Can human beings wipe out a species for good?
… … … [ That's wordplay.]
Hey terminators, Julian here for DNews.
When we talk about extinction, most of the time, it’s a bad thing.
Nobody celebrated when poaching drove the west african black rhino out of existence,
because they had done nothing to incur the wrath of humanity besides having a horn on
their face.
So have human beings ever caused an extinction that would make the most kind-hearted conservationist
bust out the confetti and sing “na na na na hey hey hey goodbye?”
Has there ever been a good, intentional extinction?
So far it has happened exactly one time.
In 1979 smallpox was officially declared eradicated.
The disease was caused by the variola virus and existed for over 3,000 years.
It caused raised, red bumps that would fill with fluid that would turn into pus and 30%
of the people infected died.
In the 20th century it killed some 300 million people worldwide.
Clearly it was a bad mama-jama, but thanks to an aggressive global vaccination campaign,
it’s been wiped as far as we know out save for a few samples that exist in laboratories.
So if people ever ask what good vaccines do; that.
Nobody got all weepy eyed when variola took a hike because it wasn’t a valuable part
of its ecosystem like other species we unintentionally wipe out.
Smallpox only affected humans, so once it’s gone everybody wins.
Well, except the virus.
After smallpox we’ve come close to eliminating a few other ailments, but we haven’t gotten
to 100% completion yet.
The next closest species we’ve almost wiped out (intentionally) is the guinea worm.
The guinea worm is a parasite that’s terrible in almost every way.
It enters its human host when they drink contaminated water.
It drills out of their intestines and sets up shop in the abdominal muscles where it
grows for a few months until it reaches sexual maturity.
Then the males and females mate, yes, while still inside of a person, and the smaller
male dies while the female, which can grow over a meter long, works its way down to the
person’s leg.
After being inside of its human host for over a year, the female emerges from the leg or
foot and releases an irritant that causes the wound to burn.
It burns on and off for months, keeping the infected person from being able to work.
The only way to sooth it is with water, so when the host sticks their leg in a stagnant
pool, the mother worm vomits out her millions of embryos and the whole process starts over
again.
Now you may be thinking that if these embryos are in the water, then something must eat
them, and you’d be right.
They’re often eaten by water fleas.
But they aren’t a valuable link in the food chain, because they give the fleas the same
treatment we get; the guinea worm burrows out of their digestive tract and munches on
their insides while it waits for a human to swallow the flea.
So everything about this worm is horrible, and there’s no vaccine or drug that kills
it.
The only way to get rid of it is to cut it out or wait til it pokes its head out and
then reel that sucker around a stick, drawing it free a couple of centimeters at a time
over the course of weeks.
Efforts to educate people about how it spreads and provide them with water filters have been
spectacularly successful.
There were over 3 million cases in 1980, in 2015 there were 22, and so far in 2016 there
have been just 12 cases.
The fight’s not over yet, as now the worms seem to have jumped to dogs to survive, but
if the campaign to end guinea worms in dogs is as successful as it has been in humans,
maybe in a couple of years humanity will have wiped 2 species out.
That we meant to anyway.
Can you imagine how long ago the guinea worm would have gone extinct if it had a valuable
horn?
Humans might be causing a mass extinction but it’s not the first!
If you want a recap of the 5 previous times the earth’s slate was almost wiped clean,
Trace has a video on
it here.
After the Guinea worm, what’s the next disease we should focus on to eliminate it forever?
Malaria?
I don't know...
Tell us in the comments, subscribe for more and see you guys next time on DNews.