Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and recently I have an especially problematic development in my family – but no one wants to hear about it, right? Therefore, since there is no counterarguments, let us get back to the BB ‘Endlings’ series. This week’s topic – the Guinea worm.
In fact, this is a parasitic roundworm, a nematode,
who has several hosts, including humans as well as copepods – crustacean
cousins. For the copepods, the Guinea worms (they actually have a scientific
name, but let’s just stick with this one, as it is quite distinctive) mean one
thing, but for humans they result in a lot of pain, as the females of this
species, (and those roundworms have both males and females), burst through skin
on human legs and lay their eggs in the water, where the larvae encounter the
copepods and etc. Those parasites are unpleasant and painful, and on their
episode, BB talked about how humans plan to exterminate them all, to drive them
into extinction. Pause.
Let’s be honest – the narrator of team BB is himself
uncomfortable when talking about this topic: these days, driving any other live
organism into deliberate extinction smells of hubris, and that feels even more
wrong – gods, even polytheistic ones, tended to punish hubris quite severely…
On a more practical and less esoteric note, I feel
doubtful that humans – us – will be able to drive the Guinea worm with
extinction without a hitch. Why? Because of the same arrogance, but
differently…
Earlier in 2025, for example, the U.S. talked about
exterminating several thousand barred owls in order to save the spotted owls.
This proclamation was met quite sceptically and unenthusiastically: a slaughter
of several thousand owls is not a pleasing perspective to anyone sane and
coherent, you know?
On the other hand, there is the practical aspect –
and how are people to execute this… execution? Both of those owl species are
not as showy as the great horned owl or the snowy owl are, for example – they
are shy, retiring birds that hunt during the day in tree hollows, in the tree
tops, and so on – they aren’t found so easily, (plus they got impressive
camouflage and all). Finding them is not easy or simple or fast, so fulfilling
the kill quota is something else, so it is not too surprising to learn that the
talk of killing the barred owls has dissipated… Back to the roundworms?
On the Guinea Worm episode the narrator mentioned
some other diseases that were eradicated – supposedly, only not entirely, and
they can come back. He swears that this is not the case with the Guinea worms,
if they are gone, they are gone. Perhaps they will be, but humans are actually
bad at driving animals to extinction directly, as a rule it is done indirectly
instead, so in this case, if we are driving the Guinea worm to extinction
intentionally and directly, then there is a chance that it, this attempt, will
fail and we will have something worse on our hands. When humans mess with
nature, it is bad. When we do not and act as if we are a part of it, it is not
an improvement either. This is the unintentional message of ‘Endlings’.
More precisely, humans should decide if the Guinea
worm nematode is as natural as we are and thus we should endure it as our
ancestors did in ancient Egypt and medieval Europe, or not – humans are almost
supernatural in their power of managing and shaping Earth and nature, and the
Guinea worm nematode can go bye-bye and good riddance. No one will miss it. It
is a question of human ethics, and that is a discussion for another time.
…Of course human competence is also a part of this
question, (re: the owls). If we cannot execute the… extinction due to ‘mechanical’
reasons, then all of the ethics suddenly become more or less redundant instead…
Isn’t real life fun?
Well, no, not to me anyhow. However, thank you for your
visit to my blog. See you all soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment