As ecologists, we learn that any particular species isn’t good or bad, nor of greater or lesser intrinsic value than any other—they simply exist. Except in the light of our own beliefs and wants, a blue whale has no more value than does the tapeworm in the blue whale or the bacterium in the tapeworm or the virus in the bacterium. They exist simply because they evolved.

— Never Home Alone by Rob R. Dunn (Page 144)