Mother nature is a cruel and ruthless bitch. Thomas Hobbs knew this, so did Werner Herzog, and deep down you know it too. A childhood diet of Disney movies might have tricked your brain into thinking that animals skip around hand-in-hand singing hakuna matata to each other all day, but the reality is that out in the street they call it murder.
Life is competition – kill or be killed, eat or be eaten – and it’s not represented by a beautiful panning shot of a million Monarch butterflies fluttering carelessly in the balmy summer air, nor is it narrated by David Attenborough. Life is encapsulated by a parasitic worm burrowing into the eye of an African child; survival by any means and at any cost.
That’s not to say that there isn’t beauty out there, but you have to turn a blind eye to a lot of death and destruction to find it.
In nature competition is the only rule, how you choose to win is up to you, but if you can’t keep the pace then you’re faced with one ultimate option – death, and in extreme cases extinction. While no one is seriously arguing against death, extinction tends to be regarded as nature gone atomic – it’s the unthinkable doomsday scenario that keeps Al Gore awake at night. But in fact, extinction is a natural process that is as old as time. Smart people with doctorates and large fact-swollen brains estimate that 99.9% of all species that have existed on earth are now extinct. Or to put it another way, extinction is not the anomaly, survival is.
Statistics like this tend to put me in a bit of a nihilistic mood. Why should we worry about saving endangered species if they’re most likely destined for extinction anyway? Instead of worrying about conservation and climate change shouldn’t we instead enjoy our current position in the top 0.1% of survivors in the billion year galactic reality show called life? Maybe we can’t save the whales and, come to think of it, when the day comes that human beings are facing extinction will the whales be busting their humps to save us?
All valid questions. But as easy as it is to be flippant and dismissive when it comes to the environment it’s important not to stray too far to the right, because then you’re no better than… oh let’s say, Jeremy Clarkson, whose best argument against climate change is to put his fingers in his ears and shout ‘la la la can’t hear you’. Jezza seems to be working on the assumption that climate change campaigners are like fairies in Peter Pan and that every time he says ‘I don’t believe in climate change‘, there is a hippy somewhere that falls down dead.
What self-interested, short-sighted jerks like Jeremy Clarkson need to realise is that although nature may be a cruel and ruthless bitch, she’s also our bitch. Humans don’t work with nature, we bitch slap her into submission – chopping down forests, raping the land of resources and extending our lives long beyond their natural span with drugs and complex medical procedures. We have the power to upset nature’s delicate balance, and although that sounds like a tag-line from a lame moisturiser advert it’s true, and as such we need to accept a certain level of responsibility.
To illustrate the point that humans dick nature around and fast-track a specie’s extinction, I originally wrote an 800 word section about the dodo that slotted into this about here. In the end, however, I had to cut it because a) it was far too long, b) it was a bit “fact heavy” and c) you’ve got to cut something, right? But for those of you who are interested, here is a diet slimline version of the same section.
Remember how I said that life was ruthless competition and struggle earlier? Well for the dodo, it was one long beach holiday. You see, the dodo lived on the island paradise of Mauritius and benefited form a biological phenomenon called island gigantism – a scenario which is the animal Kingdom’s equivalent of winning the Euro Millions. Basically, the dodo lived on an island where there were no predators to prey upon it and unlimited supplies of food for it to eat. As a result it thrived and over time evolution adapted it’s body and mind to this lay-z-bird lifestyle. First it started to nest on the ground because getting up in the trees is a real bother, then it lost the ability to fly (see previous) and finally it lost the natural fear and state of alert that things like pigeons have in abundance. Consequentially, when a bunch of Dutch jerks landed on the virginal sands of the dodo’s island resort in the 1590s and introduced hardened mainland species like dogs, cats, rats and monkeys, these alien invaders made short work of the native mega-turkeys.
Human intervention, although indirect, upset the delicate ecosystem that had allowed the dodo to exist, and as a result less than one hundred years after it had been discovered this feathered version of The Dude from The Big Lebowski found itself of the evolutionary scrap heap.
The – motherfuckin’ – End.
The dodo is just the most famous of maybe a million others. There must be a huge list of animals who have become extinct thanks to human involvement as long as Ron Jeremy’s wang, maybe longer? Whether it was by the indirect destruction of their habitat or by the direct shot of a gun, us humans have been cappin’ off species since we’ve been walking upright.
That’s why I’m not going to spend sleepless crying about the fate of the dodo. I’m all for environmental responsibility, but shit happens and extinction is a part of life. It keeps animals on their toes (if they have evolved the need for toes). Imagine, for example, if tigers went all lazy and just stopped trying. No one would be happy with that, plus it would make going on safari shit boring. The constant specter of death and extinction keeps animals sharp. The dodo died out because it had adapted itself to the lifestyle of an ME sufferer. When change came it had no chance of moving with the times.
Extinction is going to happen whether we like it or not, and as long as it’s not extinction because we’ve built a golf course over a patch of tropical rain-forest then I’m OK with it. But, and it’s a big but, if we are going to drive certain species to extinction then I think we should do it openly, for no better reason than we don’t like that particular animal. For example, here is a list of animals that I think we should kill off. Not because their habitat is rich in minerals or because they taste particularly good, but because I don’t like the way they look. OK, so maybe I have slightly better reasons for wishing them all dead than blind prejudice, but not much better.
See, and judge, for yourself.
Polar Bears
Why have so many people been tricked into thinking these guys are cute and cuddly? Seriously, are you kidding me! I’d rather cuddle Josef Fritzl than one of these white monsters.
Polar Bears aren’t cute and cuddly like this…
They’re stone cold killers like this.
Polar bears are animals that aren’t content to just kill and eat their pray. As you can see form this picture, the adorable and cuddly polar bear has transformed what was a living, breathing creature into a pile of amorphous meat and bone – Patrick Bateman style! Even one of those forensics experts from CSI would have a hard time putting this animal back together again.
Polar bears need protecting about as much as John Terry does. Both are animals using their god given talents and doing what comes naturally to them. One is a ruthless animal whose mind has no room for morality and compassion, whose only concerns are eating and fucking – and the other is a polar bear. Zing!
But seriously, remember that life is ‘kill or be killed’. This is nature’s mantra and all I suggest is that we start killing polar bears now, because I know that if given the chance a polar bear wouldn’t think twice before turning your internal organs into external organs and spreading them out all over the snow like pieces from Operation. Also, if there were no more polar bears we could all go up to the Arctic and lark about. I’m sure you saw the winter Olympics on TV recently. Well without these vicious killers roaming around we could all go up there and get in some much needed practice for Sochi 2014 (the next Winter Olympics. Apparently it’s a place in Russia. No, me neither). Then we might actually win some medals.
Pandas
What is my problem with bears you may ask? Well I did watch Grizzly Man the other day, but that’s by the by. My main beef with the panda is that they are media whores, greedily gobbling up newspaper column inches as if they were sticks of bamboo, and channeling aid and attention away from other, less media friendly, endangered species.
Granted, it’s difficult to maintain a low profile when the world’s largest and most powerful country (China) makes you one if it’s national animals. And it doesn’t help when the same country pimps out members of your species to foreign zoos for a cool 1 million dollars a year, in a bid to build international relations. But the Panda really established it’s name at the top of the endangered species A-list when the WWF (sadly, not the World Wrestling Federation) chose the its image for their logo in the 1960s.
This wasn’t an environmental decision it was a branding decision. The WWF needed an animal with a striking silhouette that they could print easily onto t-shirts, baseball caps and letterheads. They chose was the monochrome panda because it was striking, popular and cute. They could gone for another more ecologically significant animal like the lowly bumble bee of the Beluga Sturgeon but they didn’t, they went for the animal equivalent of Paris Hilton – a pretty face with a gift for media and a shit hot publicist.
Such media coverage has meant that pandas have acquired a sort of untouchable status. This was highlighted in September last year, when TV naturalist and animal expert Chris Packham sparked off a media shitstorm by suggesting that the panda should be allowed to die out. His view that millions of pounds in aid had been wastefully spend trying to rear pandas in captivity instead of preserving their habitat – save the habitat and the animal will save itself – was reasoned and fair, and his argument provoked a number of responses; some balanced, some focusing on how it would affect the UK housing market, and one that was celebrity endorsed and retarded.
The Daily Mirror’s reaction to Packham’s Panda bashing was to dress an intern up in a panda costume and get him to pose with celebrities like Arlene Phillips who were reportedly “outraged”… no hang on, “OUTRAGED“, by Packham’s evil and disgusting comments. Using her years of experience as a choreographer, dancer and a Strictly Come Dancing judge, Philips waded into the charged ecological debate with the following statement – “I’ll do anything I can to stop pandas dying out. People love them… it’s nice to feel loved.” Thanks Arlene , your unique brand of hollow sentiment and inane comment has allowed me to look at the subject in a totally new light.
In the end, who do you think won, the wildlife expert or the hyperbolic and moralising media campaign? There’s a rhetorical question if ever I heard one. But just in case you’re unsure, here is a picture of Packham prostrating himself before the panda lovers of the world, apologising personally to The Mirror’s office panda.
British tabloid media, I think a round of applause is in order.
Spiders
As you may have gathered by now, this list of animals I would like to hound to extinction is based exclusively on personal preference, sometimes masked by a very thin layer of (often dubious) fact. However, this last selection is made for no other reason than they creep me out.
Spiders have made me feel uneasy since I was a kid. They haunted my dreams and in the winter used to come into my house and scuttle along the skirting boards when I was trying to relax and play Age of Empires. And these weren’t small spiders, they were massive house spiders the size of coasters or something. Give me rats any day.
But where did the fear come from. I think it’s because with spiders, there is just nothing to relate to. With most animals you can look at their behaviour or into their eyes and recognise something, there is a level of kinship or understanding. Look into the eight eyes of a spider and all you’ll just see are eight emotionless black marbles staring back at you. Then it’ll probably jump at your face or something.
‘But Mark’, some of you might be thinking, ‘you’re contradicting yourself. Spiders are really ecologically important, they do all sorts of unseen jobs in the ecosystem. They eat flies for one. Is that what you want, a plague of flies?’. Well, to address your concerns, I have thought of a solution. Spiders eat insects, right? What else eats insects? I’ll give you a clue. They’re feathered, have beaks and I think they’re awesome! Yep, birds.
Nature has a great way of leveling out imbalance. If spiders went AWOL insects would thrive and as a result insect-eating birds would increase in numbers due to the increased food supply – like Jeff Goldblum says in Jurassic Park, ‘life finds a way’. That might be bullshit biologically, but it’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Anyway, who would seriously make a case for spiders being better than birds? Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds was miles better than Arachnophobia, and I can’t imagine Ken Loach’s gritty film about a working-class kid finding an escape from his bleak northern life in the companionship of an animal having the same impact and charm if that animal had been a hairy spider instead of a kestrel.
Overall, spiders suck and birds rule, and if I was blessed with god like powers – imagine a charismatic version of Neo form the Matrix or a toned down Jim Carrey from Bruce Almighty – then I wouldn’t hesitate in wiping out every last one of those eight legged freaks. To make a bit of a show of it I might gather them all in one place and swat them with a massive newspaper, or maybe flush them down the world’s biggest plug hole. It’s important to have fun with your omnipotence.
