Alternate Extinctions

i was at the natural history museum in LA earlier today and a display about recently extinct birds made me wonder: does anyone think that there's any way that some recently extinct animals wouldnt go extinct in a given ATL, even if the animals are only rare in the wild?

here's a link to the holocene extinction page on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction

also for this thread, what are some other plausible extinctions which could happen in place of OTL ones or at other historical times

For species that could have gone extinct that didn't it would have been easy for many of New Zealand bird species to go extinct as many did.

For example the little spotted kiwi only survived because a small population existed on an island which cats and stoats had yet to reach all you would need to do to drive them to extinction is introduce some cats before the conservation program started.

The best way to avoid or at least lessen a man made mass extinction is to make humans herbivores. This would safe most of the animals and it would be in humans interest to protect plantlife.
But if we would develope into intellegent beings that shape the environment around us is another question.
Humans might end up being the smartest animal on the planet, but caged by the environment, not "master" of it.
And that, arugably, is what seperates us from the rest of the animals.

As for a later POD only some sort of religion could help.
Humans might learn to live with nature as part of a believe system, otherwise mass extinction is a natural consequence whereever men - and his animal companions, from the flea to the cow - appears.

Jared had a bit about this topic towards the end of DoD.

I think an Eastern or non-christian dominated world might have lesser extinctions.

kasumigenx said:

I think an Eastern or non-christian dominated world might have lesser extinctions.

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It might see the earlier extinction of species such as the Chinese river dolphin, though.

One butterfly in TLs with PODs far back enough could ensure the survival of the dodo, for one.

SavoyTruffle said:

It might see the earlier extinction of species such as the Chinese river dolphin, though.

One butterfly in TLs with PODs far back enough could ensure the survival of the dodo, for one.

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Yes, they can be extinct but they will not mind species like Dodos who live in uninhabited and far places, the cultural domination of the East will be via trade not via colonization.

The obvious example is mammoths survived on siberian islands until the mid 17th century delay discovery only a hundred years or more and we might have dwarf mammoths in zoos all over the world

cerebus said:

The obvious example is mammoths survived on siberian islands until the mid 17th century delay discovery only a hundred years or more and we might have dwarf mammoths in zoos all over the world

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that would riquire a change in climate

cerebus said:

The obvious example is mammoths survived on siberian islands until the mid 17th century delay discovery only a hundred years or more and we might have dwarf mammoths in zoos all over the world

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I'm afraid the Wrangel Island mammoths died in the 17th century BC.

The megafauna I'd be most interested in seeing surviving are those of Madagascar- gorilla sized lemurs, panther like mongooses, and of course the huge elephant bird, plus an array of unusual land dwelling hippos and tortoises. These creatures probably stayed alive until the 15th or 16th centuries...

Bison could have very easily gone extinct. had conservation efforts not suddenly realized they were almost all dead in the early 20th century, they might have all been killed off.

Passenger Pigeons could have survived with an earlier conservation effort in the US.

The Great Auroch could have survived in Europe passed the 15th century, methinks.

I'd love to see the Great Awk waddling around. The worlds most awk-ward animal ever

The Moa might have survived if the Maori had tried and succeeded in domesticating them.

It would be nice to come to Tasmania and see the thylacine roaming around in their own protected areas deep inland.

Errnge said:

Bison could have very easily gone extinct. had conservation efforts not suddenly realized they were almost all dead in the early 20th century, they might have all been killed off.

Passenger Pigeons could have survived with an earlier conservation effort in the US.

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Reverse the fates of the two?

If circumstances were different the Falkland wolf might still be here

kasumigenx said:

I think an Eastern or non-christian dominated world might have lesser extinctions.

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Non-Abrahamic, you mean. Islam and Judaism are just as carnivorous as Christianity.

Someone posted the idea of saving the Yangtze river dolphin by transplanting some to the Mississippi. How likely is this to work?

Lemont Elwood said:

Non-Abrahamic, you mean. Islam and Judaism are just as carnivorous as Christianity.

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Actually, its just a human thing altogether, irrespective of religion.

Last time I checked the Maori and Clovis Culture hunters weren't Muslim, Jewish, or christian, despite the extinctions they caused.

Oba said:

The Moa might have survived if the Maori had tried and succeeded in domesticating them.

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The moa were, in all probability, undomesticable. The early Maori were familiar with domesticated birds (chickens etc), and indeed had domesticated animals (dogs at least). But they didn't domesticate the moa.

While it's impossible to be sure, we do know that the moa took ten years to reach breeding age. That's all species of moa; the bigger ones grew faster, but didn't take any longer to reach breeding age.

Ten years is a heck of a long time to go about trying to domesticate an animal. The effort required to feed them for that long (meat etc) isn't really worth the reward, even if they could be domesticated at all. Offhand, I can't think of any domesticated animal which takes anywhere near that long to reach breeding age, for good reason.

On a broader note, there are indeed a variety of species which survived by flukes in OTL and might have gone extinct, or who were pushed into extinction by contingent factors in OTL and which might have survived in OTL.

Some have already been mentioned: American bison, passenger pigeons, etc. Maybe Carolina parakeets, too. In Australia (well, Tasmania, really), the Tassie tiger (thylacine) appears to have been swept into extinction by a combination of human hunting and an introduced epidemic disease (probably a variant of canine distemper). If those factors hit at different times, then the Tassie tiger may still be around. (As I had happening in DoD).

New Zealand also has a variety of bird and other species which survived only on isolated offshore islands, and thus may well have gone extinct in an ATL if rats or cats or so forth made it to those islands. Or ones which went extinct if cats or rats weren't introduced: the Stephens Island wren, for instance, which was wiped out when cats were introduced into its last refuge (although it was more than one cat, urban legends notwithstanding).