Daniel Lemire's blog

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Science and Technology links (March 23rd 2019)

3 thoughts on “Science and Technology links (March 23rd 2019)”

  1. Matt Fulkerson says:

    Great for the polar bears. A small amount of hope in the face of global warming.

    We need to arrest global warming, but will fail to some degree. We will need to adapt.

  2. jld says:

    Let the polar bears die!
    They are the only big predator which deliberately hunt humans as food.
    None other does this except accidentally.

    1. Andrew Dalke says:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-eater says “Most reported cases of man-eaters [an individual animal that preys on humans as a pattern of hunting behavior] have involved lions, tigers, leopards, and crocodilians. However, they are by no means the only predators that will attack humans if given the chance; a wide variety of species have also been known to adopt humans as usual prey, including bears, Komodo dragons and hyenas.”

      Further, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_attack#Polar_bears says “Polar bear attacks on humans are extremely rare, but according to records by James Wilder, there have been only 20 fatal polar bear attacks out of 73 fatal attacks between 1870 and 2014.”

      While the next section reports that sloth bears are more deadly: “In Madhya Pradesh, sloth bear attacks accounted for the deaths of 48 people and the injuring of 686 others between the years 1989 and 1994, probably due in part to the density of population and competition for food sources. One specimen, known as the sloth bear of Mysore, was single-handedly responsible for the deaths of 12 people and the mutilation of 2 dozen others before being shot by Kenneth Anderson.”