After the last of a species has taken its last breath, there is a risk that the entire species will fall into oblivion
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himEvery species, be it animal or vegetable, is extinguished twice: once, the real extinction, when even the last being belonging to that given species dies; a second time when the species falls into oblivion and leaves the collective memory. It is the so-called social extinction - at least according to University of Oxford researchers who explored this phenomenon in a recently published new study.
These two types of extinctions are not necessarily a consequence of each other, but can also occur simultaneously or in reverse order - that is, a species may have already been forgotten by humans before it truly goes extinct. This is because social extinction depends on numerous factors - such as the "fame" of a certain animal, its symbolic or cultural values, its more or less strong presence in the collective human imagination.
The extinction of society occurs not only in extinct species, but also in those that still live among us, often due to social or cultural changes, such as urbanization or the digitization of society, which can radically change our relationship with nature, and lead to collective memory loss - explains Professor Diogo Verissimo, among the authors of the study.
An example of this is represented by the advent of modern medicine in our continent, which ended up completely replacing traditional herbal medicine: the knowledge that society had of medicinal plants has been lost, and with it also the memory of some plant species which have therefore become extinct from a social point of view. In practice, the less we have to deal with a species - whether animal or plant - the less we remember it.
But, as we have said, the link between real extinction and social extinction is not always clear: at times it can also happen that extinct species remain in the collective imagination and become even more famous and popular. An example of this phenomenon is represented by theAra di Spix, a small bird that is extinct but popularized by the Disney film Rio. In these cases, however, the species ends up being idealized and remembered in a vague and in some ways incorrect way.
Researchers are keen to emphasize that the phenomenon of social extinction hides a danger, as it could lead us to underestimate the dangers associated with the destruction of ecosystems and the loss of biodiversity and, consequently, to decrease our efforts to protect animal and plant species. which risk disappearing.
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Fonte: Trends in Ecology & Evolution
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