As the saying goes: The people take food as heaven. Humans should be the most edible creatures in the whole world, whether they are flying in the sky, running on the ground or swimming in the water, we humans can carry them to the table.
As the total number of human populations proliferates, so does our need for food, with large-scale farms spreading around the world.
For us ordinary people, eating other creatures is a normal thing, after all, this is our right as a creature at the top of the food chain.
But in the process of "eating", we humans actually extinct many organisms, the most tragic one is from 5 billion to be eaten alive to extinction, and their time from discovery to extinction is not even 100 years. Today I will take you to take stock of the creatures that have been eaten by humans to extinction.
Stella sea cow
Stella's great cattle are a large creature that once existed in the ocean, they can reach about 8 meters in size, and they can easily break through 4 tons. Even in today's ecological environment, this creature can be called the second largest mammal in the ocean, and only whales can match their size.
The Stella sea cow does not look like a cow, but looks more like a pig that can swim. They are covered in thick fat all over their bodies, and they look round and very cute.
Despite their enormous size, the Stella sea cattle are herbivores that live mainly in icy waters at high latitudes, with seaweed and kelp as their main food sources, and are quite docile.
With the advent of the age of human discovery, a fleet of ships that had accidentally crashed in the Bering Strait fell to the island. In order to solve their own food shortage, these people began to hunt and kill the Stella sea cattle living in the area.
People who have eaten sea beef have praised it as the best food they have ever eaten, and after that, more and more people have come to hunt and kill the sea cow, and from the first discovery of the Stella sea cow in 1741, only 27 years later, the creature was extinct.
dodo
The dodo is a bird that was once widely distributed in Mauritius, and their strange appearance, their large bodies make them not look like agile birds, only the hard beak and claws indicate their identity.
Dodo is a large bird, weighing about 20 to 30 kilograms. Although they are birds, they do not fly, and the wings of the dodo have long been degraded, like chickens, looking for berries and insects in the rainforest to feed them.
Since they do not have any natural enemies in nature, the desire to breed is not high, and the average litter can only produce one egg. The pampered life also makes this creature lose its vigilance against other species, not only clumsy and slow movements, but also very docile personality.
The dodo was once widely distributed in Mauritius and is also the national bird of Mauritius, but Europeans immediately hunted the dodo in the area after coming to the uncivilized land of Mauritius.
This creature looks silly and shows full trust in humans, but its cute habits have not been exchanged for human pity. The dodo bird also followed the same path as the Stella sea cow 100 years after it was discovered – it was eaten alive by humans to extinction.
A passenger pigeon that was tragically extinct
Passenger pigeons look like doves, they are extremely colorful, their bellies are mostly bright red, and their wings are made of blue feathers.
This creature was once mainly distributed in North America, also known as the North American passenger pigeon. Like the pigeons of the current era, passenger pigeons will also carry out collective migration when the climate changes, and every summer and autumn, the passenger pigeons will collectively move to form a "cloud" in the sky.
According to scholars, the number of passenger pigeons once in North America should easily reach 5 billion. More than the number of humans on the entire planet combined. This creature has flourished on the North American continent for tens of millions of years, and there are references to passenger pigeons in the history and culture of the Indians.
However, as soon as the Europeans entered the American continent, they brutally plundered this rich land, not only slaughtering the local indigenous population, but also attacking the rich ecological environment.
The Europeans soon discovered this extremely large number of creatures, and they began to set up hunting nets on the road that passenger pigeons had to pass, and to catch large areas while passenger pigeons flew.
Passenger pigeons are a typical social creature, once a companion falls into human hands, the rest of the passenger pigeons will hover over the air, and humans have also taken advantage of this feature, using a single passenger pigeon as bait to deal a devastating blow to the entire passenger pigeon population.
In addition to eating themselves, humans also mash the passenger pigeons that cannot be eaten into pig feed. Under such inhumane behavior, the number of passenger pigeons plummeted, and eventually it was tragically extinct.
The last recorded passenger pigeon died in 1941, and from its discovery to its complete extinction, the passenger pigeon took less than 100 years. That is to say, humans hunt an average of about 140,000 passenger pigeons every day. This level of hunting is naturally unbearable for a species...
epilogue
Although human beings are the top creatures in nature, they have the right to hunt other species. But as intelligent beings, we are well aware of the importance of ecological balance to the environment.
If, as willfully as before, a species is extinct by virtue of its own selfish desires, nature will surely inflict revenge and punishment on us humans.
"To see his life, not to bear to see his death, to hear his voice, not to bear to eat his flesh, is to be a gentleman far away from the kitchen." As human beings, we should maintain our most basic respect for life. That's what a truly mature civilization should do.