“Warning: Humans in the Natural Environment”
The following is an amusing news story that predicts this un-amusing fate for humans: “At the London Zoo, visitors can talk to the animals – and now some of them talk back.
Caged and barely clothed in a rocky enclosure, eight British men and women were on display beginning Friday behind a sign reading “Warning: Humans in the Natural Environment”. The inhabitants of the Human Zoo exhibition sunned themselves on a rock ledge, wearing fig leaves – pinned to bathing suits. Some played with hula hoops, some waved. A signed informed visitors about the species’ diet, habitat, worldwide distribution and the threats to its survival.” 7
In fact, on May 21, 2012 The Automatic Earth Community delivered a Petition for Listing of the Homo sapiens species as an Endangered Species Pursuant to Federal Regulation of the Endangered Species Act [50 CFR 424.14(b)] stating that, “Upwards of 50% of this species' range has come under the threat of near-term (within the next 50 years) extinction due to economic growth (and it's natural collapse), untempered development, severe resource mis-allocation, air/water pollution, ecosystem degradation, energy scarcity, climate change, potential nuclear war and a variety of inter-related factors.”8
The zoo episode provides an opportunity to satirize common values and behaviors within industrialized nations that endanger humanity’s ability to survive. Satire uses irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to expose, denounce, or deride a person’s or institution’s vice, folly, hypocrisy, deceit, etc. Consider the many human habits and behaviors of Homo sapiens inhabiting some region of North America that this situation exposes to ridiculez:
• diet (carnivorous, omnivorous, vegetarian)
• dwelling
• means of locomotion
• communal or solitary
• settled or nomadic
• reproduction and child-rearing
• nocturnal or diurnal
• temperament (aggressive or passive)
• forms of self-defense
• domesticated or wild
• forms of recreation