One Species Are We by Benedict Gagliardi
(melody = Awake, Arise Good Christians)
Of three domains of all life, eukaryotes are we
Inside each cell within us, a nucleus there be
Bacteria, Archaea, unfortunate are they
They have no membrane bound around their strands of DNA
Chorus: Linnaeus! Linnaeus! Here's to your hierarchy.
And let it not betray us! One species are we!
Come all you motile metazoans and listen to my song
The kingdom Animalia is where we all belong
The plants may have their chlorophyll to photosynthesize
But animals are heterotrophs and so are the Fungi.
Our backbone gives us structure, our backbone gives us strength
So with the other chordates, we find our phylum rank
But let our boney ego, never be unfurled
For the spineless worms and insects, they truly rule the world
By the milk our mothers gave us, by the hair upon our skin
It's clear that we are mammals, class Mammalia we're in
Most have a placenta, but this class has strange extremes
Like the milky-pouched Marsupials and egg-laying monotremes
So let's put things in order, now that we've been to class
With monkeys, apes, prosimians, we, the primates, do amass
We all can be distinguished by our well-filled craniums
And the envy of all other life: two fine opposable thumbs.
Welcome to our family, all Great Apes are we
Orangutan, gorilla and our cousin chimpanzee
But if you believe that monkeys evolve into man
It seems you treat your own brain just like a garbage can]
[This family are great climbers and some can use their feet
While others, who have not the skill, attempt to climb by Tweets.
Homo is the genus of the African bipeds
Who stood erect, and picked up tools, and learned to use their heads
Our cousins are extinct now, leaving only us
But thanks to our bad habits, we may join them soon enough
So we are Homo sapiens but let us not forget
The reason we were given our specific epithet
We earned it for our wisdom, we earned it for our brain
Let fear and hatred never trump our consciousness again
