Why is there a jihad for every wretched ethnic gang in the world, but no jihad for the mammals? Some of these species are grief incarnate: the Musk Ox, saddest of all. The African Elephant--your grandchildren simply won't believe it was possible to wander onto the savanna and actually see one. But at least those species have had their moment of nature-documentary fame. Sadder still are the species which are going to vanish unnoticed. Topping that list is the Fossa, which may be the most beautiful predator on the planet (though the tiger and orca also deserve nominations). The fossa, which you will find described on page 271 of Mammals, looks like a vampire cat with phosphorescent Weimaraner fur, huge eyes and big paws full of very efficient, comic-book claws. It needs them for its vocation: hunting lemurs (lemurs! You should read the section on lemurs, especially the Aye-Aye!) in the trees of Madagascar. And of course the Fossa is vanishing, along with the lemurs and the trees. And for what? So that villagers can indulge their habit of producing ten children who will take the habit of slash-and-burn cultivation further and further into the last forests of Madagascar? There's a rule, I gather, that any human life is worth more than a fossa's life, so that I have to accept that these villagers, extras from a Naipaul novel, are each and every one more valuable than the last breeding pair of Fossas. I can't see it, myself. There are people walking this earth whose life is not worth that of a garden snail, who will only look good in their coffins. And there are other people one would give one's own life to save. But the notion that any human life is worth more than any animal life simply because it's human is nothing but Christian cant with the Christianity turned to low volume, a pop version of Berdyayev's mocking enthymeme: "Man is descended from the apes, therefore we must love one another." And this nonsense needs to be opposed, because sooner or later the jihad for the mammals is going to be nose-to-nose with the jihads of the villagers, and you'll have to choose. I choose the mammals; I say the life of the last breeding pair of Bengal tigers is worth more (MUCH more) than the lives of the entire human population of, say, Houston. Or Dhaka, for that matter. <A href="http://www.exile.ru/188/book_review.html">http://www.exile.ru/188/book_review.html</A> <hr size=1>Do you Yahoo!? <a href="http://pa.yahoo.com/*http://us.rd.yahoo.com/hotjobs/hotjobs_mail_signature_footer_textlink/evt=23983/*http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/careermakeover">Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs </a>