starry starry night

It would be official also very soon. The Baiji Dolphin of the Yangtze River in China are extinct..or almost extinct...no one has seen one for years. And a two month long search for them recently resulted in nothing.

Known as the Goddess of Yangtze, this nearly blind dolphin was unique in so many ways - lived in fresh water, had heightened sonar capabilities to navigate the murky water (much like bats) and a long pointy nose.Alas, we may never see one again :(

Its sad to see how much the measly humans have destroyed over the years. The newspaper report said that they realised way back in 2004 that the dolphins are gone, and yet... a search was launched only in 2007. None of the scientists who were a part of the team were hopeful that they would see one. They are most probably right. Even as more and more countries would reach the one trillion dollar mark (for the uninitiated,India just reached it) ; I think we should take the time to just reflect that maybe the only thing we created and worry about on earth now is money...the life as the planet had or deserved, is lost.

".....various species that have gone extinct at the hands of humans: the dodo bird, Steller's sea cow, the passenger pigeon, and scores of others, many of which were never known to science at all. Even stuffed organisms, some representing the only specimen of an extinct species, have been known to disappear at the hands of humans. The last Carolina parakeet, stuffed after its death in 1918 at the Cincinnati Zoo, was lost some years later; the last surviving thylacine, the only large carnivorous marsupial to live into modern times, was thrown out with the weekly trash.

... humans are not necessarily the best choice for guardians and record-keepers of the planet. "But here's an extremely salient point: we have been chosen, by fate or Providence or whatever you wish to call it. As far as we can tell, we are the best there is. We may be all there is. It's an unnerving thought that we may be the living universe's supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously."

And no amount of trillion dollars can ever bring back the Goddess of the Yangtze.