Biodiversity Of Animals

The diversity of observable animal life is extreme, far greater than the diversity of their habitats.  God (the uncaused cause that exists by logical necessity) and nature, alone or in tandem, can create creatures that might seem incredibly bizarre if it was not for an individual's years of familiarity with them.  Nothing about which animals actually exists can be known beyond direct but fallible sensory perceptions or mere hearsay, though the laws of logic are relied on to even know what one's perceptions or what scientific reports assert.  It is not as if hearing of or even seeing an animals proves it is there.  All the same, the sensory evidence for a much greater spectrum of organisms than many people are familiar with is extensive, and the seeming philosophical/theological truth of human exceptionalism does not erase how subjectively fascinating or objectively diverse animal life could be.

Just one environment can contain an extreme variety of animals.  Oceans, for example, feature parrotfish, which are specially equipped to consume underwater rocks to eat the algae growing on them.  There are octopuses, which can camouflage not just their exterior color, but the very texture of their bodies to match environments.  Other very unique saltwater animals include sea horses, the male of which carries fertilized eggs and gives birth rather than the female, and the female anglerfish in the darkness of the bathypelagic zone, with its bacteria-induced bioluminescence, as opposed to the bioluminescence of fireflies that do not rely on additional microorganisms.  Then there are even creatures of the ocean that lack nervous systems entirely (sea sponges) or that have very inhuman nervous systems (like jellyfish).  These are just examples of diversity in oceanic life, however.

In inland freshwater, one might find electric eels that can paralyze or frighten other organisms with bioelectric shocks, or bull sharks that can dwell in either saltwater or freshwater, unlike many sharks of the world's oceans.  Rivers of Africa are home to the hippopotamus, the so-called "river horse" that coexists with crocodiles, the massive seemingly lizard-like beasts that, as reptiles, have some traits in common with amphibians such as frogs as fellow cold-blooded animals.  Since they can be observed on or from land, such creatures much more likely to be encountered by humans than those in any of the oceans.  Experientially familiar to a multitude of people, though, are the often rather small insects that can invade even modern homes.

The world of insects spans butterflies with their sharp stages of metamorphosis bringing them from caterpillar to a chrysalis-bound pupa to a winged adult, bees and ants with their extreme social coordination, and wasps with their spiked genitalia.  Even smaller than an ant, unobservable by humans except with technological aid, microscopic tardigrades can withstand extreme conditions that would drive plenty of macroscopic creatures to extinction, such as the vacuum of outer space, volcanic environments, or the bottom of the oceans.  And what of bacterial life that cannot be seen but is guarded against by the use of flowing water and soap?  Though they are macroscopically invisible, they can reduce much larger beings like humans to agonizing or lethal sickness.

Cities of increasing number and size isolate so many people from the organisms that could otherwise be their more direct neighbors no matter the environment.  For some, this isolation might lead them to ignore animals until in the presence of an annoying or dangerous creature, but diminished interaction with the untouched natural world does not mean that these beasts, large and small, do not dwell on the same planet or that there is no moral obligation to acknowledge them, and even to promote their flourishing wherever it does not conflict with human flourishing.  No matter how much more metaphysically grand humans might be than their fellow organisms, and whether or not the uncaused cause directly appointed humans to a status of higher moral significance, humans are animals like other creatures, and both human and non-human life can suffer when these truths are neglected.