At the time they were alive, passenger pigeons where the worlds most abundant bird species with numbers up to 5 billion in the wild and flocks reported to take hours to pass overhead.

Passenger pigeons were sexually diamporphic, with males being brighter in color and larger than their female counterparts.

From their massive numbers and sweeping flocks, the endling of their species (An endling is the last known individual of a species or subspecies), known as Martha, passed in 1914, a female who lived to about 29 years old in the Cincinnati zoo.

Upon her death, the species was declared extinct.

so much care put into housing this aging spider. why are my eyes wet

Sure. Humans fight each other all the time, aliens would probably think we’re the worst, right?

But what if we’re not?

What if the aliens come, and the first thing they say is, “Hello! We are so glad we found you! We are so pleased to meet you!” Similar to how humans greet puppies that we really want to meet and not scare, except it’s aliens that have been following radio messages across light years to find us.

We’ve spent so long wondering about what’s out there, and we see ourselves almost as a blight on our own planet, when we’re probably just fine. We’re trying. Maybe, just maybe, we’re okay. Maybe an outsider would look at us and think, “Look at them! They’re trying to be good! They name rocks and waters and cleaning robots! I love them for it!”

We tend to think that we must be the worst, the most backward, the blandest, least interesting or intelligent creatures in the galaxy.

I wonder how aliens would actually look at us.

We play whale noises into the black. We send greetings. We send probes with videos and audio tracks out explaining who we are and what we do on earth, just in case there’s someone else out there wondering if they’re alone in the universe. We tame predators to be companions because we are compassionate and we want to be friends with anything that will have us.

Maybe we’re not so bad.

Wallcreeper (Tichodroma muraria), family Tichodromidae, order Passeriformes, China

This species is the only member of this family.