Janine Benyus Quotes

Every species becomes extinct; at some point, we will go extinct. The question is, as Homo sapiens, are we going to be able to adapt to the change that we're actually part of? We're causing such dramatic changes to the planet, so yes, you do stop and think, 'I wonder where we're headed.'

Unlike your fish tank, in nature, fish eat each other. When the population of a species gets too low, it will die out.

All that is really necessary for survival of the fittest, it seems, is an interest in life, good, bad or peculiar.

Human evolution, at first, seems extraordinary. How could the process that gave rise to slugs and oak trees and fish produce a creature that can fly to the moon and invent the Internet and cross the ocean in boats?

Most of them are doomed to rapid extinction, but a few may make evolutionary inventions, such as physiological, ecological, or behavioral innovations that give these species improved competitive potential.

Nature favors those organisms which leave the environment in better shape for their progeny to survive.

Humans are an infant species, a mere 150,000 years old. But, armed with a massive brain, we've not only survived, we've used our wits to adapt to and flourish in habitats as varied as deserts, Arctic tundra, tropical rainforests, wetlands and high mountain ranges.

If every human being disappeared off the face of the earth in an instant, the earth would still keep spinning and the planet would develop new life forms.

Nature knows best.

So we can't go backwards, we can only go where the evolutionary trajectory is taking us and attune our ideas about ourselves and our existence to that course.

Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live.

Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative.

Happiness is just another of the tricks that our genetic system plays on us to carry out its only role, which is the survival of the species.

As humans become civilized, the survival rate of the lazy, botched and dim-witted grow in inverse proportion to the productive segment since nature can no longer remove them from the species.

What Darwin was too polite to say, my friends, is that we came to rule the Earth not because we were the smartest, or even the meanest, but because we have always been the craziest, most murderous motherfuckers in the jungle.

Fear, love, and hunger were the agents that developed the wits of the lower animals, as they were, of course, the prime factors in developing the intelligence of man.

What people don't realize is the human body and the brain are so well designed to do - by millions of years of evolution - what we do.

We've almost been wiped out as a species many times, going back millions of years, and we've survived by reinventing ourselves and enlarging our circles of awareness, inventing new technologies and social structures.

In fact, if you think hard about it, animal conservation should actually be anathema to the Darwin-loving liberal agenda, which holds up evolution - and not altruistic compassion - as the final word on the survival of a species.

Just as your own existence is unlikely and far from inevitable, the evolution of modern humans as a species depended on a whole string of chance events - some happening in the environments our ancestors inhabited, and some inside their own bodies, including random mutations in their DNA.

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you'd better be running.

The lower animals, on the other hand, must have their bodily structure modified in order to survive under greatly changed conditions. They must be rendered stronger, or acquire more effective teeth or claws, in order to defend themselves from new enemies; or they must be reduced in size so as to escape detection and danger. When they migrate into a colder climate they must become clothed with thicker fur, or have their constitutions altered. If they fail to be thus modified, they will cease to exist.

Evolution is not finished; reason is not the last word nor the reasoning animal the supreme figure of Nature. As man emerged out of the animal, so out of man the superman emerges.

To put it crudely but graphically, the monkey who did not have a realistic perception of the tree branch he jumped for was soon a dead monkey-and therefore did not become one of our ancestors.

If we do not save the environment, then whatever we do in civil rights will be of no meaning, because then we will have the equality of extinction.