6 Endangered Species That Aren't Endangered Enough

Let's get the obvious question out of the way: Why is it called the corpse flower? Because it smells like rotting dead bodies. Why does it smell of rotting dead bodies? To attract the armies of flesh eating beetles that pollinate it. Why does it exist? Because Satan is real, and He hates us very much.

To further cement its status as "genuine product of human nightmares," it looks like a giant 12-foot penis. Really. Originally named the Amorphophallus (Latin for "Weird Dick"), it was given the name "Titan Arum" by David Attenborough, who point-blank refused to spend a documentary talking about the majestic StrangeCock plant. When Mr. Nature himself refuses to even utter a plant's name, that's more strong evidence for the "Satanflower" pile.

Until 2000, the Arum was the official flower of the Bronx. It's one thing to accept that you have a crime problem, but when even your chosen flower smells of dead bodies you may be taking "truth in advertising" too far. It was replaced by the day lily. To summarize: It stinks, it's disturbing looking and it's been fired from a day job in the Bronx--this species is already dead, it just doesn't know it yet.

So how do we finish them off?
Despite being critically endangered in the wild, the amorphophallus is kept around by museums which not only grow them, but bill their occasional flowerings as "fascinating and educational."

Armed guards protect onlookers from the corpse flower

Vultures are one of the most unwelcome animals in the world, what with the whole "we're just waiting here until you die" thing. Add the curse of red-headedness and they're one shelf of hentai from being the most socially repellent creature on the planet. On the upside, it does look exactly like Darth Maul would if he was a bird:

It hangs around cattle country in Northern India, letting struggling farmers know when they're one dead farm animal closer to starving to death. The farmers, rather unsportingly, try to keep the cattle alive. Bastards. One of veterinary drugs used on the cattle (NSAID Diclofenac) has the side effect of killing vultures who then eat the cow via renal failure, which is just the painful icing on the lifestyle cake after being born as a ginger corpse-eater. Some over-keen animal rights activists are demanding that farmers stop using this treatment, preferring that the vultures stay alive while the farm animals die--so not only is the carrion feeder alive, it's well fed. Bonus: When the farmers family starve to death, the vulture gets seconds!

So how do we finish them off?
This one's already in progress--farmers are strangely unwilling to work as "Vulture Buffet Chefs." There is a safer replacement for Diclofenac, Meloxicam, but it's more expensive and for some reason the farmers can't work up enough sympathy to fork over the extra cash to save the carcass-eating bastards.

Kitten may or may not have been added by Cracked.com

A slightly more compelling reason is the creation of armies of feral rabies-ridden dogs, as the festering corpses that go uneaten by dead vultures are going to be eaten by something. Still, we believe that when the only good thing you can say about a species is "At least it's better than armies of rabid dogs," it's probably one we can do without.

This problem has become so severe that the Indian government has pledged to prevent the use of Diclonofec, though that seems a short-sighted solution. We have to play to our strengths, Indian government! We're humans, extinction is our business. If the dogs become a problem, make them extinct. If the hippies start to complain--well, we think we understand each other.

"Not the cuddly, wuddly panda!" you exclaim, possibly chewing on a gender-neutral flax-soy bar. Well guess what? The panda is nature's loser, an animal so far gone that it won't even have sex without the aid of several Chinese zookeepers. When a species' sole responsibility is to "get busy" and it still doesn't bother, then we, as people who have to go to goddamn work every day, lose sympathy.

Speaking as men, we can tell you--when an animal has lost interest in its own penis, it wants to die. Scientists are considering cloning the species, but when you've got a room full of super-biologists stuck photocopying an animal that was too stupid to exist the first time, it isn't going to be long before they start thinking: "We could build a far better panda--with four arms! And laser vision! And neon pink! And isn't mystified by its own genitals!"

So how do we finish them off?
Pandas might be doing it themselves (by not doing it themselves), but as long as they have the "awww big teddy weddy bear!" appeal people are going to keep them around. But we know the secret that will truly encourage their extinction: they're carnivores. The cute color scheme blinds people to the fact that it's still a couple hundred pounds of goddamned bear.

Another panda gets stuck in a tree, and has to be rescued by the fire department.

Bamboo is their depression comfort food since they've become too slow and fat to hunt anything but firmly rooted plants, but they'll still eat any small animals they get their paws on. We have a plan to stop all the panda-pandering. We can't get into it now, but it involves a zoo, a basket of puppies and a YouTube account.