How Man's Best Friend Nailed It

Biodiversity has always been complicated for us

I’m sure your dog is rolling its eyes at the stories we tell ourselves. Chief among them is the charming notion that our impact on the environment began with agriculture and then got turbocharged during the Industrial Revolution. Cue the Thanksgiving nostalgia when we get all misty-eyed about those wonderfully eco-friendly early days—back when we supposedly lived in simple harmony with nature, taking only what we needed. Well, pass the pooper scooper; this is going to get messy!

Reality check: we were in full Terminator mode with other species as soon as we got our act together during the Pleistocene. Armed with a few brain cells and a solid toolkit, we started reshaping ecosystems like it was our job. Fire and projectiles? Absolute game-changers. Other hominids might’ve dabbled with these, but we took them and ran—right up to today’s version of ‘Thanksgiving’—Black Friday.

Sure, animals duking it out for survival is just another day in the wild, but we humans? We took it to a whole new level. While our furry friends were content with a good meal and a nap, we introduced the game of ‘specicide’, which involved wiping out our competition and even our own food sources.

In fact, in this regard, the critics of capitalism have it wrong—our first steps to creating an Anthropocence started before we even left the Pleistocene and eons before before we combusted enough fossils to influence the climate. Its far more likely that feudalism, mercantilism, and capitalism are increasingly powerful accelerants for more archetypal urges. I know, lots to unbundle at your next psych visit!

The Good Ol’ Days?

As our population grew and other hominid species faded into the background, life was getting, well, a bit more manageable for us early humans. Food was plentiful, especially with “surf” being added to our “turf” diet! No one’s saying it was a picnic, but at least we weren’t as worried about being some saber-toothed cat’s lunch anymore. Plus, if the neighbors got a little too irritating, there was always plenty of room to pack up and move on to another postal code.

The fossil records of the Americas and Australia bear witness to our early attempts at immigration. As fully developed H. sapiens, armed with a toolkit forged through millennia of adaptation, when we arrived on new shores, we swiftly dispatched the original megafauna inhabitants with ease. We’d honed our skills in Africa chasing animals that had also evolved over millennia to avoid us, so bagging mega mammal protein in Australia and the Americas was the original game of 'shooting fish in a pond'. The poor buggers didn’t even know to run the other way.

Once we had surfed our way over to Australia around 45,000 years ago, we rapidly worked our way through the continent bumping off giant kangaroos, rhinos, and even the iconic Tasmanian tiger. When we reached the Americas some 20-30,000 years later, we sprinted down from Alaska, eliminating all the megafauna as we went—mammals, wild horses, saber-toothed tigers, giant sloths, and the dire wolf. Species that we know about from the rare ‘I was here’ fossil (which, when compressed and heated into liquid ‘gold’, we now burn for energy—they really can’t catch a break).

Sure, the warmer weather of the Holocene probably didn’t do these other species any favors, but let’s be real—the fat finger of blame points squarely at us—after all, they survived for longer in areas we reached last. In terms of adaptation, they needed time to come up with a solid defense, but we were out here pulling off the first Blitzkrieg tactics, using fire (more on this cozy relationship in future notes) to create perfect little killing fields for our missiles.

Without modern medicine, infant mortality was very high, but there's surprisingly little evidence of the diseases, pandemics, malnutrition, systemic warfare, and deep-rooted inequality that would later plague us. In fact, those early days seem almost less brutish than the chaos we’d face once agriculture—and all the baggage (literally) that came with it—entered the picture. And yet, it’s that very baggage that has come to define what we think of as "civilization." Towns, fortifications, social hierarchies, writing systems—basically, the Indiana Jones version of archaeology, where "stuff" and how we protect it is seen as the hallmark of progress. In other words, recency bias, or maybe more aptly, ‘Black Friday syndrome’. 

Going into Overdrive

In the early Holocene, we started dabbling in agriculture, but let’s be honest—hunting was still the name of the game. That is, until most of the biggest and easiest targets were wiped out. Full-time agriculture? Yeah, that feels more like an "oh sh*t!" reaction to mass extinctions than some grand desire to spend our days toiling behind a plow. To sweeten the deal, we stopped worshipping animals and trees—because, really, why praise something you’re going to hunt to extinction or chop down for firewood? Instead, we eventually adopted religions that barely gave a nod to life on Earth and which revered harvest surpluses—because, let’s be real, someone had to foot the bill for those demanding priests and elites eager to create some solid social distancing.

The exceptions, of course, were the tribal societies that maintained hunting and gethering as a primary means of substinance. Sure, the landscape was drastically transformed since the Pleistocene, but they pivoted to more sustainable practices probably because they had to. Marginalized to the fringes, where the land wasn’t exactly prime real estate for farming, and missing the megafauna paydays, some of these original regeneration enthusiasts have somehow managed to survive to this day. They’re the remaining "Leavers" from Daniel Quinn’s *Ishmael*, practicing a worldview where life isn't just about squeezing every last drop out of nature.

Our unique relationship to other species, fueled by an ever more "sophisticated" toolkit, now has its own title—the Sixth Mass Extinction, coined by Wake and Vredenburg in 2008 but popularized by Elizabeth Kolbert in her 2014 book.

“Somewhere in our DNA must lie the key mutation (or, more probably, mutations) that set us apart—the mutations that make us the sort of creature that could wipe out its nearest relative, then dig up its bones and reassemble its genome.”  Elizabeth Kolbert - The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History¹

And no, it’s not to be confused with Star Wars: Return of the Sith—because, let’s face it, they aren’t coming back—well, other than as fossil fuel! Certainly, ghosts of extinctions past would be impressed by our efficiency. While their mass extinction events dragged on for thousands or even millions of years, we’re speeding through this one like an F1 driver in Monaco. 

Now that I think about it, to really get serious about managing our extinction business, we needed an official agency to keep score. Enter the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which has thoughtfully provided us with a "Guest List" of Threatened Species to track the whole situation. And to prove it means business, the IUCN has a small army of 1,400 member organizations and 15,000 experts keeping tabs on our specicide habit. If you need cold, hard data on how we’re accelerating extinction, they’ve got you covered.

Make no mistake—this is the guest list no furry, scaly, or leafy creature wants to be on. The list is quite the who's who of endangered life, featuring 41% of amphibians, 37% of sharks and rays, 26% of mammals, 21% of reptiles... and let’s not forget the plant world. A staggering 70% of cycads and 34% of conifers are on there too. 44,000 species in all, so definitely don’t RSVP! 

Bummer: And Your Point Is?

I know some people are shrugging and asking, "So what?" Sure, we binge-watch nature shows and snap selfies with exotic wildlife on safari, but will we really miss biodiversity? Well, for those of you dreaming of an AI-assisted life in the Metaverse, just remember that biodiversity is the quiet stagehand that keeps the whole show running here on planet Earth. It’s like the ultimate unsung hero, ensuring ecosystems stay stable and resilient while we humans stumble around, desperately searching for energy sources to fuel our digital fantasies.

Think about it: without a diverse cast of characters in nature, we’d be in serious trouble. Take pollinators, for example. These tiny, unsung heroes are the reason we have a steady supply of legumes, seeds, and basically the majority of our food. And let’s not overlook the plant kingdom’s pharmacy—nature’s own medicine cabinet that we’ve relied on for centuries.

Once biodiversity drops below a certain threshold, ecosystems collapse—whether it’s on land or in the water, the food chain loses its order. No bugs? No plants. No plants? No animals. No animals? Well, you get the idea. So while our Metaverses might seem shiny and futuristic, it’s biodiversity quietly making sure the lights stay on in the real world.

From a past where humans seemed not worth worrying about for those naive giant sloths and mammoths to a present where we and our livestock now account for 96% of the mammal population on Earth. Is this surprising? Not really given our collective appetite for protein (Turkeys didn’t make this list!). According to the WWF, between 1970 and 2018, there’s been a jaw-dropping 69% reduction in the average population size of 5,200 different species. It’s like we’ve been slowly clearing the stage, leaving just a few “star performers” while everything else fades into the background. 

And as for our conservation efforts? We’ve definitely had a few wins—take certain whale species, for instance. It turns out, if you stop hunting them, they tend to bounce back. Go figure! So we have a path forward, but much of the time, we seem to act too little, too late if at all. 

Is this insatiable urge to dominate nature hardwired into our DNA? Maybe. After all, we spent eons surviving as both predator and prey, which probably left us with a primal toolkit that knows no bounds. Our evolutionary history might have given us the drive to survive, but now that we’re on top, we just keep pushing—whether we need to or not. This isn’t anti-humanist, as some might suggest, but self-reflective. It’s like our survival instinct got stuck in overdrive, and unfortunately, the rest of nature is feeling the consequences.

Maybe this is just our oldest behavioural disorder? Sorry, RFK Junior, but compared to our addiction to processed food or prescription drugs, this one’s got a head start by tens of thousands of years. If that’s the case, why haven’t we found a fix? Where’s the empathy gene-splicing or, at the very least, a pharma response? I mean, imagine if we actually cared about the well-being of other species; maybe we’d finally start turning the tide on this extinction spree.

And I thought how sad it was that, for all our sophisticated intellect, for all our noble aspirations, our aggressive behavior was not just similar in many ways to that of the chimpanzees – it was even worse. Worse because human beings have the potential to rise above their baser instincts, whereas chimpanzees probably do not. Jane Goodall

It’s not like we lack the technology. We just need to figure out how to shift our priorities from "how much more can we take?" to "how much more can we protect?" In other words, relearn what we knew thousands of years ago, but with all the science and resources at our disposal today. Skip the Metaverse—bring on the Terraverse! Now that would be a societal agenda to get the market behind.

So Throw the Dog a Bone!

All that said, its hard not to notice that my dog Coco seems to have the right playbook while we get ours sorted. Dogs had us figured out for perhaps 30,000 years, according to the genetic and archaeological evidence, expertly dodging the extinction menu while staying right by our side. Honestly, Coco is the ultimate survivalist—she’s not just avoiding becoming dinner; she's snagging a seat at the table and even getting her paws on what’s on our plate! Unlike those other turkeys, dogs cracked the code early on: forget fighting humans, just become their best friend, and boom—thousands of years of belly rubs and free meals!

1. It seems we may not have wiped out our closest relative, but the drama probably helps with book sales