
Beluga whales adopt lost narwhal in St. Lawrence River - myth_drannon
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/belugas-narwhal-stlawrence-1.4820602
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sho
What an outstanding example of positive second order effects from the advance
of technology - in this case, drones. This project might not even be possible
without the advent of cheap consumer quadcopters. I love it.

With all the negativity about tech sometimes, it's lovely to see a genuinely
positive use.

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6stringmerc
You know, the whaling industry looks like it could use a disruption - drones
with harpoons, coming to you YC Summer 2020!

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pvaldes
Closely related (the only extant members of Monodontidae), very vocals and
imitators and probably loosely similar languages. Babies are also similar in
shape and colour.

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taneq
I bet they think they're special for finding a unicorn.

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1337biz
Good luck finding somebody paying them 1b in raw fish...

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dsfyu404ed
They probably just think he's an ugly Beluga.

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jacquesm
Or a very pretty one.

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sabujp
unicorns are real, they live in the sea

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salimmadjd
I might be alone here on HN to think humans are just an intelligent virus that
is gradually destroying a very beautiful harmonious life structure called the
planet earth.

Our only redemption might be devising some system of protecting the planet
from a future catastrophic meteoric collision.

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Kalium
Picture a peaceful forest. Tall trees, underbrush, sun-dappled leaves, the
smell of loam on the gentle breeze. A rustle in the distance. You feel at
peace, and harmony surrounds you.

This peaceful scene is an endless orgy of violence, death, and deceit as
living things work constantly against one another. Animals stalk prey as
plants wage chemical warfare against plants and animals alike. Creatures
pretend to be other creatures, and plants pretend to be insects in order to
attract them for selfish reasons.

"Harmonious" is not a word everyone would use to describe nature red in tooth
and claw.

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tomxor
Nevertheless, the ecology you describe has sense of harmony in the way it is
self balancing; humans are quite anomalous in that respect.

In nature a species population usually self correct and balance through either
becoming prey or resource depletion (their prey). We can too easily protect
ourselves from any potential natural predators (technology) and have found
more and more ways to exploit the earth to allow unsustainable growth
(technology). Modern humans are quite unbalanced and inharmonious... This
point of view is also interesting when considering our predecessors, tribes
who lived in the forests, not Mayan civilisation or whatever, but tribes, they
leave no trace because everything they take or make is of the forest and goes
back into the ground just like every other part of the ecosystem - _they_ were
the only harmonious humans and there still are small numbers of tribes who
live like this.

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matthewmacleod
Around 2.5 billion years ago, cyanobacteria caused the Oxygen Catastrophe
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event))
and is generally regarded to have killed off nearly all life, as well as
triggering the Huronian glaciation lasting some 300 million years.

We are not unique in our ability to overwhelm ecosystems. It's true that as
intelligent life we should be far, far more aware of our actions.

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tomxor
> We are not unique in our ability to overwhelm ecosystems.

We are not unique in that respect, but we are unique magnitude and
consistency, we aren't an "event" like others, we are an _adaptive_ species.

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fiter
The cyanobacteria literally terraformed thr planet so that it's habitable
animal life. If only we could do the same!

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JustSomeNobody
Look, Jimmy, if you’re gonna keep playing with us you have got to stop poking
everyone with that thing!

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peterburkimsher
Liz Climo drew a comic about this: [https://me.me/i/no-dont-pass-it-to-larry-
memes-conm-dont-pas...](https://me.me/i/no-dont-pass-it-to-larry-memes-conm-
dont-pass-11707404)

