Terry Pratchett: Facing Extinction

Pratchett alongside an endangered red ape

Bestselling author Sir Terry Pratchett, known in particular for his Discworld novels, returns to the jungles of Borneo in the last segment of this trilogy. Eighteen years ago, he encountered orangutans in the wild for the first time and this documentary follows his return to Borneo where he hopes to encounter them again and discover what the future holds for these amazing creatures. The experiences of his first trip caused him to become a trustee of the Orangutan Foundation, a UK charity devoted to protecting both the animals and their habitats.

In this segment, Pratchett and his assistant visit an Indonesian street market that is rumored to sell endangered animals and meet up with Dr. Birute Galdikas, the world expert on orangutans and president of Orangutan Foundation International. The most powerful piece of the documentary is the travel into the jungle to find the intelligent orangutans, in particular Kusasi, described as the “former king of the orangutans.”

The reality of the situation sets in when Pratchett asks a local conservation worker: “Would the people of Borneo care if all the orangutans were wiped out?”

“No,” she responds, “Ninety percent wouldn’t care a bit.”

This documentary is especially emotional for fans of Pratchett’s because in 2007 he was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Watching him struggle through the perils of the jungle is guaranteed to wrench anyone’s heart.

The hour-long show broadcasted on BBC Two at 21:00 GMT, but can also be found here.

Let's Get Wild

Australia has a problem, and this time it’s not the poisonous spiders, venomous snakes, or sharks. Australia’s problem is its grass. Giant African Gamba grass was introduced in the 1930s and has taken over the outback and with Australian’s recent bush fire track rate, this is worrying.

The solution? Elephants. David Bowman of the University of Tasmania has recommended rewilding an elephant population in the outback. “I’m talking about using elephants as a machine or ecological tool to manage [the] grass,” he told the Guardian. Rewilding is a conservation movement, which involves reintroducing species to areas in which they became extinct at some point in recent history.     
 
Clearly, there are risks as well with this solution. Australia has a background with being overrun by invasive species and it would be difficult to manage the elephants once released. “If we did go down the road of introducing elephants to Australia, we had better develop the technology to clone saber-tooth tigers to eventually control the elephants,” [said Ricky Spencer, senior lecturer with the Native and Pest Animal unit at the University of Western Sydney.]
 

Two-thirds of the people who have ever reached 65 are alive today

Can the above statement really be true? First of all, the common statement: "more people are alive today than have ever lived" is false. According to wolfram alpha, there have been about 100 billion people ever.

There is a possibility that we are are reaching older ages with the technology available to us today, and therefore the statement might be "more" true. I wouldn't discredit it right away, but I think it might be a little bit exaggerated, given facts such as:

In the United States the proportion of people aged 65 or older increased from 4% in 1900 to about 12% in 2000. [Citation] And in the entire world we are sitting at ~ 7.9% of 65 and older currently. So this would mean we have about 550 million seniors. This would require that out of the other 100 billion people who are not living anymore, only 250 million of them could have reached age 65. While this seems small, we have to look at what life expectancy has been historically. Curves of life expectancy in the past have looked like this:

The life expectancy curve is essentially unchanging, until the development of science and technology, and then it explodes. This gives more possibility to the "0.25% chance of reaching age 65" that is a requirement for the 2/3 statement. So as a whole, it may be viable but I would probably feel more comfortable with a statement such as "Most likely, 1/3 of the people who have reached 65 are alive today."

Finally, it is important to note that huge infant mortality rates were a large part of low life expectancy in the past. There is an interactive graph that showed age breakdown for each year, here. This graph represents some amusing data points, such as the claim that it’s impossible to die between the ages of 20 and 26.