Benedict Gagliardi 2016
melody ‘Awake, Arise Good Christians’ trad. Sheffield carol
The Vox Hunters: https://thevoxhunters.bandcamp.com/track/one-species-are-we
https://thevoxhunters.bandcamp.com/track/one-species-are-we
Of three domains of all life, eukaryotes are weÿ Inside each cell within us, a nucleus there be Bacteria, Archaea, unfortunate are theyÿ They have no membrane bound around their strands of DNAÿ Chorus: Linnaeus! Linnaeus! Here’s to your hierarchyÿ And let it not betray us! One species are we! Come all you motile metazoans and listen to my songÿ The kingdom Animalia is where we all belongÿ The plants may have their chlorophyll to photosynthesizeÿ But animals are heterotrophs and so are the Fungiÿ Our backbone gives us structure, our backbone gives us strengthÿ So with the other chordates, we find our phylum rankÿ But let our boney ego never be unfurledÿ For the spineless worms and insects, they truly rule the worldÿ By the milk our mothers gave us, by the hair upon our skinÿ It’s clear that we are mammals, class Mammalia we’re inÿ Most have a placenta, but this class has strange extremesÿ Like the milky-pouched marsupials and egg-laying monotremes So let’s put things in order, now that we’ve been to classÿ With monkeys, apes, prosimians, we, the primates, do amassÿ We all can be distinguished by our well-filled craniumsÿ And the envy of all other life: two fine opposable thumbsÿ Welcome to our family, all Great Apes are weÿ Orangutan, gorilla and our cousin chimpanzeeÿ But if you believe bonobos just evolved into manÿ It seems you treat your own brain just like a garbage canÿ Homo is the genus of the African bipedsÿ Who stood erect, and picked up tools, and learned to use their headsÿ Our cousins are extinct now, leaving only usÿ But thanks to our bad habits, we may join them soon enoughÿ So we are Homo sapiens but let us not forget The reason we were given our specific epithetÿ We earned it for our wisdom, we earned it for our brainÿ Let fear and hatred … never trump … our consciousness againÿ