Animal Companionship Essay (Call for Photos!) Send em in.

I'm working on a new photo project for Underground Voice L.A. Send me your pet photos. Any animal at all.. Send to UndergroundVoiceLA@gmail.com. I'm putting together a photo project that will include a short essay on the nature of animal companionship, and the effect it has on the human psyche.

Send away!

MBPM

My animal companions, my pups, Dexter & Lucy

 

Photography: Old Zoo at Griffith Park

Old Zoo in Griffith Park

The old zoo in Griffith Park was opened in 1912, to a barrage of many complaints about the cages being too small for animals. The site is merely ruins at this point, with partial cage walls falling over tall grass, and huge dark staircases and tunnels leading to several more small cages.

It is a dark and spooky place, but totally worth checking out. Tons of beautiful graffiti is hidden inside these dark cavernous cages, that housed many miserable animals before the new LA Zoo opened in the 1960s. 

Directions: Take the 5 Freeway to the Los Feliz Boulevard exit. Drive west on Los Feliz Boulevard to the first light and turn north on Crystal Springs Road. After 1.5 miles, turn left on Griffith Park Drive. Continue a quarter mile and turn left into a parking area just before the road bends to the right. There is a row of parking spaces by the turnoff and more parking as you drive into the picnic area. If all spaces are full, you may park at the larger lot by the merry-go-round and walk a little further to the picnic area.

Trailhead address: Griffith Park Drive, Griffith Park, Los Angeles, CA 90027
Trailhead coordinates: 34.13527, -118.286357

Opinion: Religion and Creationism Versus Science and Evolution

 

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the definition of evolution is “a theory that the various types of animals and plants have their origin in other preexisting types and that the distinguishable differences are due to modifications in successive generations.” Creationism is “a doctrine holding that matter, the various forms of life, and the world were created by God out of nothing and usually in the way described in the book of Genesis.” 

For almost twenty years, anthropologists have been comparing the DNA of living humans of varied origins to build evolutionary ‘family’ trees. The science has led to many theories, including how mutations occur in our DNA and will often be passed along to the offspring of our species. It is these differences that tie us all together, but also point to us having many differences through our personal genomes. After awhile, it becomes easy to predict what and where we came from through our DNA. DNA also shows that our species and chimpanzees diverged from a common ancestor species that lived between 8 and 6 million years ago. The last common ancestor of monkeys and apes lived about 25 million years ago. Our past, present and future is predicted through our own DNA.

Creationism doesn’t meet the criteria of being an actual theory, given that there is no feasible way to test it as being true or false. It has no scientific backing and appears to fall under the category of an idea. A scientific hypothesis must be testable and has the opportunity to be false. If the idea has no predictions, cannot be falsified or redeemed, or has no scientific principles, it is not science. With creationism, there are no scientific claims about how to identify our design, what the mechanism of our design is, or when and where the design will or has taken place. 

I believe Creationism is false. One of the leading factors that points to it’s falsity, is the fact that it’s based on doctrine with no scientific backing. The bible doesn’t explain why species vary from one form to the next. Creationists use this as a battle point in the ‘natural selection,’ argument. Natural selection can be described scientifically. All species that move to a different place with different conditions change along with natural selection and adaptation to the surrounding environment. This explains how new species are formed. Animals that didn’t move from their original area, did not need to adapt to a new environment. 

This science is disputed by creationists, such as Henry Morris, author of ‘The Scientific Case Against Evolution, who believe that, ‘if it were a real process, evolution should still be occurring, and there should be many "transitional" forms that we could observe. What we see instead is an array of distinct "kinds" of plants and animals with many varieties within each kind, but with very clear and -- apparently -- unbridgeable gaps between the kinds.”

This is a weak case against evolution. It is hard to dispute through the discovery of new species, such as the four new kinds of legless lizards found in California and announced as recently as last week. According to the founding herpetologists, these new species of legless lizards ancestors date back at least 50 million years. Creationists believe that the world began 6,000 years ago, and the DNA of these lizards disproves the idea of Creationism.