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Subject: Re: Silurus glanis - Would I be crazy to kill it? Author: Matt [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] Date Posted: 16:54:21 02/11/04 Wed In reply to: Zanderman 's message, "Re: Silurus glanis - Would I be crazy to kill it?" on 20:17:19 10/22/03 Wed I think that your claim that scientific papers are less accurate than anglers' fish stories is rediculous. Proper scientific papers are peer reviewed and based on empirical data and statistical tests. Anecdotal stories by anglers are full of inacuracies. I am an avid sport fisherman and aquarium fish keeper and I am confronted everyday by the ignorance, exageration, and political bias of many in both of these hobbies. As for your contention that non-native fish are not harmfull, consider the case of the round goby in the North American Great Lakes, the destruction of entire brook trout populations by introduced rainbow trout in eastern North America, the loss of dozens of cichlid species endemic to lake Victoria and Malawi in Africa due to the introduction of Nile Perch and non-native Tilapia, the collapse of the Great Lakes lake trout fishery due to invasion by the sea lamprey etc. It is true that not all non-native species are going to have such drastic effects, but to assume that is always the case is naive and ignorant. Your assertion that only humans use up resources causing extinction is a rediculous but wide spread myth based on the long debunked idea of group selection. The only reason that we don't often witness this phenomenon in natural systems is that those relationships don't last long. Look at any introduction of predators to any island. Look at rabitts in australia. Look at reindeer introduced to islands that had a population explosion and then completely died out because they consumed all the food. Look at enumerable laboratory experiments. Put some paramecia in a jar with a bacterial culture. See if they don't eat the bacteria faster then they can reproduce and go extinct within 4 weeks. The complexity of many natural systems buffers them (predators can't be everywhere at once) as does the fact that predators often starve before they completely consume the entire prey population. However, generalist predators that can maintian population desities by switching to other prey items can easily wipe out prey not well adapted to their presence (as with a non-native predator). If you want a more in depth argument, read the Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins or any modern evolutionary or ecological text. Although I can't claim to be knowledeable about Silurus glanis I know that many catfish are active predators of fish. THe North American flathead catfish eats live fish almost exclusively. There are literlally thousands of catfish species in the world. Do you really have any idea of what proportion of them are predatory and which are scavengers? Maybe you should admit that you want the catfish spared because you like catfish. I like catfish too. But if your reasons are not based in science (a.k.a. logic, reasoning, and most imporatantly empiricle evidense), then don't claim that they are. [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]