A family is nice to have. Some of us have lots of relatives. Others have just one or two. And some of us live in adopted families. What about wild animals? Some are loners, but many species live permanently in families, just as we do.

When I studied African wild dogs, I saw that each pack consists mainly of grown brothers and their father and uncles. Usually, one unrelated female lives with them. If a dog gets lost, it makes its special “hog­call”, and the others answer. Warthogs also live in families. A common group would be an old mother, her grown daughters, and these daughters' grown daughters with their babies. If these warthogs become separated, they look for one another.

But some other plant eaters seem to have almost no family ties. For example, caribou live in huge herds of hundreds or even thousands of animals. Except for each mother and her baby, these animals do not appear to remember one another. If some of them get lost, the others do not seem to miss them.

An animal can be in great danger if it has no family to help fight off predators (捕食性动物). I once saw a rooster try to defend his chicks from a snake. He was killed by the snake. The wildebeest, which lives in a herd, is on its own when predators strike. That is because a wildebeest herd, like a caribou herd, is just a crowd of unrelated animals that do not know or care about one another. Many times I saw wildebeest mothers standing alone, trying to protect their babies from wild dogs. But in the end, each mother had to flee for her own life.

However, a big family is sometimes a nuisance (麻烦事). The little dik­dik is a tiny antelope that lives in Africa. It has a diet of rare plants and is limited to a small home range. The dik­dik would not find enough to eat if there were too many relatives around. The female leopard, too, lives alone all her life, except while she's raising cubs (幼崽). She usually hunts small animals, which are just big enough to feed her and her cubs, but nobody else.

Joanne was stuck in a traffic jam in central Birmingham at 5:30 and at 6:30 she was expected to be chairing a meeting of the tennis club．At last, the traffic was moving. She swung quickly racing to her house. As she opened the door, she nearly tripped(绊) over Sheba.

“Hey，Sheba, ”she said, “I've got no time for you now，but I'll take you out as soon as I get back from tennis club．”Then she noticed Sheba seemed to be coughing or choking (噎).Obviously，she could hardly breathe．Immediately．Joanne realized she would have to take her to the vet (兽医).When she got there, the vet was just about to close for the day. Seeing the state of Sheba, Dr. Sterne brought her quickly into his office.

“Listen, doctor, I'm really in a rush to get to a meeting. Can I leave her with you, and go and get changed? I'll be back in ten minutes to pick her up, and then I'll take her on to the meeting with me. Is that OK?”

“Sure.” said the doctor

Joanne made the quick trip back to her house in a couple of minutes. As she was once more entering the hallway(门厅), the phone by the door began to ring.

“This is Dr．Sterne, ”said an anxious voice. “I want you to get out of that house immediately, ”said the doctor's voice. “I'm coming round right away, and the police will be there any time now. Wait outside! ”

At that moment, a police car screeched to a stop outside the house. Two policemen got out and ran into the house. Joanne was by now completely confused and very frightened. Then the doctor arrived.

“Where’s Sheba? Is she OK?” shouted Joanne.

“She’s fine, Joanne. I took out the thing which was choking her, and she’s OK now.”

Just then, the two policemen reappeared from the house，half-carrying a white-faced man, who could hardly walk, There was blood all over him.

“My God,” said Joanne,“How did he get in there? And how did you know he was there?”

“I think he must be a burglar(thief),” said the doctor. “I knew he was there because when I finally removed what was stuck in Sheba’s throat：it turned out to be three human fingers.”

On average, we each eat more than 20 kilograms of fish per year. Worldwide, between 1961 and 2016, fish consumption increased faster than meat consumption, and grew twice as fast as the human population. All of these fishy dinners have reduced marine fish stocks to a point where a third of global fish stocks are now classed as "overfished". Fishing also has negative impacts on non-food species in the ecosystem, and pollutes the waters with fishing waste. Temporary fishing bans may help, but what if we banned fishing altogether?

One thing is for sure: the ocean would hopefully become a better place for marine species. Recent years have seen plastic products much less used as the public has woken up to the effects of marine plastics. But few people realize the contribution that fishing makes. Pieces of abandoned fishing tools account for about 10 percent of all marine litter, and according to a 2018 study, 86 percent of the big pieces of plastics floating in the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch". Without fishing, we'd also wipe out emission from fishing boats. One 2014 study claimed that fishing industry was actually highly fuel-consuming, like lobsters, with some boats using 20,000 liters of fuel to catch a single ton.

However, what we must not forget is that our planet is highly dependent on fishing in various ways. Around the world,40 million people earn their living directly from catching wild fish, while another 19 million are employed in relevant industries. A total ban on fishing would make it hard for them to put food in their families' mouths. Moreover, seafood is a major source of protein across Southeast Asia and islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. So while in Europe or the US people could eat more meat or soy products to make up for lost protein, there could be food shortage in communities with little land-based farming.

Though not a realistic choice, a total fishing ban is an interesting thought experiment, which may throw light on how man can get along with marine species. After all, the damage fishing does to the entire ecosystem and the pollution it brings about are becoming so enormous that it's time we did something to change it.