This week’s issue of The Quick Fox is brought to you by mortality.
Animals die. People die. I will die and so will you. Our pets will die. Every living thing we’ve ever seen will die. Mortality can be very painful, but it’s not inherently a bad thing. It makes way for new life, and new life is amazing. Sure, death is sad, but step back a bit from that sorrow (in your own time) and it’s part of the great continuum we call existence.
Extinction–the death of a whole species, never to be reborn–is another thing entirely. Last Monday, The Revelator published a reckoning of the species that went extinct in 2019. There were a lot of them. I can’t, at this moment, really think through the problem of scale inherent in appreciating exactly what extinction means.
I try not to rail about capitalism too much in this newsletter, but the imperative to maximize a specific kind of value that primarily benefits a small number of individuals at the cost of all of us, and all of our animal and plant and fungi and microbe colleagues—it’s too much. The price is too high. We live in a death cult.
Image: The Bramble Cay melomys (Melomys rubicola) is the first mammal to be declared extinct for climate change related reasons. (Credit: State of Queensland)
If you need a chaser after the above outburst, check out this lil BBC documentary about someone who’s doing real good for the animals he lives alongside.
Extra credit
Short-ish things I read this week:
Pigeon wearing [sic] tiny sombrero discovered in Reno (Associated Press)
Crews Round Up Over 1,700 Piglets After Semi Overturns (Associated Press)
Fourth North Atlantic right whale calf of the season already injured (Global News, Alexander Quon)
The ‘Blob,’ a massive marine heat wave, led to an unprecedented seabird die-off (Science News, Johnathan Lambert)
As 2019 ends, reptile-rich Sri Lanka delivers three more new gecko species (Mongabay, Dilrukshi Handunnetti)
Longer or more involved things:
The mystery of the disappearing seabird (The Atlantic, Eric Wagner)
Puget Sound tribes and scientists join forces to breed millions of clams (New Food Economy, Hannah Weinberger)
The Gene Drive Dilemma: We Can Alter Entire Species, but Should We? (The New York Times Magazine, Jennifer Kahn) If you read this one, also check out this handy thread that addresses a mischaracterization of CRISPR in the story.
India’s yak herders face the end of ancient tradition in warming Himalayas (Mongabay, Bikash Kumar Bhattacharya)
New genetic research shows that the great auk population was large and diverse—until hunters swiftly drove it to extinction (Hakai Magazine, Kate Evans)
In our cabin, towel swans neck on our bed, chocolates pose on our pillows, champagne ices. “How did they know?” I ask. We take turns looking out our porthole window at the wide black pier, the sloshing water, the perched and diving gulls.
—“Postcard,” Blackbird, Kate Tighe-Pigott
Read me
My most recent work:
These tiny living robots could help science eavesdrop on cellular gossip
The volcano erupting in the Philippines could be building up to another explosion
Australia’s government needs to take drastic action to prevent future fires—and so do the rest of us
Australia’s historic bushfires could impact the world’s biodiversity forever
Questions? Comments? Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at my email or on Twitter. If you enjoy this newsletter and would like to tip me, I am on Ko-fi.
All images in CREATURE FEATURE are used under Creative Commons licensing. Efforts have been made to ensure that photographs of living animals or natural scenes have been taken ethically, in responsible pet ownership conditions, at AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums or under safe, non-damaging conditions in the wild. If you see an issue with any image we share, please notify me.