Lucy the Chimp

               In class, we listened to a recording of an experiment with a chimpanzee named Lucy. Lucy was an experiment, to see how much a chimpanzee could adapt and evolve to the environment of a human. Instead of living in a jungle with all kinds of wild animals and species, she was raised by human beings. Eventually, after Lucy finally adapted to the habitat of a modern human, she was put back with other chimpanzees in a forest to see how she would act. Lucy learned to be very friendly to everyone she saw because of how she was specifically raised. One day, a women working with Lucy and the experiment went to where Lucy was located, and found her dead. Although the ending was rather disappointing, the experiment was very enticing and educational.
               The most important thing I learned through listening to the experiment of Lucy, was that all animals are oddly like in very many ways. An average chimp is a lot smarter than I would have thought, Lucy adapted to the area around her and learned to be just like a human. If an animal like her is influenced in such ways, they could very well be more like a human than we anticipate.
               The human is a very complex species to fully understand and fully adapt to, we are so much different in complicated ways from every other type of species and animal. Every animal is unique in it's own way, especially humans and apes.
               The experiment was very different in my opinion. I would have never thought that an average chimp could adapt to its surroundings so well, it was exciting to hear about. Although, I wonder if the confusion and deep emotion Lucy went through was actually worth the experiment, it was cruel in many ways and didn't seem morally correct, but it was very interesting.
               It was depressing to hear about the ending of the experiment and how Lucy died. It was very shocking and unpredictable, just imagining how nice and sweet Lucy must have been, I can't believe someone would have killed her.

"Thinking Like a Mountain" by Aldo Leopold

               In the story we read in class "Thinking Like a Mountain", the author describes many points of views about nature and how wolves affect their surrounding of nature.
             This story is mainly about how nature sees its animals compared to how we see them. The "mountain" in this story is all nature. The mountain sees importance in the simple howl of the wolf that maybe we as humans do not realize. In the story the author says, "Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf." We are unable to see the hidden meaning of an animal that the mountain does see.
              We don't live where these animals live, nor do we go through the same troubles that they face everyday. The reason we don't understand the true meaning of the howl of the wolf is because we don't hear it the way the mountain hears it. In my opinion, diversity equals stability in this story. The more diverse the animals and organisms are, the more stable their habitats and ecosystems are. This story is a great way of showing people the wolf is an important animal in nature and we need to be more aware of that.

Ted Talk Video: Response and Summary

               According to the sustainability advisor Louise Fresco, food is as economically important as things like oil and energy for our world.
               In the video a woman named Louise Fresco has two loaves of bread. One loaf is freshly baked and represents agriculture and "true beauty". The other loaf is the name brand "wonder bread". Louise believes the "wonder bread" is the better alternative for people around the world to buy because it is mass production. She claims that sound mass production foods fee the whole world, yet leave a small role for small bakeries. Only 1% of United States population are farmers today due to the modernization of agriculture and global trading.
               Louise says we need to improve our agricultural science, also known as "good science", and we also need to improve our agricultural technology in order to maintain the environmentally sound mass production of food.