Each Death Diminishes Me

At the start of the 20th century, there were perhaps 150,000 tigers in the world. There are now 3,500. Half of those are in zoos. In 1900, there were roughly 1.5 billion people in the world; there are now 7 billion. Each day, my significance decreases; each day, somewhere, a last tree frog, a last beetle, a last hummingbird perishes, its significance much greater than mine.

I don't know for whom the bell tolls. But for the other species on this planet, it must now be a howling siren, each second announcing the departure of some unknown genotype to the great beyond. For humanity, arrivals exceed departures. The airport is filling up, and we have nowhere to go.

I visited the zoo yesterday. There are fewer animals to see. For some, their only hope of survival is in zoos; they have ceased to exist anywhere else. Cuteness has become a survival trait. It is sad in the sense of watching something leave the world forever.