Not so long ago, commercial harvesting of birds and mammals was more akin to that of commercial seafood harvesting. More species were allowed to be hunted and sold into the marketplace, either for food or for the use of some part of them for some other purpose, as well as captured captured alive for various other uses.
As Prof. Lisa T. Sarasohn explores and explains in her new book “Getting Under Our Skin; The Cultural and Social History of Vermin,” these ubiquitous long time companions of our species at some point in our history, became something more than the mundane nuisances that vexed our mythological first forefather Adam.
Whereas the Gray Wolves now reintroduced into their former ancestral habitat of Yellowstone National Park rely on the area’s population of North American Elk (Cervus canadensis) to provide their primary source of food, in Isle Royale National Park, it’s Moose (Alces alces) that sustain the pack. However dietary differences aside, both wolf populations have and continue to face challenges to their existence – both natural and human directed.
Let’s face it – the popular understanding of the cognitive abilities of reptiles isn’t particularly complimentary. And for that matter, even some areas of the scientific world have borrowed the name to represent aspects of biology that are considered primitive or base – the “reptilian brain,” for example. However…