It is true that man is responsible for one of the worse mass extinctions on earth. However, it is due to our power, not due to our lack of concern. This is in fact something that sets us apart from other animals. Man is a compassionate animal.
It is likely that there were stone age people worried about the survival of the woolly mammoth. However, they lacked the legal institutions to protect them. It is even possible that the last human hunter who killed the last mammoth thought that there were plenty of other ones around, and had he known that this was the last one, he would not have killed it.
It is likely that there among the sailors approaching Mauritius in the 17th century to get dodo birds, there were some who were concerned with the survival of the species. However, as each sailor went there for just a short period of time, there was no long term plan set up to protect the birds. And once rats and cats were set loose on the island, there was no way to remove them to save the dodo.
We know that people in India feel bad about cutting down the habitat of tigers. However, when you need to feed your own children, they take priority over tigers, especially as the tigers presumably could go elsewhere. The problem is that people around "elsewhere" may say the same thing and cut down the tiger's habitat there. Luckily, the government of India has set up long term legislation to protect the tiger. If it is enough, we still do not know.
A squirrel would never have set up long term legislation to protect the tiger. A squirrel would probably not care if the last tiger died in front of its very eyes. No other animal, except man, cares about the survival of tigers.
At the Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, they made attempts to help chimpanzees find food hidden under cups, by pointing at the right cups. The chimpanzees did not understand the gesture at all. However, chimpanzees happily point at objects themselves, to hint that humans should give something to them. It is just that chimpanzees never point to each other. They are unable to fathom the concept of someone else helping them in this way. As soon as the human changed gesture from pointing to an open hand, as if the human tried to grab the food, the chimpanzee understood the gesture. "If the human tries to get the cup, that means that it contains food, and then I can get it." (Documented in "Why Don’t Apes Point?" by Michael Tomasello.)
Chimpanzees are able to cooperate, when they get a reward for it, and sometimes even without direct reward. However, they seem to have a very limited sense of gratitude or compassion.
There are of course some animals, who care about other species. There is for example the fennec fox, which never eats all the berries of a bush, as it "knows" that the bush needs them to survive. Likewise there are plenty of animals living in symbiosis with other animals. However, in all those cases, it seems their behaviour is part of their DNA to protect some other species.
No other animal has the human ability to reflect and feel compassion about another species, for either practical or moral reasons.
Our challenge now is to set this compassion in practice.
Non compassionate squirrel
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