Earth has been populated by billions of animal species throughout the ~3,800,000,000-billion year history of life. Over a million, in extant animal species alone, has been discovered.
Yet, few are known to the general public, and yet fewer are actually recognized as significant. And those few are often overrated. Part of the reason why this is so, is because of the titles given to certain animal species/genera.
Some examples:
Tyrannosaurus rex = "King of dinosaurs"
Homo sapiens(anatomically modern humans) = "Crown of creation"
Argentinosaurus huinculensis = "Largest dinosaur ever"
Balaenoptera musculus = "Largest animal ever"
Panthera leo(Lion) = "King of the beasts"
These titles draw quite a lot of attention most of the time, often away from many interesting species. Although the case with Homo sapiens can't really be helped, can't it? Popularizing selected genera instead of giving all of them the spotlight, causes massive fanbases that can be quite stubborn at times, such as the case of the Tyrannosaurus fanbase.
We should not be giving any glorification titles to any species at all. The amount of potential undiscovered species is too vast. There may very well be a titanic ~10+ tonne carnosaur, a ~250-350 tonne ichthyosaur, or even a sapient species that went extinct millions of years ago and thus had their civilization crumble completely long before humans evolved, buried down there. We don''t really know what's down or out there.
There is an ocean of unknowns out there. Consider them, and do not glorify the known creatures as if they were the absolute pinnacle of an attribute. Stop with the title giving.
Do not call Tyrannosaurus the king, stop the overly biased anthropocentric views, stop with the "whales are the largest ever" statements. As mentioned before, there is a vast ocean of unknowns out there, and ignoring this is foolish.
No comments:
Post a Comment