Once there was an alien who came to visit Earth. Its main attraction was a museum that displayed all the species that had lived on the formerly thriving planet.
First it walked through all the bacteria exhibits. It didn’t have time to look at every single display, for the bacterium kingdoms were so large that their sections had far too many branches and sub-branches to see in one day. Plus, they wouldn’t be as interesting as the others.
Next it viewed all the aquatic creatures that had lived in the Earth’s oceans, including the fish, the whale, the shark, and the crab. Other sections showed illustrations of the reptiles, amphibians, fungi, trees, and birds. The final section was the smallest of them all- the mammals.
In this section, the alien moved past displays of rodents, ungulates, and marsupials before coming to the end of the line, the primate section. After it saw all the apes and monkeys, nested in its own inlet at the far back of the museum, was a display for the last species that had ever evolved on Earth. It was mankind.
