare;
    No monotreme stays virginal –
    Advance, Australia fair!

    Our interests intellectual
    Are broad and wide and deep;
    From group projectile vomiting
    To buggering of sheep.
    We’ve urbanised green coastlines, and
    We’ve turned locations rare
    Into a blight of bungaloids –
    Advance, Australia fair!

    We masturbate marsupials,
    Screw dingoes in their lair;
    The native fauna’s safe with us –
    Advance, Australia fair!

  3. says

    Now would be a good time for evolution to step into the ring, don’t you think? “Survival of the fittest,” isn’t it? “Evolve or die.”

  4. G. Tingey says

    So Jason, should the “Wollemi Pines” have been deliberately felled as soon as they were found, then?

    Evolution works when NOT interfered with.

    We are interferers, and we can, as Dawkins says, rebel against our selfish genes.
    Now what you troll?

  5. Neo's friend says

    The Mary River Cod is also endangered by the proposed dam on the Mary. All these and more are valued for bio diversity, as is the lung fish BUT as far as we know only the lung fish is also a living fossil. A living example of the transition of life from water to land.

    It should NOT be interfered with at all, ever, by anyone.