I got an e-mail this morning encouraging me to visit a site to sign a petition to save the polar bears.
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for saving polar bears. I just wonder why you always hear about efforts to save polar bears and pandas and whales and rarely (if ever) hear about efforts to save the ugly less cute and cuddly creatures.
I mean really. Who would want to conserve this guy?
(Source: nationalgeographic.com)
This is the aye-aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis). As you might be able to surmise by its scientific name, the aye-aye hails from Madagascar.
According to EDGE, the aye-aye is regarded as an evil omen in many areas and killed upon sight.
Check out this slideshow put together by Slate that sort of addresses the disparity between saving the cute and cuddly while basically ignoring the grotesque or unlovely.
According to the Zoological Society of London, two-thirds of the world's Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered, or EDGE, species receive little to no conservation attention. It's even worse for amphibians with 85% of the top 100 EDGE amphibians currently receiving little or no conservation attention.
I know we can't save every animal, but what if we were to put at least some of the effort we put into saving pandas into saving some salamander in a lake somewhere we'll probably never get to see? Who knows? Who cares?
I think we all should.
