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Seemed Like a Good Idea: Eugene Schieffelin and the European Starlings

2019-06-25 · explainer · John · 4:00 · watch on YouTube

Topic: History & curiosities (also: Science & nature) · mode: Personal essay

John tells how Eugene Schieffelin released some 60 European starlings in Central Park in 1890, now about 200 million destructive birds, but argues the acclimatists responded reasonably to history, since moving species around has fed the world; we too have bad ideas that seem good, and history is littered with stories of starlings.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Eugene Schieffelin, his European bird imports, house sparrows, the 1890 Central Park starling release

  • ★★ John says Schieffelin was born in New York City in 1827, born rich and stayed rich, the seventh son of a famous family, working for his father's pharmaceutical company. — 00:00:00 · New York City
  • ★★ John says Schieffelin, who loved birds, liked to import European bird species and introduce them into New York City. — 00:00:00 · New York City
  • ★★ John says Schieffelin may have been the first to introduce the house sparrow to North America, to exterminate the caterpillars infesting the trees of Madison Park. (hedged) — 00:00:29 · United States
  • ★★ Schieffelin, in his own word, 'liberated' many other European birds into New York, including bullfinches, skylarks and nightingales, all of which died. — 00:00:29 · New York City
  • ★★★ On March 6, 1890, Schieffelin released a flock of some 60 common starlings into Central Park, sparking a magnificent disaster. — 00:00:29

00:00:58 — European starlings in North America: the name, population growth, murmurations, damage, a 1906 birding book

  • ★★★ The American starling population has grown from 60 birds to around 200 million; there are now more European starlings in the Americas than in Europe. — 00:00:58 · Europe, United States
  • ★ John finds starling murmurations truly beautiful, though hugely destructive. — 00:00:58
  • ★★★ Starlings crowd out native species and cause about a billion dollars a year in damage to the US, mostly crop destruction; they also produce lots of poop and noise. — 00:01:27 · United States
  • ★★ John mocks an old birding book that welcomed the starling's 'cheery' whistle over the chatter of house sparrows: only experimental-music fans call it cheery, and we introduced the sparrows too. (playful) — 00:01:56
  • ★★ Schieffelin's liberations were part of the nineteenth-century acclimatization movement, which moved foreign plants and animals to new places to see if they could improve human life. — 00:01:56

00:02:26 — Acclimatization and the Columbian Exchange: moving species around has fed the world

  • ★★★ John rejects the expected lesson that humans shouldn't play God or mess with nature: the acclimatists were in many ways responding appropriately to developments in human history. — 00:02:26
  • ★★★ Without the movement of plants and animals between the Americas and Afro-Eurasia after the Columbian Exchange, there would be no cows or horses in the Americas and no pizza (tomatoes from the Americas, wheat from Afro-Eurasia). — 00:02:26 · United States
  • ★★★ John says one reason fewer people will starve this decade than in any decade in thousands of years is that we've become good at moving species to where they thrive. — 00:02:55
  • ★★ John says judging Schieffelin is easy and in some ways fair, because American ornithologists of the time understood the dangers of acclimatization. — 00:02:55 · United States

00:03:24 — We don't know which of our ideas are bad; P.S. on the Shakespeare story

  • ★★★ Schieffelin didn't know the future and neither do we: John is sure we also have bad ideas that seem good now, but doesn't know which. — 00:03:24

  • ★★★ John says it helps, when thinking about what we believe we know, to remember that history is littered with stories of starlings. — 00:03:24

    “history is littered with stories of starlings”

  • ★★ An old story says Schieffelin introduced starlings to bring every bird in Shakespeare's plays to the US, but there seems to be no contemporary evidence for it. (hedged) — 00:03:24 · United States

  • ★★ John says viewers who find such evidence could solve a minor but pervasive historical mystery. — 00:03:24

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description asks which current ideas are as bad as Schieffelin's starling idea, answering probably quite a few. (hedged) — video description
  • ★ The description links a beautiful video of a murmuration of common starlings. — video description

Humor (significant)

  • Schieffelin lived the American dream — 00:00:00

    “which is to say that he was born rich and remained so”

  • Why North Americans call the common starling the European starling — 00:00:58

    “in much the same way that the French called syphilis the Italian disease and the Italians called it the French disease”

  • Wikipedia calls the starling's call unmusical but varied — 00:01:27

    “which incidentally is how I'm going to describe my singing voice from now on”

  • Without the Columbian Exchange there would be no cows or horses in the Americas — 00:02:55

    “and most worrisomely, no pizza”

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: Common starling · Eugene Schieffelin

Also: People: William Shakespeare

Organizations: Wikipedia

Concepts: Acclimatisation society · American Dream · Common nightingale · Eurasian bullfinch · Eurasian skylark · Famine · House sparrow · Intellectual humility · invasive species · Murmuration · pizza · syphilis · tomato · Wheat

Places: Afro-Eurasia · Americas · Central Park · Europe · Ireland · Madison Square Park · New York City · North America · United States

Events: Columbian exchange

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