As a child I had always showed curiosity in animals of many kinds — dogs, lizards, buffalos, snakes, monkeys, fish, toads — the list was endless. It was a joy to be surrounded by them, keep some of them and dream about wild animals in the jungles far away.
As I grew up I had the opportunity to realise my childhood dreams. Visits to the Melghat tiger reserve in Maharastra, Periyar in Kerala, and Bharatpur in Rajasthan have made an ever lasting impression on my mind and left me in awe about the diversity of species.
The variety of species in these forests — tigers, wolves, elephants, serpent eagles, painted storks, caterpillars, luminous beetles, bag worms that walk, leaves that close upon touch and pitchers that trap in sects — was amazing.
I had later learnt that elsewhere in the world, in the tropical forests of South America the diversity of species was much more amazing. The forests here boast not only many major categories of species, but also many sub species that differ only minutely such that, in one region you will find 40 different species of parrot, 300 different humming birds, and tens and thousands of butterflies. The diversity is so striking that near Rio De Janeiro Darwin, an English naturalist, discovered 68 different species of beetles in one day!
Species and diversity -As astonishing as the diversity of species in South America is, the total number of species living in the world today is staggering. These species are broadly categorized into mammals, reptiles, fish, crustaceans, amphibians, birds, insects and plants. There are nearly 4,600 species of mammals, 6400 amphibians, 8,250 reptiles, 9,700 birds, 26,000 crustaceans, 20,000 fish, 310,000 plants and an estimated four to six million insects living today.
However large the number of the animal species may be, many are under the threat of extinction owing to poaching of wildlife, overfishing of the oceans, destruction of wildlife habitat and climate change. All of which have been brought about by the greedy and unsustainable activities of the most successful species on Earth, the man.
The number of species under threat is alarming. One-fifth of the mammalian species, one-tenth of birds, one fifth of reptiles, one fourth of amphibians, one- third of fish and, a whopping, one half of plants are under the threat of extinction, unless immediate action is taken to save them.
The author is a conservationist, birdwatcher and an active and dedicated supporter of several wildlife conservation organisations. He is the President of SPECIES, a US based NGO that works for the conservation of biodiversity.
In contrast The world’s largest mammal is the blue whale, which can grow over 33m long, and the smallest, the Kitti’s hog-nosed bat. This tiny bat from Thailand is about the size of a bumblebee and weighs just two grams.
Looking at amphibian diversity from a country perspective, Brazil, with at least 751 species, has the highest number of amphibians of any country on the Earth. The largest living bird is without doubt the Ostrich. This magnificent bird stands a 2.7m high and weighs as much as 160kg. The smallest bird in the world is the bee hummingbird from Cuba which weighs a mere 1.6g.
What we know -The number of insects identified so far is between one and two million. As only about 10,000 new species are identified annually, it could take another four centuries to identify the rest, if they survive that long. Insects are the most abundant and successful animals on the Earth.