BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Rare river dolphin now extinct
Man’s capacity to destroy the rarest creations that nature produced over the course of all of time remains undiminished. As unusual and unique as a freshwater dolphin was, it was not important enough to be preserved. It lost. It succumbed not to man’s cruelty in this case, but mankind’s voracious appetite for its food. As locusts periodically decimate crops in Africa and bring famine in their wake by decimating the food supply, people so thoroughly decimated this dolphin’s food supply that it vanished. Even swarms of locusts so large that they can be seen from satellite and so tenacious that they can devour everything from North Africa to West Asia cannot make mankind extinct, but mankind’s persistence through time is enough to vanquish any species. Balance is an afterthought for man, and the dolphin was cursed because it was not as adorable as the panda bear.