‘Museus refrigeratorus’

What if you open your refrigerator and inside you find the most bizarre-looking creatures you have ever laid your eyes on, not even from watching The National Geographic or Discovery channels? That is how I felt a couple of years ago when some scientists who were curators of a Natural History museum that was not yet open then in the Netherlands, led us into an 11-story freezer filled with stuffed creatures that have gone extinct. They also showed us saffron-colored journals from expeditions in the 1700s or even earlier, that contained scientific drawings of plants and animals, the real live versions of some of which are no longer found now. At first, I was horrified and almost let out a yelp when we entered the room with stuffed birds as big as tricycles. Their eyes were open and they rested as if looking your way since they all faced toward the doors. But after the initial shock and after going through level after level of those mostly extinct animals, I did settle into a more sober state where I could think clearly and try to make sense of the experience with the extinct creatures that belong to what I now call Museus refrigeratorus – extinct, refrigerated museum pieces.

The latest study on extinction that made international news headlines lately predicts that by 2050, 15 to 37 percent of the 1,103 land-based species that they studied will be gone forever. Led by Dr. Chris D. Thomas of the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, 19 scientists undertook the study published in the journal Nature last week. What exactly does this mean to the majority of the world who are non-scientists and who for the most part are living in urban areas and have not come into direct contact with any of these 1,103 from the Who’s who in the putative coveted list of Extinction Galore, my imaginary magazine that pays homage to extinct species?

The phrase "species extinction" seems so technical, like a phrase you would use to describe a phenomenon that is interesting but is still so far removed from your own existence that it probably ranks alongside UFO sightings. But sadly, I think it is our remoteness to what it really means that causes us, to a great extent, to lose a part of the world as we know it now. "Species," in the biological sense, refers to a population (not individuals) whose members are able to interbreed freely under natural conditions, that is, not in a controlled laboratory experiment. "Extinction" refers to the permanent disappearance of a life form or for our column purposes, "species." "Mass extinction" refers to the disappearance of huge numbers of species within given periods. Sixty-five million years ago, an asteroid hit a spot in Mexico that created a crater 100 miles across. This crater, called the Chicxulub crater and discovered underneath layers of ocean sediments near the Yucatan Peninsula, has been widely recognized and accepted scientifically as the crash site of that meteor measuring seven miles across which killed the dinosaurs and an estimated 70 percent of the planet’s species. This mass extinction did not just happen on mere impact but the dust it scattered blocked sunlight for years which spelled death for most of life on Earth. Depending on how scientists define what is "massive" in "mass extinction," the entire natural history of the planet has witnessed between five and 12 mass extinctions already. The most recent was 13 million years ago, long before humans inhabited the Earth. But if the study’s predictions come true, only a mere 46 years from now, headlines will read: "FIRST HUMAN-CAUSED MASS EXTINCTION OCCURS." Yes, the study points a finger to climate change as the culprit for the next predicted mass extinction but it is climate change induced for the most part by man in his industry and his lifestyle. Human industry and lifestyle as we know it now, destroy habitats, the very places that sustain life as we know it, in rates never known before. That is not science news, that is destiny, not just of humanity but also of the entire planet as we know it.

I keep saying "as we know it" because evolution will still find a way to shape the world in a way that it will. In fact, this world may eventually evolve into a planet that is no longer suitable for humans just as it is now, no longer suitable for those life forms in that towering refrigerator I encountered. So if the world will go on anyway, why weep? Some weep because they lament that somewhere in the deep jungles, a perfect cure for our darkest plagues may grow and we will never find out if we destroy them. But if it is only to rid ourselves of disease, evolution, by the nature of things, will still find a way to make us meet our final destinies in death. So even as we find more cures, life, by the nature of things, will evolve more plagues. That is why even the fiercest ones intellectually, like evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, author of the landmark book, The Selfish Gene, calls for conservation not on scientific terms but simply on sentiment. "Sentiment" because during our finite lifetimes, we hold and live in the world, in all its wildness, splendor and grace, in all its greens, reds and browns. The world holds meaning for us now. To lose it at a pace never before experienced by the planet so that your children and grandchildren may never ever see an elephant anywhere else again, except in a giant refrigerator, is reason enough to weep. It is not just the elephant, per se, that we lose. It is also the kind of humans and ways of life that have been touched in deep ways by these creatures that we will lose. For myself, I will lose the gentleness and wisdom of the five-year-old Himalayan boy who lived in a land of wild elephants, who taught me forever how to recognize a perfect mountain morning! I will weep for the elephant and the boy, and that kind of perfect mountain morning.

That is what mass extinction ultimately means beyond the concept of "species," beyond numbers, beyond computer simulations. It means saying to a creature leaving its time:  "Every time you say goodbye, I die a little." It means saying goodbye to what captivated your childhood wonder – a flower, a bug, or a tree – when you first realized you were born unto a world. Perhaps millions of years from now, species far evolved from humans will enter what their version of our museum refrigerator will be and find us, Homo Sapiens, among the frozen museum pieces. Perhaps, they will also learn that we caused our own species’ demise faster than any other period in the entire natural history of the planet. Will they weep? Will they know how?

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