Gilbert’s Potoroo (Potorous gilbertii)

This wee beastie is really really endangered. There is a bunch of marupials that are in serious trouble. I get quite depressed about anything becoming extinct, but marsupials especially. There was a time when I was concerned that we might have been losing something important to humans every time we allowed a species to drift into extinction – some plant contained a cure for cancer – a tool using bird that would help us understand our own evolution – a jellyfish that explained the reason for reality television. But I’m doing that human thing that humans do, defining everything in the universe in relation to ourselves. I don’t care about that now. We are diminished if we define all of these creatures in terms of what they can do for us.

I took this from the marvellous website at www.potoroo.org where you will find the Gilbert’s Potoroo Action Group. And why on earth wouldn’t you? They even have a big potoroo suit! I want one.

Gilbert’s Potoroo is a small marsupial teetering on the brink of extinction. Found only in dense scrub on a rugged, windswept headland thrusting out into the Southern Ocean, its numbers are so low that a chance event like a bushfire or a drought could push the species into extinction.

With an estimated population, in the wild, of only 30 to 40 animals, critically endangered Gilbert’s Potoroo is Australia’s rarest mammal.

First discovered in 1840 by naturalist John Gilbert and recorded again only a few times over the next 40 years, this small rat-kangaroo was thought to be extinct since the late 1870s until rediscovered in 1994 at Two Peoples Bay near Albany, on the South Coast of Western Australia.

What a handsome and dignified example of one of the furrier species. Do your bit for these lovely members of the potoroo family by following the instructions on the website, they are there somewhere. Although it hasn’t been updated since April 2004 so they may in fact all be dead. Bugger.

Anyway, apropos of nothing, my US Election badges are in and even if I say so myself they are fantastic. I LOVE working at Crikey, they are mad for merchandise. They can’t get first dog cartoons on to stuff fast enough. The Sarah Palin teatowels were wrong so they are being redone (the blue moose is intentional – we couldn’t afford brown). But the badges rock and are selling fast, so if you are a chicken parma for obama (and who isn’t these days?) go and get some.

They look even better in real life. My mum would have been proud.

Badges!!

And then there is also the video I made for Crikey video of the day. I make a video every second Thursday or so because my editor asks nicely. The only requirement is that they are funny, however they are also invariably stupid. The latest one is especially stupid but I had a lovely time figuring out how to get a toilet roll into a television studio with David Speers. Getting it to dance to eurodisco was especially edifying. It has been seen on youtube by over 2000 people so far but has still only managed a rating of 3 stars! Brutes. Perhaps people just don’t like David Speers now that they know how rude he can be.