Wolves in Germany

For decades, wolves were thought to be completely extinct in Germany. Some people were happy about that, others were not. Now the wolves are back.

Over the last couple of years, the wolves have come back to Germany from Eastern Europe, mostly Poland and the Czech Republic. Therefore, the eastern areas of Germany have been the first where the wolves took residence. Currently, there’s a couple of packs and with every new generation of wolves born, the borders are pushed further west. Young wolves leave the pack they were born in behind and try to find (or found) a new one, a little away.

Biologists and green activists are very happy about this (I am, too, I like the idea of wolves back in the woods), because it shows nature is slowly regenerating and things are going back to ‘normal’. Hunters are not, because the number of deer they’re allowed to shoot is decreasing when wolves, too, hunt the herds. In Germany, the main reason for hunting is not just ‘killing animals’, it’s protecting the woods and balancing nature. Wolves are a natural balance, keeping the deer populations (and that of various other animals) at bay. That’s good for the forest, because deer feast on young trees, stumping their growth and even destroying them.

Over the last couple of years, as the wolves came back, especially one German tabloid (Bild-Zeitung) has done everything possible to raise the fear of those creatures. Every time one wolf is doing anything noticeable (like, for instance, kill one sheep), the tabloid is on to it, talking about the danger, showing aggressive wolves (sometimes even photoshopped, with green eyes, for example) and basically saying ‘humans will be next’.

That’s stupid for various reasons. First of all, humans are not exactly normal prey for wolves. They fear our scent and they are not really seeing us as something yummy to eat. (Besides, compared to a sheep or a deer, humans are poor sustenance.) In addition, there’s not all that many wolves around and they mostly hunt at night. They’re not coming into the cities right now (unlike foxes or wild boars), so the chances of actually meeting a wolf is next to non-existent (there’s always a slight one, of course). (And even if you should meet one, it’ll probably run away…)

While quite some hunters see the wolves as something positive (balancing deer much better, because they only go for the weak ones), others would prefer to do all the killing themselves and thus would really like to kill the wolves, too. But as wolves are on the list of rare and protected animals, that’s not allowed. You can, probably, imagine the discussions going on.

Wolves are back in Germany and that’s great news. We have at least some predators back in our woods (lynx and wild cat, too). Maybe even bears will one day be back (not just one, but a small population). Things are looking up for nature in Germany.

It's March for Heaven's sake!

First of all: The pictures in this post are new. I made them today with my own camera, looking out of my living room window. What I want to say: it’s the 11th of March and we have snow … again!

I have to keep the sidewalk clean this week – and I will later go out and try to remove at least some snow. It is still snowing out there, so every try to remove the snow now is, mostly, pointless.

I’ve got more pictures of this year’s snow right now than of any other year. Three years ago, in March, I was going around with a T-shirt and already worrying about how hot the summer might be. This year:

When will it all end? How much longer do we get this weather? Where’s the climate change when you need it?

Not so Creative Design

I live in a country in which the government gathers the taxes for the church. I also live in a country in which at least two major parties (well, on the highest level they’re one party) keep the word “Christian” in their name. And yet, it is a country in which Creative Design is – rightfully – banned from school.

Now, to whoever is reading it: you might actually believe in Creative Design and thus say that Darwin got it all wrong.

The main problem with evolution – at least to some of the more fundamentalist Christian groups – is that it doesn’t require a deity of any kind to work. That’s right, Darwin’s idea of the survival of the fittest, and all that comes with it, works without any kind of god.

And Creative Design is such a good argument of ‘how God does His work’. Because everything in this world fits together so nicely, there must be some kind of intelligence involved in it. Someone (guess who) must have designed everything.

European Christians have found a way around the religious problem of evolution, by claiming that the ways in which evolution works, the natural laws, are God’s design. That would mean God is far more curious than we give Him credit for. He basically pushed the first domino and is now watching what has become of the chain reaction. I hope He enjoys it.

There is a wonder in evolution, too. The wonder is how life came to be. We know that no other planet in our solar system – no, not even Mars – is inhabited. As far as we can say, we are a statistical error in this universe. Life isn’t something a lot of planets have developed. Yet, somehow, here on Earth, while our atmosphere developed and the molten structures turned to stone, some random molecules came together and became the first living cell.

By all rights, this cell should have died. It was merely a little thing in a huge, dangerous and still poisonous world. But life proved strong and determined. The cell split, split again and started a process of change and development which – after a very long time – developed into me and you and every person you know and every other person on this planet and all the animals and all the plants and the bacteria and everything else that I might have forgotten to mention here.

Is this anything less of a wonder than a God creating every single species from scratch?

In Germany, Creative Design is not taught in school (unlike religion). You either get the religious part or the science part, but not both in one go. And as Creative Design is not plausible from a scientific angle, it is not considered science.

Science today knows how species evolved. Quite some ‘in-betweens’ have been found. And, as much as some people hate to hear it, humans are just a species of animals as well. We’re clever, yes, but our big brains and intelligence only serve to help us stay alive. We don’t have all that many natural weapons.

The idea ‘everything was put together by an intelligent force’ is nice, but where’s the prove? Don’t say Paley’s Watch, okay? If you find a watch while wandering around in the wildness, you know it has not grown there. You know it’s not a natural structure, but a construct. It is not alive. If you put two watches in a drawer, they will not produce any offspring. And watches don’t die, even though they may become dysfunctional. But you can repair a watch and, in theory, make it run forever. You can’t ‘repair’ a dead dog or a dead human and make them live forever.

Evolution is a difficult process which humans still not understand completely. But it is far from simple ‘accident’. Things develop into a new form over time, provided the first time this form appears, it proves useful. The necks of giraffes became longer over time, because it was an advantage. They could feed from places other animals could not reach. Flying developed various times throughout earth history, because it’s a great way to travel far over long distances, not matter whether you are an insect, a dinosaur, a bird or a bat. Whales and dolphins returned to the sea, because it proved useful for them. And they slowly ‘lost’ their legs, because they didn’t need them in the water. Fins were far more practical there. Yet the process of evolution is far too slow for humans to see. It takes generations upon generations to turn one animal into another. We can only see the developments that have taken part in the past. We can’t see those that are occurring at the moment.

Evolution is not destroying the wonder of life, it merely gives another explanation for the fact that we’re walking around on our hind legs and using our big brain to change the environment instead of changing with it. Creative Design is not the only solution to combine natural science with religion!

Spring has come

...with a vengeance, I should say, but, honestly, after an April with rain, rain and rain (and I’m not living in London), I can’t, really. It’s getting hot very quickly (from around 10 degrees Celsius to about 25 degrees in just a little under two weeks) and I don’t really like too much heat (anything above 25 to 30 degrees). But there’s sun, the birds are singing, nature is blooming and I just feel good. More alive, more full of energy and ready to tackle my life again.

That much rain was making me feel a bit depressive. I like a bit of rain. A rainy afternoon with a good book, some hot tea (or hot chocolate, depending on my mood) and a comfy couch is a great thing for me. But weeks of rain with hardly enough sun to make sure you don’t forget what it looks like, that’s definitely too much, even for me.

Now I’m almost wakened by the sun every morning (well, my curtains are in the way; I pull them closed every night, because I have a streetlamp in front of my bedroom window). And it’s bright out there until well after eight in the evening, that’s great, too, if you get off work around half past four or so.

Nevertheless, this week I felt the abrupt changes - I do not take terribly well to hot temperatures and the sudden rise has given me a bit of a headache. But it’s gone now - and in a few weeks, my slight allergy to sunlight (which makes my skin all itchy until it’s gotten used to it) should be gone, too. I just need to continue my walks in the evening, exposing my skin to the sun, and before I realize it, everything should be alright. Until then, it will itch - but I can live with that.

I’m plotting for a long weekend, too, as we’ve got a holiday coming on Monday and that means one more day to sleep in. Yeah!

I’ll take a trip to Karlsruhe (the next bigger city around) on Saturday, just for some shopping and to enjoy the early summer day we’re expecting then. I’ll check with my favourite comic store (which I visited almost three to five days a week when I was still at university, but get to only rarely these days), I’ll also check the gigantic mall they’ve build three years or so ago and have some fun in the shops (and maybe a good sundae later on). It’s situated in the middle of the city centre and is a great place to spent time, no matter which kind of weather is to be found outside. Then there’s my favourite book store ... I guess, I better take a backpack.

Spring has come with all its gentle showers, methinks it’s time to hack ... ops, wrong text (that’s from a “Black Adder” episode). Spring has come and I feel like I’m blooming myself.

Almost like flipper

Not much of a comment in this post. But did you know before White Sharks could jump like that? Always takes my breath away when I see it in documentaries.

About 1.000 kilograms of fish jumping high in the air ... it's amazing...

Sometimes it hurts

Yes, I do know not everybody is as fascinated by sharks as I am. That's only logical - after all, we're all interested in different things. But if I write an article about something, I ought gather information about it first. And I fear, some journalists don't.

I was reading more of the magazines after finishing my last post and stumbled upon an article about a primeval shark (with the picture shown at the left of this paragraph). The creature on this picture is a dunkleosteus (hope I wrote it right) and the topic of the article. That's a large and dangerous fish from the Devon (if I'm right), but it's not a shark. Sharks are among the oldest fish still alive today, but given the fact life on earth started in the oceans, that's not much of a surprise. It's had a head start, after all.

The dunkleosteus is a dangerous fish, as I already pointed out, with a lot of bone plates on the front half of its body. Actually, it doesn't have any teeth in the way we would understand it, but bites through its prey with sharp bone plates around its mouth. It's the largest and best known member of a whole group of fishes. Not something you'd like to keep in an aquarium ... unless, of course, you're a super-villain. (But in this case you're a couple of millennia late ... sorry to tell you.)

But, if that's possible without looking among the mammals in the ocean, it's the anti-thesis of a shark. A dunkleosteus is half-covered in bone plates while the only 'bones' a shark has are its teeth and jaws. Sharks and rays (is that the right word? my translator didn't accept "Rochen" and I know that "Teufelsrochen" translates into stingray) don't have bones by default, it's what sets them apart from all the other fishes on earth (octopuses don't count, they're no fishes). Sharks are fast and manoeuvrable, even the largest like the White Shark or the Whale Shark. The dunkleosteus wasn't. But as it was larger than most other fishes around, and well-armoured, too, it didn't have to be.

In fact, the whole article reminded me of a horror movie I saw some years ago. It was about a 'primeval shark', too (and the critter almost looked like the dunkleosteus). But that was just a horror movie - and I love horror movies about sharks, although most of the time they only make me laugh ("Shark Hunter" didn't though, that was one good movie - great meg). Now I wonder whether the journalist saw the same movie...

Anyway, I always thought a journalist should do a quick research before writing an article - and even the most basic information about sharks and other primeval fishes should make everybody see there's definitely a difference between them.

Obviously I was wrong.

A fact about sharks

... which you probably didn't know and will never hear in one of those 'monstrous sharks kill little children'-movies Hollywood is so fond of every couple of years.

Just watch this:

movie

In case you don't want to (or can't) watch the clip (it's the first time I link to a video online, so I might get it wrong), a short summary of the facts: 10 humans are killed each year by sharks (in words: ten); 200,000,000 sharks are killed each year by humans (in words: two hundred million). That's - as you can easily see, a 2 with 8 zeros. Man, that's a number I wish I had in black on my bank account. Let's don't be greedy: say I'd gotten a cent for each shark killed last year, that'll still be two million. On the other hand if I'd gotten an Euro for each human killed last year, I'd still only have ten Euros ... that wouldn't be enough to buy the book I just ordered online.

What do we learn from this?

a) I order books online

b) I don't have 200,000,000 Euros, neither do I have 2,000,000 Euros

c) the danger sharks present to humans is highly overrated

While a) and b) probably are of no interest to you, c) should be. Let's continue to play with the numbers, shall we?

Normally it's said that our world has 5 continents (Antarctica being the mostly forgotten No. 6), so statistically only 2 persons on each continent risk being killed by a shark each year. That's two people for North America, two people for South America, two people for Europe, two people for Asia, two people for Africa (you could - and probably should - also say: two people for America, two people for Australia). Now, I haven't checked lately, but even forgotten Antarctica has more than two inhabitants, as far as I know.

On the other hand my hometown has about 40,000 inhabitants (I've checked: at the end of 2004 we were 42,757 people in my hometown, says our "Statistisches Bundesamt" ... and I doubt the number's gotten much higher during the last two years). If we were sharks, you'd need almost 5,000 times my town to get the amount of sharks killed each year by humans. At least in Germany my hometown is not considered that small. Actually, as I've just checked, Germany on the whole had 82,438,000 inhabitants at the end of 2005 (and I doubt we've grown much as a country last year), so it's even more than twice the inhabitants of Germany. There are still people out there who think only a dead German is a good German, but obviously there are more people out there who still think only a dead shark is a good shark.

Now, I'm not good with all those statistics about the ways you can get killed, but I know for sure, that driving, flying and every other outdoor activity result in more deaths each year than sharks. And even inside your home you run a higher risk of dying than by meeting a shark.

So why do people still think sharks are that dangerous? Just two words: public relations.

When did you last hear something positive about sharks? Come on, think, there must have been something. No? Right, proves my point...

The only good things you even hear about sharks is that their bodies may contain the keys to curing some serious diseases, like cancer. But most sharks are not killed because people want to find a cure for cancer, they are killed for sports ... or even worse: for their fins.

Finning is the worst thing you can do to any living creature. Imagine swimming somewhere in the ocean. The only thing you're thinking about is your next meal ... and maybe the cute female shark you met a couple of hours ago. Then you get pulled out of the water - and as a fish you can't breathe air, it's pretty much like being pulled underwater for a human - and people with knives bent over you. They cut off your fins: the two on the back and the four on the sides. Then, while you're bleeding profoundly, they simply throw you back into the water. But you don't have the time to die on your own. No, your shark colleagues zoom in on you - somewhere in the crowd you spy the cute she-shark from a couple of hours ago - and rip you to pieces because now you're bleeding and dying, just like any other fish. The monsters in this tale aren't the other sharks, they just act on their instincts: it's bleeding, it's dying, let's eat it! The real monsters are the humans doing this to a living creature.

And what for? A couple of fins that get dried and are the main ingredient to a soup. Now the worst part of this is: the fins themselves have no taste at all. They are heavily spiced and there's a lot more added to the soup, like vegetables and noodles. In essence the fin is that part of the soup you can't define once you bite on it.

Yes, I know, sharks are not cute and they are not cuddly. They don't look as furry as a young lion or a young tiger. But what would our oceans be without sharks? They're an important force in our ecosystem. Let's just hope we don't end up in a world where the movie "Jaws" stands right next to "Jurassic Park" and other movies about dinosaurs, showing creatures from a time long past. The world has survived the end of the dinosaurs, but I'm not sure it will survive the end of the sharks as well...