this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2024
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The Circle of Life (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 
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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

It's exactly what happens, and we have about as good a natural experiment on this as it gets:

https://www.gi.alaska.edu/alaska-science-forum/when-reindeer-paradise-turned-purgatory-0

tl;dr: a Reindeer herd was setup on an uninhabited Alaskan island as a potential food source during WWII with no natural predators. The war ended before anything came of it, so the herd was left on its own. Within a few decades, they had stripped the island bare of all vegetation the deer could possibly reach, and then they all starved to death.

Also, see predator reintroduction programs, such as how wolves change rivers.

Elephants and rhinos don't breed the same way a lot of other animals do. If they did, evolution would very quickly do what happened in Alaska to those deer. Animals like deer and rabbits breed in great numbers with the evolutionary expectation that predators will keep them in check.

If you think this process is brutal, well, yes, it is. The conservative thing would be to say that this is "natural" and therefore the correct and only way to run human society. This is wrong; we can choose a better path for ourselves while also accepting that nature works this way all the time.