Last Chance to See-Douglas Adams & Mark Carwardine

Travel/Nature

 

Last Chance to See

Douglas Adams/Mark Carwardine

 

Every species of living organism is a uniquely crafted specimen of nature. Be it a bacteria thriving on human waste, wood pecker with beak that drills holes in hard bark of trees in search of insects lurking beneath, Sphinx Moths with ten-inch long proboscis to suck nectar from flowers with nectary situated in its depths or an Influenza virus that rapidly changes its genome  to evade host defence mechanisms. Each is a work of art created over millions of years to deftly exploit the niche of nature it inhabits. The most wonderful aspect of this process of creation of millions of species on earth is the blind creator of these marvels. The creator is a simple law of nature, Evolution by Natural Selection, breathtakingly bewitching in its stark simplicity and mind-jarring in its unfathomably huge powers. It works relentlessly, untiringly, blindly, without forethought, and without an objective. Species go extinct when environment changes, either gradually or cataclysmically, and newer species better adapted for the new environment replace them. Since birth of a species is the culmination of blind forces of nature without any planning whatsoever, a species once extinct can never be resurrected. Millions of species have died and millions have taken their place, since life began on earth about four billion years ago. But arrival of a new species on earth, the thinking, planning, scheming, bipedal ape, added a sinister twist to this natural tale of birth and death. This new species of big ape was capable of forethought due to its greatly ballooned brain and it could alter the environment rapidly for its own gain. Many creatures of earth had no apparatus to adapt to the dangers posed by this rapidly changing environment. They depended on Natural Selection to change them, a process that is uninspiringly slow. These species then went extinct at an alarming rate. This thinking ape, capable of forethought, willingly or ignorantly abandoned this most unique of its features, as it went about killing many species of animals, thoughtlessly, just for fun.

 

This book, by Adams and Carwardine, is a forceful and poignant reminder of the speed at which species ae dying out on earth due to the rapid change in environment bought about by human beings. Douglas Adams, a hugely popular science-fiction writer and Mark Carwardine, a zoologist, teamed up, as they travelled to places on various continents to avail the Last Chance to See the vanishing species. They travelled to Madagascar to view Nocturnal Lemur, the Aye-Aye; to Combodia for the Komodo Dragon; to Zaire for Mountain Gorillas; to New Zealand for the flightless parrot Kakapo, and to many more such stunning places in search of exquisite animals.

 

I have not read many popular Authors. These are writers of such solid fame and universal liking, that to admit ignorance of their books in literate public, is subjecting yourself to scathing mockery. Douglas Adam is one such author and this is his first book that I read. I had my reason to eschew him all these years. I do not like science fiction. But as I finished this one, I regretted having avoided his books for so long. He is a fabulous writer. His humour is unparalleled, not unlike Bill Bryson. Bryson and Adams have a similar vein of wit, a mind-ripping, tummy-jarring humour, in most innocuous of saturations that is laced with stark irreverence. This being a travel book too, brings it closer to Bryson’s forte. Adams has a unique capability to present scientific facts in singularly witty phrases, without disturbing the scientific explanations. Book is replete with such terrific snippets of evolutionary science. Adams’ prose is highly readable, and has an elegance that also sates the hunger for refined writing. Even the most commonplace circumstances of their travel stand out because of Adams’ humorous writing. There is not a dragging paragraph in the whole book and when the last page pops-up unannounced, one irresistibly craves for more.

 

I now intend to read Adams’ Histchhiker’s Guide to Galaxy soon