How far are We from Mass Extinction
Something was killing the frogs of Central America, and pretty fast. One of the first people to notice was Karen Lips, an American studying amphibians in a rainforest there. In 1993, she was shocked to discover that dozens of frogs had vanished from her research site in Costa Rica. When she moved to Panama to continue her research, she found that the frogs there were dying too. And no one could explain why.
By 2006, whatever was killing the frogs had swept across central Panama. Within a few years, dozens of amphibians had disappeared from the wild, including the Panamanian golden frog, famous for being so toxic that the poison on the skin of just one animal can kill 1,000 mice.
The recent demise of the frog and the other amphibians in Central America is just part of a large phenomenon that’s being called the Sixth Extinction.
Today, extinction rates among nearly all the groups of plants and animals are soaring. A century from now, pandas, tigers, and rhinos may exist only in zoos. Scientists say that within this century, 20 to 50 percent of all plant and animal species might disappear.
Under normal circumstances, species rarely become extinct. Scientists estimate that one amphibian species disappears every 1000 years. But sometimes, the world changes very suddenly. In these rare moments, species disappear much more quickly. These events are known as mass extinctions and scientists say that we may be headed toward one.
ATTENTION! THIS ARTICLE IS ONLY TO INFORM THE CONSEQUENCES IF HUMANKIND DOES NOT CHANGE THEIR EVIL WAYS! THIS ARTICLE IS NOT WRITTEN TO SCARE THE DAYLIGHTS OUT OF YOU!
