More fauna
I was particularly proud of this picture of a fox, that I took in Algonquin Park. In more than a month in Algonquin Park (not consecutively), this was the only sighting of a fox that I made.
In contrast, here is a picture of a fox (one of over 10 I saw), taken in Germany (near Munich). We saw more than 5 foxes in 3 days of driving around the countryside, looking for them.
Indeed, we even saw foxes just standing next to the autobahn as we drove along (obviously, we were driving too fast to actually take a picture).
I guess the reason you see so many wild animals in Europe (vs. in Canada), is simply that they have been interacting with humans for much longer (1000s of years), in contrast to Canada (a few 100 years).
posted by Arjun_Bharioke @ 5:06 a.m.
4 Comments:
Nice shots. Did you toss it some food? I hear they appreciate a little fried chicken
-Abhinav
Err, Arjun, you know that there've been people living in the Americas for many thousands of years, right? According to Wikipedia, the Bering Strait land bridge was around between 26000 and 11000 years ago. So chances are good every bit of the Americas was inhabited by ~6000 years ago, at the latest.
An answer to each comment in turn.
I didn't throw any fried chicken because I was particularly hungry, and I therefore felt that the fried chicken could be put to better use. :)
Seriously though, the foxes in Germany were really easily spooked. They didn't seem to mind a car driving past at speed, but the moment we tried to slow down, they would immediately start to bolt.
The only reason I got such a nice picture, was that they had the odd habit, that they would bolt until the edge of the forest, and then turn around and look at you carefully, once, just out of curiousity, I guess.
It's good to know that someone is actually reading what I write, so I can't just trick all of you.
To focus on Senning's point, though -- when I meant interaction with humans, I meant interaction where there was a significant loss of natural habitat.
In North America, most Native American tribes remained as hunter-gatherers. In contrast, in Europe, there was signficant loss of Natural Habitat, already, by 1000 AD. Also, humans in Europe had farming communities for much longer than in North America. Consider that cities like Paris, in 1250 AD, had a population of around 160000 (Populations in History). Such a population would have had a significant impact on the surrounding wildlife.
So, that was my argument when I mentioned animals being used to humans in Europe, more than North America.
P.S. Your stats are a little off. There are known archaeological sites (of the Clovis Culture), even down in the Southern US, which have been dated to about 11000 years ago, just around the closing of the Bering Strait Bridge.
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