Their flesh provides necessary nutrition for humans, their body fat was burned as fuel in the cold and their fur is also widely found in clothes or blankets to keep humans warm. There were plenty of them, but just because they are in such abundance, killing them did not alarm humans. This is the part where I feel the greatest impression of the sixth extinction: these birds were literally killed to extinction by humans. The first story featured the Original penguin, the great auk. Three out of the thirteen stories had taken over my mind after reading the book. Changes started to happen even since our ancestors appeared on earth, but were accelerated in contemporary times. Because humans have been there since the beginning, we now can pinpoint the cause of the sixth extinction: us. With the reason for the first five extinctions still lingering, the earth has already entered the sixth one. With countless evidence suggesting both ways, seems like humans are not yet able to portray those five previous tragic extinction events.

Uniformitarianism later lay the foundation of Darwin’s Evolutionary theory: extinction is due to its own incompatibility to the environment (natural selection). One believes that the changes on earth happen in a gradual manner as the results of numerous other previous changes the other, as the name suggests, that extinctions are due to some major catastrophes. Two contradicting theories about extinction are uniformitarianism and Catastrophism. In our current time, extinction doesn’t seem like a fancy term, even kids can talk about how the dinosaurs and their extinction, but up until the 18th century, people have not considered the fact that “what existed may have vanished into thin air”. Some part of the book was somewhat history heavy, talking about the discoveries scientists made leading up to the concept of “extinction”.

When I decided to read this book, I had in mind a book with graphs and percentages to give out stunning information about how human activities have killed off many animals on earth and I was ready to feel guilty but this book,with factual details woven into deftly written language, gives me a feeling that is quite indescribable: it’s like standing on a remote island in isolation to realize that whatever I had is probably gone or in the process of disappearing. Available in: Hardcopy (Maybe consider used book?), ebook, audiobook.

The sixth extinction book review