The Survival of Animals - Animals and How They Survive in the Environment

The Survival of Animals

Animals and how they survive in the Environment

Amazingly enough, animals have to ability to adapt to almost any environment; given the environment has certain aspects such as water, shelter, and vegetation. Charles Darwin once wrote, "It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." As humans we live in homes, animals' homes are called a biota. A biota is all plants and animals found in a specific region at a specific time.

In my opinion the world wouldn't run as it does without animals, animals provide us with more than just a companion to sleep with at night. We get our meat, clothes, fertilizer, money, ect. There may be as many as 14 million species of plants, animals, and microbes in existence. Adaption, migration, and extinction are three factors in which an animal is going to survive. The population of survivors can adapt to new conditions through natural selection, the survival population can migrate and find an area where conditions are suitable, but failing the first two extinction is inevitable. There are 4 key variables in animal survival, geographical distribution, specialization to a given habitat or food supply, genetic variation, within the gene pool of the species, and the reproduction rate relative to the rate of environmental change (Environmental Science, 2011, p. 90). In a way everything and everyone gives back to one another as one big cycle. Animals help plants, which helps our soil, which helps our farmers, that provides humans with food. Without one detail of how our world goes around nothing would work the same. I've included a picture that will give you a little better understanding of how the cycle of animals work.

Animals have a certain instinct in the wild, they know how to provide shelter for themselves, and they know where to find food and how to get what they need. Although with humans getting in the way it makes the survival for animals in the wild even harder. If humans continue to cut down trees in the forest, or pollute our rivers and oceans most animals won't have a home. While we all want to see our community grow building is also really bad for the environment. Approximately 7.188 million new housing units were built between 2005 and 2009 (Google, 2011). If humans continue to cut down more and more trees just to build a Wal-Mart, or another CVS the town doesn't need, that's more and more homes our animal population is loosing. Where will the animals go without a home? The extinction rate will continue to rise. Another slow cause of extinction is hunting, humans use hunting as a sport for money,