Why should we (humans) care about animals other than dogs and

Because some people consider all life to be precious and worth protecting. It's not a difficult concept to wrap your head around.

The whole "let nature take it's course" argument holds little water when most animals we protect are endangered because of humans. Should we let retards are the elderly die in ditches because it's on them to survive? What about the boas in Florida? Just nature taking its course bro even though they were introduced through the human pet trade. Let the native species die if they can't adapt in less than a decade

Because they're our back up plan. A functioning ecosystem is kind of a nice thing for some people to have when your farms run dry or burn down.

I never cared about what was native or original, let the pandas and polar bears die, let new species of trees grow over the old bamboo plains, melt the ice caps, kill the whales, but there must be some life aside from us, because if there isn't, we're fucked. It's our duty to ourselves to make sure our plan B doesn't end at canned beans and traditional japanese carpentry. What kind of a retarded species actively destroys the niche it's still spectatularly adapted to?

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we should just turn the entire world into a grey industrial area where the only animals left are dogs, cats, chickens, cows and rats

>>2301028
Except that at the same time we somehow seem to agree that species like the guinea worm, plasmodium or cockroaches need to be exterminated. A lot of conservation efforts are based on aesthetics, even if species are displaced naturally. It's hypocrisy.

>>2301015
>Evolution tell us that only the fittest will survive
Behold the power of anon, the bio class skipper.

>>2301015
I would be a-ok with letting animals die off over survival of the fittest, if and only if the same standard is set for people. We no longer bide by Darwinism rules. People who would have been killed off, like the disabled, live very comfy lives. Hell, even retarded people, something that would actually severely hinder a person in modern society, live nice lives and reproduce. Because of this we set a huge unfair advantage.

>>2301015
>Why should we (humans) care about animals other than dogs and domesticated species?

It is commonly believed that humans are a specie successful enough to destroy everything else (and it is 100% true, we already have nukes). It is natural that once some specie becomes too successful it destroys a part of variety of other species - for food, for living space, for anything. Human became successful enough to destroy everything.

Aaand developed societies decided that they would like to live in the world which we live in and not alter the system which feeds them too dramatically.

The biggest problem is that humans may destroy parts of nature without having too much in return - humans may cause significant changes in nature which will make their life worse but they won't necessarily benefit equally.

So: we should take care of how much we abuse the nature to not change it dramatically enough to affect our resources.

>>2301015
We need to breath, eat and see, what's working ecosystems are for. For example, ever heard about overfishing?
>why the world ocean is so important, if we live on the land?
Most of Earth's oxygen comes from phytoplankton.
>what is happening while we take more fish it can regenerate?
We are loosing phytoplankton mass as well as the fish to eat in this screwed up phytoplankton-zooplankton-fish equilibrium. And no, you can't have just one type of feeder fish all other the planet doing their job in translating plankton energy to bigger fish, the same way there a different predators and herbivores for every land climate. While little obscure ecosystems like Madagascar are pretty much fucked and just a money bait at this point, here, we already have serious problems with bigger ones that matter too. What's why biology or ecology is in EVERY(every) country middle or high school course.

>>2301015
>Evolution tell us that only the fittest will survive

no, "survival of the fittest" means that individuals in a single population of a single species who are the most "fit" (meaning fit in to their natural roles, not the modern definition) will be the individuals who breed the most. you are retarded.

>>2301015
>Why should we (humans) care about animals other than dogs and domesticated species?
I am a student doing ecology, I think the whole ecosystem services stuff is unnecessary and mostly unhelpful, but the truth is that, yes, some ecosystems and species do support humans in various ways.

I think objective ways of looking at nature are not that helpful such as with the ecosystem services, with a few exceptions. So yea, like >>2301028 says.
>>2301066
>The whole "let nature take it's course" argument holds little water when most animals we protect are endangered because of humans.
I personally think the human nature divide isn't helpful. I am not as extreme as OP but I think that there should be some self-reliance.

I hold another controversial view: that we shouldn't intervene with the happenings of non-native species unless the end result is exceptionally worse. Massive rhododendron forests in the UK, supporting few insects, other plants and life in general are a much bigger problem as boas in Florida if you ask me.

I find in some non-native species some hope that the future will be wild, and that includes many native species.

Of course I am very aware that non-native species are very controversial.

>>2301337
And what bothers me is that because of this divide between humans and nature, people seem to think we can fix nature without fixing culture.
I already sort of went through a process of loss, I think it is inevitable that we will lose loads of species since we seem to make no process at all at fixing our culture and society. And very few people even want that.

So when a species is dying out for environmental or indirect by humans, instead of directly by humans, I am thinking of letting that species go. I still find it sad when I look at the database for species in my country and see species has gone locally extinct.

Sometimes it is because of reasons that could easily be avoided, and I think it could be prevented. But sometimes I also think we need to let go.

In the Netherlands the black grouse has gone extinct. And I have to say the environment just doesn't suit this animal. I rather preserve the partridges, quails and pheasants.

These galliformes are still around. While the black grouse is being reintroduced with very bad results, pretty much failing.

And it is not just anthropogenic changes or non-native species alone, it seems that shifts in land-use have changed distributions and numbers of native species, such as goshawks and foxes, as well.

Entertainment value for me. An important part of my life is knowing about and observing wildlife, wilderness and geology.

>>2301015
humankind is special only b/c: it falls for the oldest tricks in the book, it is on the bottom of the killchain, it is cucked so hard that it wants to move to "Death Valley - The Planet".

The biggest problem is that we are causing a mass extinction and we have no idea what sort of cascading effect it will have. Nature and species are very much interconnected, and life benefits from biodiversity. The greater a variety of DNA and species, the better an ecosystem's chances at surviving a disaster.

Take, for example, the banana. Bananas became a monocrop with very similar genetics. But then in the 1950s a sickness evolved and wiped out the entire banana population, and we had to cultivate a new variety. The bananas we have now are not the same kind of banana there was before. If we didn't have another variety of banana to cultivate, they would've been gone forever. And now, we've done the same thing again.

There is a reason that sexual reproduction is a thing. Species benefit from having more variance in their DNA, because you never know when your environment is going to change drastically and you will need that 1% with a mutation to carry on the species. And this happens at the grander biodiversity scale, too.

When a species goes extinct, ever species that relied on it has a severely reduced chance of surviving, and often goes down with it.

The earth needs to adapt to our presence. but if we cause too much of a disaster too quickly, it won't have time. And we simply cannot predict the extent of the damage that will be done by the disappearance of half of our environment's biodiversity.

>>2301028
It sort of is, since these same people will kill ants, squash mosquito's and probably eat meat.