Why do animals go extinct? You asked Google – here’s the answer | Jules Howard

Every day millions of internet users ask Google life’s most difficult questions, big and small. Our writers answer some of the commonest queries

A man pulls from his pocket a futuristic, streamlined flat metallic box that has been constructed in China but filled with chemical components dug from great underground mines in what was once a vast, unspoilt South American wilderness. Looking through a glass screen, forged with heat produced from the burning of 400m-year-old fossil swampbeds, the man considers the question he would like to type into his metal box, a request that would involve it interacting remotely with an air-conditioned server room in a data centre in coastal Finland. He types the question “Why do animals go extinct?” and there is a silent pause before the universe shatters with irony into a million pieces.

Related: Why don’t people like me? You asked Google – here’s the answer | Anouchka Grose

Continue reading...