Divide And Diminish Olivia Judson Summary

“Divide and Diminish” by Olivia Judson is an article predicting large land animals will be smaller in the future. Judson believes this will happen for 3 reasons, first, because large animals need more food and space compared to smaller animals, for example in order to feed one tiger 180 kilograms you will need 22 tons of prey. Second, huge animals cannot live on a smaller usually large animals who are on islands go extinct or shrink and Third, smaller islands are the home of less animals than bigger islands and as a result ecosystems are usually simple and there are little to no predators in these ecosystems. To reaffirm that she is staying on topic Judson states “an island is any self-contained patch of habitat within some larger sea.” Even