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Sibila Ramakrishnan

Inspirational Others

4.7  

Sibila Ramakrishnan

Inspirational Others

This Virus Jumps To That Species

This Virus Jumps To That Species

2 mins
118


Autopsy report: 

Fifteen years old female elephant

Amniotic fluid with a four months old calf's heart found in the body

Pyrochemical explosion damaging lower jaw and tongue.

Final cause of death: Asphyxia, as the subject stood in water, trunk down, for some relief. 


Yes, we've done it again! We've killed one more.

No, no, two more this time. What a hit! 


We did very well in extinctions also last year.

Did you not know? Let me explain:

Three bird species - Cryptic tree hunter, Alagoas foliage gleaner, Poo-uli

Two frogs - Corquin robber frog, Lake oku puddle frog

A famous snail - Hawaiian tree snail named Lonesome George

One of the world's largest freshwater fishes - Chinese paddlefish

First mammal extinction too - Bramble cay melomys

And several more of plants and fishes, as usual. 


We also wiped out Victorian grasslands earless dragons, 

Also Miss Waldron's red colobus monkeys

And killed the last female Yangtze giant softshell turtle during artificial insemination. 

Disappointments though were Indo-Chinese tigers and Sumatran rhinoceros

As we could only extirpate them. 

But the biggest celebration is Spix's Macaw - extinct in the wild! 


Come, let's celebrate the invincible human species! 

What did you say? Coronavirus? Killing humans? 

Impossible! But how can this happen?

Vanishing wild spaces caused this, you say? 

So parasites and pathogens run amok! No!

We are the superabundant species now

Unbuffered by the vast array of other species

And easy prey for zoonotic viruses

Human-meat market for predators!


When this virus jumps to that species

With biological annihilation everywhere

Extinction of one species wiping out many more

Remember this, next time a frog dies in your lake, 

It is one step less for the virus to jump to you! 


Biodiversity in its full range protects us

The last generation who knows

What was, what is and what will be of our nature,

The last that could act. 



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