Interesting Fact...

Indonesia has the most known mammal species of all countries in the world. Unfortunately, it also has the most mammal species under threat of extinction.

Back from Extinction

They say that no news is good news, but after 80 years most people would think you to be long gone or in the case of the pygmy tarsier, extinct. However, in a good news story for Indonesia, the pygmy tarsier has been rediscovered. The pygmy tarsier is an insect eating primate and as it name suggests, it is little and weighs in at a mere 50 grams. Do not let this deceive you though as it is said to pack quite a bite.

The pygmy tarsier has been trapped and tagged for the first time in more than eighty years. One was trapped and killed back in 2000 by Indonesian scientists doing a study on rats. This unfortunate death of a previously considered extinct animal lead to a ratcheting up of attempts to find live pygmy tarsiers. This culminated in 3 of the little ones being located in Sulawesi on Mt. Rore Katimbo at an elevation of almost 7,000ft. There was a fourth one but he or she was way too clever for the pursuing scientists and managed to get away.

Now that they have been tagged hopefully their movements can be tracked and the pygmy tarsiers saved from extinction.

Killing Our Environment and Killing Ourselves

Why is it that human beings have such an exaggerated appetite for death and destruction? This appetite includes an obvious innate desire to limit our opportunities for survival on this planet. We better hope those astro-scientist types work out practical ways for us to live elsewhere in the universe or we will soon be victims of our own excesses.

What inspired this not so cheery post is a press release from the UN that highlights the human race's propensity to destroy its environment means the likelihood of finding cures to modern diseases decreases as rapidly as the natural environment that we destroy on a daily basis.

An example of this is the Rheobatrachus or the Southern Gastric Brooding frog which was thought to produce substances that slowed acid and enzyme excretions which are a main cause of peptic ulcers! Nah, bugger me if we haven't gone and made this poor little frog extinct and with it the possibility of finding and developing a treatment for the prevention of peptic ulcers - idiots!

Just the possibility that the cure for cancer or HIV/AIDS is just sitting there out in the environment there waiting to be discovered must become motivation enough for us as a people to protect the biodiversity that we have left.

Climate change, stripping away of natural resources, environmental degradation, and the like are real and we each need to start playing our little parts in turning the tide against what will ultimately lead to our destruction!

This would be the ultimate irony for those that believe in God our ability to destroy that which was given us! It would also be the ultimate vindication for evolutionists as the cycle of life and death would fit nicely into the evolution theory of humans coming into existence and ultimately being evoluted out of existence.