Have you ever watched that part in a nature documentary when the cute baby duckling takes to the water for the first time and then you see a crocodile enter the water, eager to take a bite out of it?
Do you remember how you screamed for the bird to take flight and get out of the water even though you knew ultimatley that it was pointless and that ounce per ounce there was no way this crocodile wasn't going to win in its quest to eat that duckling?
Remember how sad it made you that the cute cuddly little duckling dies a gruesome death while the evil crocodile got his meal and goes off cackling wickedly to himself?
That's the natural world. It's very brutal, it's very cruel and it is very unforgiving. Only the toughest and most well adapted animal species survive, it's an arms race for survival that has gone on for millions of years.
And frankly, nature really couldn't give two sh*ts about what we might think is 'cute' or just things that in general appeal to us. If it did, that duckling would have lived to see it's first birthday and the croc would have become a vegan. Nature cares about what can survive and what can adapt to the hostile ever changing world.
The panda cannot adapt. It has a color scheme that doesn't help it hide out in the wilderness, it's a nomadic animal that barely comes in contact with other members of it's species, it's a carnivore that is forced to live on vegetation so to compensate it has to be constantly eating bamboo all day and night and doesn't have the energy to do anything productive and they can't seem to reproduce. Not to mention if a panda female has two cubs (which they often do) she'll just abandon one and let the other live.
Not only can't they breed, they can't even manage to raise their offspring.
They aren't well adapted and they simply are not a species made to last, in fact it's as if they were literally designed to die. Plus, they aren't a valuable part of their ecosystem. They aren't an apex predator or a main herd animal. All they do is eat bamboo and not reproduce, if left to their own devices I'm all but certain they would all be dead by now. And the rest of their ecosystem wouldn't even notice.
The only reason, the only reason that anyone wastes time and money on these creatures is that they were cute. If they were hideous and lumpy and stinky and vicious and nasty we would have yelled a long time ago:
"F*ck it, let them die. If they can't even be bothered to reproduce then they can't obviously be vital to the ecosystem!"
Instead we just keep spending money and leaping through hoops to try and save them. This isn't an action that comes from our desire to help the natural world. This comes from us trying to save something that we find appealing to us on a personal level. So now we have talk of cloning them, or making panda porn for them, or rubbing them together until something happens and it all just smacks of the sad realization that if we are seriously planning to clone them back into existence then we are talking about an animal that clearly wasn't meant to be alive.
So what if it's dying out? Millions of small insect populations all over the world die out every day and no one complains about them. Animal species come and go, it's a part of natural evolution. What is happening to the pandas is just that, natural evolution. They aren't a species meant to adapt.
You can't argue that human interference has caused their population decline, because nowadays human interference is the only thing keeping them alive. They are on life support, we are refusing to let them die out because we find them so cute even though from a pure analytical standpoint, apart from their aesthetic appeal to us, they offer nothing of any value or worth that would actually make them worth saving.
Except for that if it weren't for them, the dumbest life form ever born from evolution would be Ke$ha.
That's the point, just because we like a certain species does not mean it deserves to live. Anymore than just because we don't like a certain animal species, it deserves to die. I absolutely think we need to stop deforestation and polluting the oceans, and I'll stand proud to prevent the slaughter of animals in their natural habitat by humans.
But honestly, if an animal species simply cannot adapt, won't reproduce and offers nothing of value to its ecosystem of any kind and is dying out very fast on its own... maybe that means it wasn't a species meant to last.
Us trying to save it just because we think it's cute is just plain silly, as I said before... nature just does not work that way.
I'm not saying we should kill them all, we should just take a step back and stop going to such stupid and extreme measures to save them all. Hold back and see, maybe they will adapt and maybe not.
They have a right to live, of course. But a species also has the right to go extinct. Let's let them see on their own terms, which path the species goes.
For what it's worth though, I still argue we should save the tiger. Because at least currently, they still understand what their genitals are for.