– “Half of life on Earth has vanished since we arrived on the scene“, New Scientist, 21 May 2018
To: Planet_ALLUSERS
From: Admin@Earth
Re: Welcome Humans!
Team,
Thank you all for making such an effort at the humans’ two-hundred-thousand-year-long housewarming party. I think we can all agree the planet is now definitely warmer! It’s always tough being the new species on the block and I’m glad to see we gave them the traditional Earth welcome of malaria, sepsis and bodies inefficiently evolved for life on land.
The humans will I am sure bring many unique gifts to our little planet, and even if not their command of language and opposable thumbs mean I intend to stay on their good side and memorise the location of fire escapes.
On which note, in all the excitement the humans appear to have misplaced half of all known life on Earth. Easy mistake, could happen to anybody. I told them the sabre-toothed cats probably ate it but they say they’ve killed all the sabre-toothed cats and still haven’t found anything, which certainly speaks highly for their diligence.
They’ve asked me to pass on this lost property notice to see if it rings any bells. No worries if not, they said, it’ll probably turn up next time they decide to do a deep clean.
Best,
—
Lost: 550 billion tonnes of biomass.
Last seen: gambolling, strolling, swimming, slithering, climbing, growing, photosynthesising and clinging loosely to stone walls, looking either tasty or decorative or a nuisance or possibly all three.
Distinguishing marks: bullet holes, oil-soaked feathers, plastic necklaces, missing tusks or feathers or horns or feet. Anything that qualifes as a superfood or can really add a zing to scrambled eggs.
Possible whereabouts: vaporised into the atmosphere, trapped inside that giant island of rubbish in the Pacific, rotting on the forest floor or else sprinkled onto scrambled eggs. Who knows! That biomass gets everywhere.
Reason for disappearance: search us! We did everything we could to make Earth as comfortable as possible for ourselves, so all that remaining biomass must have been very happy too. Perhaps someone mentioned there were other planets nearby and the biomass built a rocket to go exploring? You know how clever biomass can be – Elon Musk is biomass, for goodness’ sake, and he can do anything.
Reward for discovery: oh, we’re actually all right with it being missing. I mean, where would we put all that biomass if it came back? It’s not like the planet could sustain so many different lifeforms all at once, now is it. Come on, really now, be sensible.