WIRED reports from Australia:
"The ferocious bushfires have killed at least 25 people, with 15 million acres scorched so far. On south Australia’s Kangaroo Island, perhaps half of the koala population has been killed. One estimate puts the bushfires’ total tally at over a billion mammals, birds, and reptiles, but that doesn’t include other animals like insects, whose toll could be much, much higher. One... estimates that more than 3 trillion insects from one family alone, the rove beetles, may have perished so far. "
But beetles tend to be far outnumbered by ants, and as Oz boasts 985 species of the colonial creatures, accounting for perhaps 20% of the mass of the continent's biosphere, some quadrillions of pismires may have perished as well, making a remake of Picnic At Hanging Rock an inevitable addition to the list of catastrophes arising from climate change.
Funds to facilitate a trip to Australia to provide grief counseling & emergency rations for numbats, echidnas, and other antipodean anteaters may be sent to Mnestheus@paypal.com
