Anybody who’s followed this blog for more than 10 minutes knows I do not care for the panda. It is a lazy, useless, drywall-crapping waste of space that’s too stupid to even have sex. I would never actually kill a panda*, but I have no problem letting the species die out. Go away, pandas! You stink and are dumb.
I’ve been saying this for years, and finally this ineluctable truth is getting through. Timothy Lavin at Bloomberg News writes:
Why I Hate Pandas and You Should Too
Congratulations on your new panda cub, Washington! You’re prolonging the existence of a hopeless and wasteful species the world should’ve given up on long ago.
I understand the impulse. Some people find them cute. Pandas don’t have much of a habitat left in the wild, thanks to heedless human development. And zoos imagine they’re doing the right thing, pulling in some extra visitors while helping conservation efforts.
But the first test of a species’ worthiness for conservation should be some instinct for self-preservation. And pandas fail objectively…
“Here’s a species that of its own accord has gone down an evolutionary cul-de-sac,” Chris Packham, a British author and wildlife activist, said in 2009. He argues that “the panda is possibly one of the grossest wastes of conservation money in the last half-century…”
Lu Zhi, a panda expert from Beijing University, has said that trying to reintroduce pandas to the wild is as “pointless as taking off the pants in order to fart.”
That’s not quite fair. Sure, both are pointless, but one is way more fun.
Read the whole thing. And if you’re one of these freaks who get tattoos of pandas, and write blog posts in a cutesy-poo “panda voice,” and weep like mourning mothers when one of these cockroaches with fur gets moved to a zoo in China or wherever the hell, have a good cry at the meanies who are smarter than you.
Pandas. Yuck. And if you’ve got a problem with that: Why do you hate science?
*Okay, I totally would do that, given the means and opportunity.
Update: I suppose this one deserves a reprieve.