Today in Longreads, a chapter from Elena Passarello’s important new book Animals Strike Curious Poses featuring illustrations by The Last Menagerie:
“The same year, two administrators of a Georgia convalescent center wrote the editor of the journal Nature, soliciting a name for an organism that marks the last of its kind. Among the suggestions were “terminarch,” “ender,” “relict,” “yatim,” and “lastline,” but the new word that stuck was “endling.” Of all the proposed names, it is the most diminutive (like “duckling” or “ ngerling”) and perhaps the most storied (like “End Times”). The little sound of it jingles like a newborn rattle, which makes it doubly sad.”
https://longreads.com/2017/03/24/the-sense-of-an-endling/
