Learning English

Dr Tim Cockerill
A zoologist is a person who studies animals – so the science behind animals – so that could be anything from studying the diversity – all the different kinds of animals that exist, or it could be the way that animals interact with other living things like plants or even the way that animals and humans get on together. Many of the animal species on our planet are in decline – so they are threatened species and what we do as zoologists is try to work out ways to save those animals in the future, so what will our world look like in fifty or a hundred years' time? Well, we hope we can save lots of those animals that are still around at the moment.

Rob
Without the important work that people like you do, what could happen to our planet?

Dr Tim Cockerill
Well humans are already having a really big effect on our planet so if we're not careful at reducing those impacts, well what we're going to see in the future is a world that's very different to the world that we're in today where there are fewer animals around and fewer living things and of course that's going to have a very big impact on the way that we live.

Rob
And are we seeing evidence of that at the moment?

Dr Tim Cockerill
We certainly are seeing evidence of that at the moment so there are already larger species of animals that are going extinct and of course in the future we're going to see other large animals going extinct but lots of smaller animals disappearing as well and some people think there are animals that have disappeared and that will disappear in the future that we haven't even discovered yet.

Rob
We hear a lot of negative, a lot of scare stories about endangered animals and we're going to lose animals and insects and plants and all kinds of things. How true do you think that is? How serious is the problem?

Dr Tim Cockerill
Some people say we are in the 6th major extinction event so that means that we're in a time when lots and lots of our animal species are dying out so this is the first time that we know about where humans are having a direct impact on our planet and it definitely is happening but what we don't know is to what extent it's happening – so we don't know how many of those animals that are surviving now will still be alive in fifty or a hundred years' time. What I really hope is that in the future we can work out a way to reduce our impact not only on the climate of our planet but on all the living things like the plants and of course the animals that live there.