The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
C’mon, Our Mum’s Older Than That!
“Mum, 66, Is Oldest in World”–headline, Sun (London), May 18
Don’t Know Much Biology
“Bald eagles, bouncing back after years of decline, are swaggering forth with an appetite for great cormorant chicks that threatens to wipe out that bird population in the United States,” the Associated press reports from Portland, Maine:
The eagles, perhaps finding less fish to eat, are flying to Maine’s remote rocky islands where they’ve been raiding the only known nesting colonies of great cormorants in the U.S. Snatching waddling chicks from the ground and driving adults from their nests, the eagles are causing the numbers of the glossy black birds to decline from more than 250 pairs to 80 pairs since 1992.
“They’re like thugs. They’re like gang members. They go to these offshore islands where all these seabirds are and the birds are easy picking,” said Brad Allen, a wildlife biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. “These young eagles are harassing the bejesus out of all the birds, and the great cormorants have been taking it on the chin.”
We have no dog in this fight, but we’re a bit surprised to hear a biologist engage in such blatant anthropomorphizing. Didn’t he learn in school about evolution and nature’s Darwinian struggle?
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.
