These might be over-population; lack of water; the impact of climate change.

Kangaroos even have a trick called embryonic diapause which suspends development until they have room in their pouches.

Whatever superiority we assume, humankind does not remain aloof from such considerations. We know that Ireland’s population boomed during the agricultural and industrial revolutions, and at its peak, before famine, disease and migration, stood at some eight million.

But what we are witnessing now might be seen by historians as the impact of the “Information Age” with potentially profound consequences for us all in the years to come.

The CSO shows that the number of births in the Republic of Ireland has fallen by 20% to 54,678 in 2023, an annual drop of 14,252.

To put it another way, this is a yearly reduction equivalent to the full-time roster of An Garda Síochána, just one of the public services which may have to come to terms with this “new reality” of recruitment and replacement in the years to come.

Of equal significance is a dramatic transition in the child-bearing age of first time mothers. Just 12 years ago the average was 28.2 years. Last year a typical primigravida was 31.6, an increase of 3.4 years.

While there are some associated risks, particularly as mothers advance through their 30s, there are complex societal, professional and economic pressures which contribute to decisions to commence families later.

It is noteworthy, also, that as fertility rates are falling so, too, are the number of women in the younger cohorts who might once have been expected to produce the children, and the tax-paying workforce of the future.

The picture we have is incomplete.

We are short on details for inter-race marriages, for births outside cohabitation, or on the impact of fertility technologies such as IVF which are largely the province of wealthier people.

The impact of the continuing Irish housing shortage and precarity of full-time employment also bears upon family decisions.

Some people may also believe that, given the conflicts, political and environmental, of the world, it is an act of irresponsibility to bring new life into it. 

There is, as the experts say in today’s Irish Examiner analysis, a lot to unbundle in the data. And no simple solutions.

The attitude of various states towards population growth and control has always been a matter of political will. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Nazis introduced the Lebensborn programme to increase Germany’s declining birthrate with children who were deemed “racially valuable”.

For nearly 40 years, until it was abandoned at the start of this decade, China implemented a "one-child policy”. 

In neighbouring Japan, eight consecutive years of collapsing birthrate has been declared a national crisis.

While the scale there is much larger the problems of a shrinking and ageing population will be felt here in Ireland, not least in maintaining a wide and growing range of public services deemed essential to life and where there is already chronic understaffing.

It is a challenge to which we and our leaders must rise to meet.

In yesterday’s newspaper we detailed the outstanding, and moving, work carried out by staff in the neo-natal intensive care unit at Cork University Maternity Hospital (CUMH) to save the lives of the 1,500 premature babies who arrived in the past 12 months.

On Monday, we shall be examining the impact of available fertility choices for couples desirous of starting their own families.

At CUMH, Professor Eugene Dempsey spoke of the importance of a “can-do” attitude in sustaining hope and delivering results for parents. 

It is a characteristic which must come to the fore in upholding and replenishing the vigour of the nation.

Why The Beekeeper strikes a chord 

Reports of the latest online scam and security failure, this time at Cork’s popular Fota Wildlife Park, might easily give rise to the world-weary view that there will be another one along in a minute.

If it were not so serious.

In a world where we have been encouraged to rely on technology for nearly everything the number of failures might be spun as statistically small.

But the consequences and lack of confidence which arise from them can be devastating.

Customers at the attraction have been warned that their bank accounts have been placed at risk by the security breach and it is suggested that they cancel their credit cards.

In this instance, a customer purchased tickets on the wildlife park’s website on July 29 and then 23 days later, noticed unauthorised transactions on his Revolut account, processed within seconds of each other for €600.

The first transaction, for €280, was successful. However, the second failed because it totalled more than the remaining funds still within the account.

The transactions were made in Vairano Patenora, in Campania, north of Naples, Italy — a location he had never visited.

And there is a reminder for everyone to read the interminable small print with which financial companies and service providers deluge us.

While some credit card companies provide the valuable safeguard of insurance on transactions up to a certain level, this is not the case for either Revolut or Google Pay, whose platform was used to purchase the Fota Wildlife Park tickets in question, have accepted responsibility for the loss to date.

The wildlife park remains open for business, with only tickets bought physically at its kiosks are being accepted.

While the company offers apologies for “any inconvenience this may cause”, there will be many among us who prefer to do business this way.

Earlier this year, the authoritative Hiscox report found that cybercrime remained the most prevalent type of fraud committed in Ireland and was running at three times the global norm.

Attacks increased by 22% year-on-year with more than 70% of Irish companies targeted.

Given the scale of the epidemic, it’s unsurprising that it has found its way into fiction and entertainment.

One of the most popular thrillers running on the Amazon Prime streaming service at present is The Beekeeper, which stars West Cork resident Jeremy Irons as a jaded ex-CIA boss trying to cope with a dangerous operative on a rogue mission.

His objective is to wipe out a phishing gang in a number of imaginative, colourful, creative, and frankly bloody ways, after they siphoned off the life savings of his next door neighbour, and only friend. Adam Clay has handy methods with band saws and cans of gasoline and likes to make the bad guys — the cyber criminals in question — repeat after him: “I will never steal from the weak and vulnerable again.”

Not that anyone can condone vigilante justice but it is easy to see which side the audience will come down on.

And when such cases come to light wonder, just for a moment, whether anyone has a phone number for Jason Statham.