• Question: how will population affect species reproducing

    Asked by beth5000 to Claire, Kate, Matt, Rob, Sam on 24 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Sam Geen

      Sam Geen answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      As a population grows, it starts to run out of food. This causes starvation, which causes the population to drop. You can get cycles of predators and prey, where, for example, foxes eat rabbits and breed because they have more food, but then there are fewer rabbits so the foxes starve, which causes more rabbits because they’re being eaten less, which causes more foxes because there are a lot of rabbits to eat, etc.

      In terms of humans, other effects change how we reproduce – if we stay in education we’re less likely to start a family, if there are fewer jobs we can’t afford to have a family, if women start working and have more rights they can choose to have a job and not stay at home looking after children, etc. So it’s more complicated than just having more food to eat.

    • Photo: Claire Lee

      Claire Lee answered on 25 Jun 2013:

      Generally, a population of animals lives in equilibrium with its environment – it naturally only reproduces what it can sustain.

      Humans though are bad, we reproduce, and spread out, without a care for the environment (remember in the Matrix movie when the Smith bot compared us to a virus? 🙂 )

      Unfortunately this often means that the smarter people end up having less children, and the poor, uneducated people end up having more. What that says about the future of humankind is… well, I think you see the problem 🙂

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