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A Fable about un-Natural Selection

All over the world, the invention and development of automobiles resulted in improvement and pavement of roadways.

Because this particular "developing" country was blessed with an inexhaustible pitch lake, its officials decided on a mixture of beach gravel and pitch for fixing their 'essential arteries of commerce.' Factors like Efficiency, Longevity, and Dependability of the fixer material were ignored, and as a result, these roadways were dangerous at best-few but practiced local drivers could survive them.

Much further a-field on the "web of life," cold-blooded creatures found these same roadways to be absolutely "A+1" and "top of the line."

And why so? one might query.

Well, due to the tar and gravel composition of these pavements, they retained and radiated heat long after the tropic sun had set. Thus various land crabs, reptiles, and amphibians-to their advantage-were able to bask in moonlit pleasures of high energy internal physiology.

In this aforementioned 'third world' country, toads of the species Buffo marinus were most susceptible to the sultry pull of country roads.

Now this could have been an instructive 'share 'n share alike' tale, or an amusing 'all's well that ends well' anecdote. . . except that so many humans who drove automobiles on these roadways developed an unseemly glee from crushing with their fat all-terrain wheels, these lower life-form after-hour loungers.

So when considering their different tendencies for adjustment and innovation, one has no doubt as to which species is endangered.

Moral: What is joke for man is Death for crapaud.