=1 "Why flying saucers?"
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Why flying saucers?
Why would visitors in flying saucers come to our earth from other planets?
To profit from the wisdom of homo sapiens?
To contact our customs authorities, our police, our courts, our prisons?
To take over this overpopulated and underdeveloped planet, when there are trillions of other planets to choose from?
To refill their depleted water or air tanks with our contaminated, polluted stuff?
To start some educational or developmental service for the benefit of mankind?
If that is the case, why don't they come forward and make our acquaintance? We see only their ships, never their navigators. Of course, our lovable, friendly character, our hospitality to other living species must be well-known by now around our galactic neighborhood. Perhaps that is why they put those Van Allen belts around the earth, to warn off casual tourists.
But seriously, why do you think anyone would want to visit earth? What is the rarest thing they could find here to export through the lightyears or parsecs of space? Some exotic metal, some handful of diamonds? The metals are the same all over the universe, and diamonds any space-travelling technology could produce by the shovelful.
No, there is something here much more important, hundreds of magnitudes more precious, something which our planet has taken billions of years to evolve and which is unique to Earth. It is the millions of species of living beings, the great variety of plants and animals which our world possesses.
It is true that few human beings have recognized the worth or cherished the beauty, the loveliness, the grandeur, the uniqueness of Earth's flora and fauna, most of which are now threatened with extinction. There is hardly a place for them here any more, and that might be why ships come from distant parts of the galaxy, through the emptiness of space and time, to take home these splendid treasures where they will be appreciated and cared for by more evolved civilizations than ours.
Luckily, the more a civilization evolves, the more it likes beautiful plants and animals. And luckily there can be no dearth of such civilisations in the vastness of space. We may hypthesize that catalogues of Earth animals are circulated from star system to star system, orders for them coming through the space-waves. And naturally, the last thing an importer would do is ask permission of Earth's aggressive and dominant species: man. They quietly come to collect and preserve our priceless resources: the magnificent giant squirrel, ratufa indica, the shy silenus of India, the paradisical colobus of Africa, and also the red kangaroos and the maki makoko, the pink flamingo, the breathtaking white heron, the lyre-bird in nuptial plumage, and a thousand plant species, each one lovable, each one enchanting and each unique and irreplaceable in the vastness of space.
What could be more worthwhile to possess than a pair of cheetahs? What would be a better addition to a rich planet which already has everything than the beauty of the peacock or the tender song of the bulbul? What would make a better gift to a space queen than an elegant mouse deer or and Amazonian parrot? No Noah's ark is needed for transport. The cargo arrives in the form of plant seeds, fertilized eggs or frozen spermatozoids; so a droplet from a pipette may contain the living earthly treasure.
The captains of the space galleons have to hurry because in a few years the last of these evolutionary masterpieces will be extinct, shot by sportsmen or poisoned by dollar-hungry peasants, both of whom think of themselves as sapiens and of all other life forms as dumb animals or useless vermin. It has taken nature millions of year to perfect our glorious furred and feathered animals, our beautiful plants and flowers. If or natural marvels have little value for man, at least they may be treasured by those beyond earthly bounds.
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