[nyc_data_geek]

This is one of the reasons loss of biodiversity and mass extinction are so horrifically depressing, to me. All that marvelous complexity, all the blueprint information for it, all lost forever. Take the axolotl - it does not, seemingly, ever reach senescense, meaning they don't die of old age. Somewhere locked up in that blueprint information could be the key to new therapies or techniques to incorporate this into ourselves. But they are in danger of extinction, existing in a small patch of Mexico City's canals as they do. We lose them, we lose the chance to learn from them. How many undiscovered medicines, therapies, techniques lost forever? We don't even begin to imagine accounting for this particular externality