Well Mark and I enjoyed a gorgeous day out at the Perth zoo on Saturday. However, long after we returned home I found I was still suffering with a mental dichotomy. That is to say, I maintain two opposing thoughts regarding the consequences of the dying species.

See, I have a big heart, sometimes my immediate reaction to many issues arise from my heart. When Mark asked me on Saturday what I thought about extinction, I spent 20 minutes defending all the species in the world whom have suffered as prey of the human being… then in the lingering hours, I got around to asking him his opinion and finally I started to use my head.

The main issue in my heart is the unsustainable harvest of species for human consumption and sale of their parts. I find this immoral, stupid and a very poor business model. If a tigers eyeballs are so beneficial to human health, then why are we prepared to hunt them to extinction?

Although, I’m afraid to say that regardless of what breeding and farming practices we implement, animal habitats are decreasing at the same rapid rate that the human population is expanding, so they’ll eventually run out of places to go.

I certainly wont defend the reckless and harmful behaviours of the human race for financial greed, But let’s all forget about the sad & bad human beings for a moment. Let’s just look at the big picture…

Is extinction of a species really a challenge for the ever evolving ecosystem? Which, mind you has survived for 3.6 billion years since the first simple cell organisms were believed to have existed. Many argue that a slight change in the ecosystem will have a devastating rippling effect – and I believe it will, but I’m not so convinced that it’s something the earth has not already been through many times before. (*cough* meteors, dinosaurs)

I don’t know if it is an attribute or a pitfall, but the human species suffers (for lack of a better word) from the god complex. By trying to prevent the extinction of so many species are we in hand trying to prevent mother nature from running it’s course, or perhaps, we feel we can improve what mother nature thinks is working perfectly fine… thank you very much.

Let’s think about this, of all the species that have ever lived on earth, 99.9% of them are extinct. Most of them became extinct over a series of 5 mass extinction events. But guess what happened after the mass extinction events? More species evolved.

So let’s be positive today, instead of thinking about all the poor extinct animals, lets think about all the cool new animals which haven’t even evolved yet… What does mother nature have in store for our descendants?

Oh also, here’s some photo’s from our day at the zoo!

• Animals
• Evolution
• Zoo