Interspecies was once a technical term used in science to describe how one species got along with another. Now it is a word of more consequence: it arouses the new connections between humans and non-humans that are being made possible by technology. In Ways of Being, James Bridle, a British artist and technology writer, explores what this means for understanding the many non-human intelligences on Earth.

Mr Bridle makes clear that three kinds of minds are now interacting: human, non-human and machine. Using artificial intelligence (AI), machines will in future have the capability to interpose (使介入) themselves as translators between humans and other biological life forms.

It is true that profit is the main motive for advances in AI; as yet nature does not get much of a look in, and non-human intelligences go unexplored outside zoology departments. Computing is currently as focused on humans as ever, even as climate change and biodiversity-loss suggest it should devote much greater attention to other species.

The first step towards an interspecies future, Mr Bridle argues, is showing more appreciation for other forms of intelligence. To some extent, this is already happening. For example, through films and other sources many people now know that octopuses (章鱼) have an advanced and strange intelligence. The next step, Mr Bridle declares, is recognizing that people live in a “more than human” world. Other intelligences have developed from a common evolutionary base, and they overlap (重叠) in ways that science is just beginning to discover.

Ways of Being would have benefited from sharper editing. Yet, in making clear the patience, imagination and humility (谦卑) required to better know and protect other forms of intelligence on Earth, he has made an admirable contribution to the dawning interspecies age.

Shark nets in place across Australia, specifically in New South Wales(NSW) and Queensland,to protect beachgoers should be dropped as they have caused more harm than good, a study has found.

The measures were carried out by some governments, including nets and traditional drum lines , and provided beachgoers with a false sense of safety. The study found the effectiveness if nets was difficult to evaluate, while the significant damage they cause to other marine(海生的）wildlife was clear. Researches desire for non-deadly shark control measures such as eco barriers, sonar(声呐）technology , and various shark-spotting techniques.

Researchers said while the risk coming across a shark was rare, any shark-related deaths and injuries caught huge public and media attention.

One of the arguments in support of using shark nets is that just one shark-related death has been reported in Queensland since the 1960s. Similarly, since the 1930s, NSW has had only one shark-related death. But there have been at least 13 people killed by sharks at beaches without nets in the NSW north coast over the past two years.

The Human Society International’ head of campaigns, Nicola Beynon, said the government needed to move away from outdated methods.Deadly shark nets and drum lines are more than 50 years behind scientific and animal welfare standards for dealing with marine wildlife,” said Beynon.

The NSW Greens’ marine spokesman, Justin Field,said, People are 100 times more likely to drown at the beach than to be killed by a shark in Australia. Therefore, millions of dollars going into the shark net program should be directed to observation towers for our lifeguards and improving the beach devices.”

We humans love food to death.

From mammoths to passenger pigeons, we have driven our favorite meals to extinction through overhunting and habitat destruction. And globally, our tendency to overharvest just a narrow range of crops has limited the variety of foods we eat.

Passenger pigeons were the most common birds in all of North America in the 1800s. It was common to see large groups of passenger pigeons-groups that made a sound like a storm. In Colonial times it was turned into pie. It was baked. It was roasted. It was made into stew (炖). Basically, anything you do to a chicken is what we did to them. Today, they are extinct because of human behavior.

“When it comes to fruits and vegetables, we have access to only a small part of the diversity (多样性) that existed a century ago,” says Lenore Newman in her forthcoming book, Lost Feast: Culinary (烹饪的) Extinction and the Future o f Food (out October 8). She is the Canada research chair in food security and environment at the University of the Fraser Valley, in British Columbia.

In her book, Newman mainly explores how human activity has limited our food options and still threatens what we are able to put on our plates.

“I think the important lesson that I took away from writing this book was realizing that things can-and do-go extinct even if we really love them,” Newman told NPR. Silphium, a plant that was important to Roman and Egyptian culinary society, is one of many examples of foods we loved that are now considered extinct. The branch of the silphium plant was used to flavor (加味于) food, and its leaves were fed to sheep and cattle to improve the flavor of their meat. Newman says the extinction of silphium taught us that loving a food is not enough to keep it in existence. “We actually have to fight to be conscientious, especially as we have a bigger impact on the planet,” she says. “We need to be a little more thoughtful about how we eat.”