Sapiens’ Continuing Impact on Fauna Extinction Today

Yuval Noah Harari is an author of the monograph called ‘Sapiens’ in which he discusses about a lot of different themes in Sapiens’ life. One of those themes is related to impact of Sapiens on fauna extinction which has begun back in the past and has not finished yet. This short research will talk about nowadays situation, cruel acts of human beings and how can they ‘destroy’ themselves.

To be familiar with extinctions and understand a point of this text, it is important to explain a term ‘extinction’ at first. “Extinction is the death of a species, the disappearance of all members of its kind forever”, Neil Schlager and Josh Lauer (scientists and researchers) describe. They say that like individual death, extinction can be a natural process: over 99 percent of all species that have ever evolved on Earth are now extinct. The first mass extinctions have begun in Australia, the Americas, Madagascar and the Pacific Islands. Australia was the first one which was colonized. Unfortunately, all of these other places did not stay untouched when it comes about extinction of fauna. Wherever Sapiens had stepped or left a trace, it was for sure that place where he is present is going to experience a disaster, sadly. It is believed that Sapiens set lands and spaces with grass or plants on fire to make more passable space. Some of them did that for hunting and some of them for other needs. But what was the reality is the fact that those acts immediately led to extinction and a huge change in a food chain. Definitely, it is hard to blame or accuse Sapiens only with everything that was or is happening. Although he is called a ‘Wise Men’, it is hard to make this type of big changes to world in global. Having said that, scientists, researchers and scholars have started their studies and researches that include finding a causes of mass extinction. Most of scholars actually find climate change as the main offender. Sometimes it can be true, but in the other hand, there are a lot of animal species which survived climate changes for over a million of years. Some animals would maybe survive if there was not Sapiens as an ‘additional attacker’. Sapiens continued with the hunting and completely changed ecosystem by just settling in different places. Harari states, “American fauna 14,000 years ago was far richer than it is today” (10). Sadly, a lot of animals vanished and extincted and that is how many places were left with no animals or plants. Sapiens killed over one hundred species of birds, insects, snails and other animals. The saddest part of this story is the fact that since extinctions have begun, they have never stopped spreading and appearing in different places around the world. The large animals of the oceans are the main target today. Harari claims:

This is especially relevant to the large animals of the oceans. Unlike their terrestrial counterparts, the large sea animals suffered relatively little from the Cognitive and Agricultural Revolutions. But many of them are on the brink of extinction now as a result of industrial pollution and human overuse of oceanic resources. If things continue at the present pace, it is likely that whales, sharks, tuna and dolphins will follow the diprotodons, ground sloths and mammoths to oblivion (14).

Prof. Deutsch and Mr. Penn set the study at the University of Washington about predicting extinction of marine life. The study points out:

Polar species are more likely to go globally extinct if climate warming occurs because they will have no suitable habitats to move to, the researchers said, while tropical marine species will likely fare better because they have traits that allow them to cope with the warm, low-oxygen waters of the tropics. As the water temperature increases north and south of the tropics, these species may be able to migrate to newly suitable habitats. But the study warns that the equatorial ocean is already so warm and low in oxygen that further increases in temperature - and an accompanying decrease in oxygen -- might make it uninhabitable for many species.

Since this is a very serious and dangerous thing that is happening in the world right now, there are a lot of studies which give a huge amount of information about the future. A group of researchers did a genera (The work through a statistical analysis of a 2,497 different marine animal groups at one taxonomic level higher than the level of species) research that believes:

Increases in an organism's body size were strongly linked to an increased risk of extinction in the present period - but that this was not the case in the Earth's distant past. Indeed, during the past 66 million years, there was actually a small link between smaller body sizes and going extinct, marking the present as a strong reversal. The extreme bias against large-bodied animals distinguishes the modern diversity crisis from all potential deep-time analogs.

In the end, climate change is the factor that must be included when it is talked about extinction. Even though Harari does not find the climate change as the one which was ‘guilty’ for mass extinction, it plays an important role in destroying fauna. Executive director of Stanford Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, Anthony Barnosky (after getting results from previous studies) asserts:

The current study underscores ecosystem risks are not being principally driven by a changing climate - yet. Rather, they're being driven more directly by humans which species hunt and fish, and where they destroy ecosystems to build homes, farms, cities, and much more. But as climate change worsens, it will compound what's already happening.

Barnosky also argues, "Adding those human-triggered losses onto those we're already causing from over-fishing, pollution, and so on is very likely to put the human race in the same class as an asteroid strike-like the one that killed the dinosaurs-as an extinction driver.” Some researchers, scholars and scientists think that climate change is the biggest reason why some animals and plants vanished. Undoubtedly, it really is an important factor but without Sapiens, it would be much easier to survive. What is also hard to tell is that Sapiens are more guilty than the natural factors. It is nearly impossible for human with only Stone Age Technology to hunt that much it led to extinction. That is why researchers and scientists are non-stop working and making studies which have not stopped yet.

To summarize, every human being has to be aware of danger it puts itself in by not being careful. We have to save Earth and that is how we will save animals, plants and also humans. After finishing a Harari’s chapter ‘The Flood’ it can be said that Sapiens, in combination with previously mentioned natural factors (with focus on the climate change), definitely have a big role in changing and ‘killing’ megafaunas and ecosystems. That is how Sapiens' continuing impact on fauna extinction today is still present and if we do not work on it, it is going to stay with us forever.

Works Cited

Harari, Yuval Noah. “The Flood.” Perusall, reformatted and uploaded by Richard Mussewhite, 23 July 2022, perusall.com/.

"Holocene Mass Extinction." Science and Its Times, edited by Neil Schlager and Josh Lauer, vol. 7, Gale, 2001. Gale In Context: World History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CV2643450889/WHIC?u=durh55126&sid=bookmarkWHIC&xid=f90646b6. Accessed 7 Sept. 2022.

"Mass extinction of marine life if global warming goes unchecked, say researchers.”

Independent [London, England], 1 May 2022, p. NA. Gale In Context: World History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A702109159/WHIC?u=durh55126&sid=bookmark-WHIC&xid=52d317b6. Accessed 5 Sept. 2022.

Mooney, Chris. "What the 'sixth extinction' will look like in the oceans: The largest species die off first." Washington Post, 14 Sept. 2016. Gale In Context: World History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A463478219/WHIC?u=durh55126&sid=bookmark-WHIC&xid=7c7550f2. Accessed 5 Sept. 2022.