Chapter 11:

Kolbert visits the Cincinnati Zoo to visit Suci, a Sumatran rhino. She also meets with the director of the zoo’s Center for Conservation and Research of Endangered Wildlife, Dr. Terri Roth, who tells her that Suci is one of the 5 species of rhino left on Earth and due to this fact Roth has been trying to artificially inseminate her and even has given her ultrasounds to see if its working but so far has failed. The Sumatran rhino used to be found in the Himalyas but due to the forests being felled the habitat of these rhinos shrank. Ruth’s job is to make sure this species of rhino does not become extinct. Roth tried to get another rhino, Emi, pregnant and after lots of trial and error she finally gave birth to a male named Andalas, Suci, and another male rhino, Harapan. Kolbert visited the Big Bone Lick to find out why these animals were going extinct. The Big Bone Lick is where scientist found the most famous fossils such as the woolly mammoth. Some scientists believe that these large animals became extinct because of temperature changes but others believe that humans hunted them. The timing of the extinction was in the middle of the ice age which would make the theory of humans hunting them down to extinction plausible. There is a lot of evidence showing that humans were the reason for large mammals going extinct. One is how the timing went, the extinction of these mammals was in pulses. First was in Australia , the second was a few thousand years later in North and South America. The pulses don't make sense if it was global warming, “ It’s hard to see how such a sequence would be squared with a single climate change event. The sequence of pulses and the sequence of human settlement, meanwhile, line up almost exactly” ( pg 230). Secondly, large mammals have survived countless natural disasters. For example, a large crater called “ Lynch’s crater” was found and scientists know that after the crash the land started to burn which would have led to a shift in vegetation. This would lead to the vegetation that these animals depended on to disappear yet these animals. But the complete opposite happened and vegetation adapted to the fire. Lastly, scientists found that the fossils of these mammals showed no sign of malnutrition. We are slowly killing our animals and in turn creating endangered species. In chapter 11 on page 235, it states, " Though it might be nice to imagine there once was a time when man lived in harmony with nature, it's not clear that he ever really did". The author is trying to say that humans have always had negative impacts on the environment. We have hunted down animals to the point of extinction, killed each other, and destroyed our environment for our own gain. Humans have and always will impact our environment but it's up to us to decide if that impact will do good or bad.