Unconventional Sources

You know that a social movement has arrived when it makes an appearance on Facebook.

Every February 12 is celebrated as Darwin Day, but this year’s Darwin Day is special. This year is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin (he was born on the same day as Abraham Lincoln), and the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s publication of On the Origin of Species, the work that introduced the concept of evolution by natural selection to the world.

Don’t forget that Alfred Russel Wallace was a co-discoverer of evolution, though. He rarely gets his fair share of the credit. Consider Darwin Day, though named after Darwin, as a chance to recognize Wallace’s work as well.

Excitement about this year’s Darwin Day celebrations is growing fast – so fast that over 34,000 people have now joined the Happy Birthday Darwin group on Facebook. The goal is to get 200,000 people on board the group by February 12, and it looks like they may make it.

Forget all those ridiculous advertisements for sodas pops that claim to have edge. Nobody has got the edge on EDGE, a new biodiversity information resources put online by the Zoological Society of London. EDGE stands for Evolutionarily Distinct Globally Endangered, and exists at EdgeOfExistence.Org

None of the human posers you see pouting their way across your TV screen like Zoolander have anything close to the edge of the animals profiled on the EDGE website. EDGE animals are far out, both in terms of their evolutionary adaptations and in terms of being far out on a limb. They’re all in danger of extinction.

Consider the Aye Aye, the skanky lemur that issues a blood-curdling scream in the night, and uses one extremely long, kinky finger to probe for its meals. Or, how about the long-beaked echidna, a mammal that lays eggs? Would a giant salamander as long as a human being interest you?

Check it out, and then get involved, because these animals are too close to the edge for their own good. With climate change on a rampage their little niches may soon be gone forever.