After writing my post about Kudzu, I thought that I might write about the other two species that I learned about while researching my project. The extinct species that I researched was the Caribbean Monk Seal. It wasn't declared extinct until 2004 but was last seen in the 1950's. If you look at a picture of it, it kind of looks like any other seal; seal body, two flippers, whiskers, etc. It is either a brownish or greyish color but could have bits of seaweed on it that would make it seem green. It is very large and could grow to be up to eight feet long. The face and the head is what makes it different from other seals I think; it has a rounder face than other seals and less of a pointy nose.
As you can probably guess by the name, it lived around the Caribbean. It preferred the warm waters and climate around the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and the west Atlantic Ocean. It would mostly live on the shores of remote islands where it wouldn't see many visitors but it would sometimes venture to larger coastlines. It was very large and very sluggish on land. It was also unafraid of humans which ultimately led to its demise. When Spanish explorers came to the area, they began hunting these seals and they honestly didn't have a chance at all. All the explorers saw were money signs and hunted the seals to extinction.
When we turned in our projects, we learned about other extinct species and almost all of them were because of humans, usually due to the humans hunting them. When humans hunt these animals to premature extinction, it impacts the whole world and all of the food chains, ecosystems, and so on. I wish that more people would realize that what they do impacts things other than themselves. Sure, hunting those birds might pay the bills for now but what will you do when there aren't any of those birds left to hunt. This philosophy applies on a grander scale and it is so simple that one would think that it would be easy to follow, but as history and the present can point out, it is simply not. (375)
As you can probably guess by the name, it lived around the Caribbean. It preferred the warm waters and climate around the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and the west Atlantic Ocean. It would mostly live on the shores of remote islands where it wouldn't see many visitors but it would sometimes venture to larger coastlines. It was very large and very sluggish on land. It was also unafraid of humans which ultimately led to its demise. When Spanish explorers came to the area, they began hunting these seals and they honestly didn't have a chance at all. All the explorers saw were money signs and hunted the seals to extinction.
When we turned in our projects, we learned about other extinct species and almost all of them were because of humans, usually due to the humans hunting them. When humans hunt these animals to premature extinction, it impacts the whole world and all of the food chains, ecosystems, and so on. I wish that more people would realize that what they do impacts things other than themselves. Sure, hunting those birds might pay the bills for now but what will you do when there aren't any of those birds left to hunt. This philosophy applies on a grander scale and it is so simple that one would think that it would be easy to follow, but as history and the present can point out, it is simply not. (375)
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