The Sixth Extinction Chapter 3- Helen Neundorff

    In Chapter 3, Kolbert chooses to emphasize the difference in a catastrophist (one that believes the earth and its conditions were created over a series of catastrophes) and a uniformitarian (one that believes the earth’s crust and geological history was founded on a slow and continuous uniform process). The difference in these ideologies is especially important in what determines extinction. For example, a uniformitarian such as Charles Lyell, who upon studying rock samples found no significant wear or change that is expected if a catastrophic event were to happen, believed it to prove that extinction has never occured in mass numbers; rather it is uniform and runs at a pace so slow that no human is likely to live through seeing an animal go extinct. 

    One person who admired Lyell’s work was Charles Darwin. Despite some clashing beliefs (one most prominently being in the belief and credibility of evolution) Darwin and Lyell became well acquainted. It was his conversations with Lyell, his voyage on the Beagle, and his study of extinction and evolution that led him to the idea of natural selection. Natural selection not only explains on why animals go extinct, but how many animals still alive have similar traits to those of another time, as well as why currently animals are able to survive despite changing environments. One example of an animal being able to overcome all these obstacles are your friendly pigeon, or Columba Livia. This specific bird is seen everywhere in large cities, but have adapted to almost every form of human life, and stay close to humans to avoid hunting and instead, eat scraps we choose to throw away. Dogs have adapted similarly, relying on the efforts of humans to receive proper care and in exchange give undying obedience.      
 
   Touching back to the chapter, natural selection also explains how humans are able to drive extinction with excessive hunting and destroying of an animal’s habitat. Most notably this chapter touched was the human-driven extinction of the great auks in Iceland and tortoises in the Galapagos. On page 61, Kolbert states “Whether the teams [European hunters] actually managed to kill off every last one of the island’s auks or whether the slaughter simply reduced the colony to the point that it became vulnerable to other forces is unclear. (Diminishing population density may have made survival less likely for the remaining individuals, a phenomenon known as the Allee effect.)”.The author’s purpose is to highlight the human impact on the survival of a species, and how the activities of humans prevented the species from lasting any longer. This relates to the APES theme of humans alter natural systems. If it were not for the excessive hunting for the auk’s feathers and meat, the animal would have likely last for much, much longer, and we are at fault for its sudden expiration date.