We Need To Create More New Species Of Animalsâ€"Better, More Oil-Resistant Animals

Good news about the existence of the hybrid grizzly bear/polar bears known as “grolar bears” or “pizzlies.” (Grolar bears is definitely the better name, by the way, at least until the things shrink down to the size of hummingbirds and grow wings and learn to use magic wands.) With our environmentally destructive ways, we human beings are killing off the animals that predated us so fast-even though we repeatedly promise ourselves that we’ll stop-it’d be good if some new species started cropping up.

“The forces destroying biodiversity are huge,” says Daniel Pauly of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, a leading fisheries scientist and co-author of the report. “Human economic expansion, shoving everything out of its way. The forces working against that are tiny. This won’t change until a force emerges that is similar in strength to the forces spreading destruction.”

Things like grolar bears and ligers and leopons are awesome. But even they probably don’t possess the kind of strength Pauly is talking about. Also, like most other hybrid animals, they are often sterile and so probably won’t survive in whatever small pockets of wilderness might be left ten or fifteen years from now. We need stronger new animals, ones better-adapted to flourish on the post-apocalyptic oil blob we’re remodeling our planet into. We should be combining the few species that seem to be thriving in our increasingly contaminated world with the ones most endangered with extinction. Someone should breed, like, a cockroach/Sumatran rhino. Or an Asian carp/Snow leopard. Or a Humbolt squid/leather-back turtle. Or bed bugs! They’re doing great! What endangered animal can we combine bed bugs with?

Or maybe combining animals with other animals isn’t even good enough. Maybe we’re at the point where we need to start making bionic animals-organic/robot hybrids. In this light, sculptor Mike Libby is on to something with his Insect Lab series: “Borrowing from science fiction and fact, Insect Lab customizes real insect specimens with antique watch parts and other technological components. From ladybugs to grasshoppers, each is individually hand adorned, and original- a unique celebration of the contradictions and confluences between nature and technology.” These things look beautiful, and also pretty hardy. The better to weather the gray, oxygen depleted, vegetationless future we have in store.