Manatee are stupid

When you're an insomniac, you see a lot of strange things on late night tv. Last night I woke to John Lithgow telling me I should save the manatees. His ardent plea included the accusation that we horrible humans are responsible for the fate of these poor, helpless, gentle creatures through the use of our nefarious motorboats. (I found it ironic that his spot was followed by a commercial for Feed the Children. Their sponsor had much the same impassioned look on his face.)

I hate to break this to you, Mr. Lithgow, but manatee are stupid. Motorboats have been around for quite a while now, and everything else in the coastal marshes has figured out a way to get away from them. Now I'm not advocating that anyone purposely run down a manatee, but I always find it ironic that the people who are such advocates of evolution are the same ones who cling desperately to endangered species. "Survival of the fittest" is objective ... it doesn't have a special clause for animals that are really cute or really gentle.

What these manatee huggers seem to ignore is that HUMANS are a species too. They blame all the tragedies of the animal kingdom on us; yet we are members of the environment. And that includes all the trappings of our technology. These advancements are just as much a part of the natural evolution process as when those fish sprouted legs and climbed out of the water. (For the record, I'm pretty comfortable with both evolution and creationism ... 7 days in God's eyes can be millions of years to us humans.)

Back before the industrial revolution, there was a light colored moth that blended into the bark of local trees for concealment. As the tree trunks gradually become darker from factory emissions, so did the wings of the moth. Now that's what I call adaptation! The manatee might want to take some notes here.

But in the whole scope of things, some species are meant to die out. Its built into the natural plan. I don't know about you, but the loss of the dodo bird hasn't had a terribly big impact on my life. And do you really want to be dodging a T-Rex on your morning commute? What really motivates the environmentalists, though, is the fear that if other species can die out, so can humans. Which is true ... we're not immune. There may come a time when our span on this earth is over, and another species will dominate. No matter how hard you try to circumvent the inevitable, if our time comes, we're going to be extinct. This is where believing in God comes in really handy ... this life isn't the end for me. I can see where the atheists might be a little nervous though.

So, Mr. Lithgow, you might want to save your lectures to the humans and have a little talk with the manatee instead. I hear you've written a few books ... might I suggest your next one be "Evolution for Dummies"?