Russia Today once reported on a "love story."
A Belgian woman, Adi Timmermans, claims to have fallen in love with a chimpanzee chita in the zoo, and from 2016 to 2020, Adi Timmermans visited chita at the zoo every week, kissing and interacting through the glass.
But their "love" was obstructed by zoo administrators, and even blacklisted by the zoo, forbidding her to visit.
The reason is that because they often stay together, So that Chita is somewhat unsociable, and other members of the population do not regard Chita as a member of the group, resulting in it being often isolated, which is very detrimental to Chita's mental health.
In addition to the love story of the Belgian woman and chita the chimpanzee, there are many cross-species loves in the world.
There was once a small duck in South Korea, "in love" with a dog, chasing the dog every day, the owner thought of many ways to hinder its love, such as: put it in many groups of female ducks, isolate it from the dog, but the little duck still only thinks about the dog, and does not put the same kind in the eyes.
In the end, the owner had to put them together and put a special shoe cover on the duckling, so as not to wear out the duck paws every day.
There are many similar cases of cross-species love, but almost every one of them ends in tragedy. Reproductive isolation shows its terrible side with specific cases, even two individuals who "love each other" will not be able to reproduce like ordinary creatures because of reproductive isolation, and give birth to the fruits of love.
But on the other hand, some people think that it is fortunate to have reproductive isolation, otherwise the creatures of the earth may be far from what they are today.
Reproductive isolation
Reproductive isolation usually means the emergence of new species, as early as the Darwinian period, people have realized that organisms evolved from the original organisms, in the process of evolution, because of geographical isolation and other factors, resulting in the same species for tens of thousands of years without reproductive communication, the next time they meet, the two will be because of the separation of time too far and reproductive isolation, such as: human beings.
In the history of the earth, there have been many humans, including but not limited to: Homo sapiens, Homo erectus, Denisovans, Neanderthals, but today only Homo sapiens remain.
Yellow, black, and white are just the distinctions we make between people in different regions by skin color, and essentially all humans on Earth belong to Homo sapiens, and because of this, whether yellow, black, or white are free to reproduce.
However, humans have evolved reproductive isolation from other creatures on Earth today, even their closest relatives, chimpanzees.
In 1927, soviet scientist Ilya Ivanov and his son conducted an experiment on ape hybridization in guinea, and the hybridization strategy was to inject human sperm into female chimpanzees, and unfortunately, these chimpanzees did not conceive human children.
Later, Ivanov changed his mind, adopted the chimpanzee sperm + human egg model, and recruited 5 human volunteers, but unfortunately, the apes did not produce offspring.
It should be known that chimpanzees are currently the closest species related to humans, and they were separated 4-6 million years ago, but because of the long separation time, reproductive isolation has evolved and will not produce offspring.
Why is reproductive isolation protecting life on Earth?
Although the existence of reproductive isolation prevents the love between individuals across species, without reproductive isolation, the ecological chain of the earth will be unbalanced, and life on the earth is far less vibrant than it is today, and even life on the earth has long been extinct.
First, the absence of reproductive isolation means that all organisms are not genetically different, and the lack of genetic difference means that they get their energy in the same way. This will lead to the loss of carnivores, because all animals will eat meat, and no plants will produce energy through photosynthesis.
If organisms retain the way of using photosynthesis to produce energy, then all living things on Earth must compete for sunlight, and those who cannot compete for sunlight resources will be eliminated by natural selection.
However, only sunlight, plants may not live well, to know that in the process of evolution over hundreds of millions of years, plants have long formed a symbiotic relationship with animals, ancient fungi, etc., for example: the mycelium in the forest can connect a whole forest, energy can also be transferred from this tree to another tree.
Pollinators such as bees are inseparable from the flowering of vegetation, and the fruits of many plants need to be carried through the animal's digestive tract to live farther away.
Moreover, without bacteria, fungi and other organisms, vegetation will no longer decay, energy will not be able to return to nature for reuse, and the earth will become lifeless and no longer full of life.
From this point of view, the emergence of reproductive isolation not only makes life on the earth vibrant, but also allows the earth to evolve a complex ecological chain, and each different organism can find its own place in this ecological chain to survive.
#What would the earth become without reproductive isolation##Animals##涨知识 #