Animal of the Week -- September 25, 2009

So, apparently, according to naturalist and film maker, Chris Packham, the money we spend conserving this week's animal of the week is wasted and that the species be consigned to the rubbish bin of extinction. And when you think about it, a bear that eats bamboo, mushing up tough grass with it's slicing teeth and trying to digest cellulose with a stomach designed to handle flesh, fruit, and insects Ailuropoda melanoleuca (giant panda) might be said to not do themselves any favours.

But rather than put them down, Packham, perhaps we should celebrate their bold decision. Rather than go the easy route, eating all the usual old stuff that other bears eat, these chaps have struck out on their own. They're bear mavericks. And anyway, you can't conserve species forever, so yeah, they will die out eventually, inevitably, so will rats, so will mosquitoes, so will humans, but isn't it the innovators that might evolve rather than simply fizzle out? The last common ancestor of whales, dolphins, and hippos was probably a vegetarian, now look at dolphins whizzing 'round the oceans eating fish -- they'd have never got there if they'd just stuck to the veg. And then the ancestor of the blue whale, the largest animal ever, made the bold move to start eating krill -- the only thing so abundant and tasty as to allow it's mammoth size.

So perhaps the panda should be protected; maybe, from this monochrome ursid miracle of existence a whole new future family of herbivores will arise. Maybe not, but who is to know? Packham suggested that we need to preserve the habitats rather than the creatures. But what are the habitats without the creatures? What are the creatures without the habitats? We need to preserve the opportunities for evolution. And anyway, pandas may be a bit ridiculous, but at least they didn't spend the eighties and early nineties dressing a hybrid of Billy Idol and Limahl.