What is it?

Fire Whales is a friendly and easy access website, complemented with Google Chrome extensions, where the people can find information about location of the animals around the globe, visualize the amount of animals that are in extinction risk or are already extinct because of the human activity and provide to the people tools for take action in that problematic. We intend to be a NGO in the future.

Why is it important?

"Yes, said the fox. To me you are still no more than a little boy like a hundred thousand little boys. And I don't need you. And you don't need me either. I am to you no more than a fox like a hundred thousand foxes. But if you tame me, we will need each other. You will be unique in the world to me. I will be for you the only one in the world..." ANTOINE de SAINT-EXUPÉRY (The Little Prince) (6)

All of us, at some point in our lives, have come across an animal that we don't know its name, or what it is. How does it contribute? How does it affect us? among many other questions that make us think yes we are the only ones how to focus on our progress or ideal of progress, the truth is that No, we are not the only ones on this planet and we should be more aware of it, that's why with every action we do we are indirectly affecting the Flora or Fauna of our great and vast universe of ecosystems, the previous brings with it an infinity of approachable and observable problems, the Extinction of species is a key fact in the depredation of the Human beings, in simple words the animals are IN DANGER OF EXTINCTION OR IN DANGER THAT WE EXTEND THEM? (1).

It is indisputable that a scheme of appropriation by humans can be particularly efficient in the pursuit of a protection of animals from the danger of disappearance that stalks them. Indeed, "because humans use and value animals, owners spend resources on their protection. Veterinary medicine may not be on a par with human medicine, but it is only about a generation behind. When it comes to medical care, it is better to be a sick cat in a middle class home in the United States than a sick farmer in a third world country (5). The private ownership of many pets allows them access to food and shelter (and sometimes clothing) which results in long, quiet, and comfortable lives. Even death can occur in more humane conditions than in nature (...) nobody argues a perfect concurrence between the interests of humans and animals; property is not equivalent to community. But, for the same reason, there is no necessary conflict between owners and their animals (2) It is a founding fact that we have tried and activated people to follow a lifestyle with respect to hunting, capture or retribution towards animals, as it has always been imposed on society, these are in their entirety according to the times, or standards that are presented, Now, we have refused to accept a theory that advocates the attribution of legal personality to animals and we have bet on the existence of a private property regime on animals; But this does not mean -as many people must be thinking with the intention of hastily refuting our position- that because we are owners we can do what we want with animals (1). In fact, there are objects over which we cannot do what we want when we want and not because of that we suggest that they have a special personality. Indeed, commenting on the American regulation, it has been recalled that "even inanimate objects are protected from domination and control, you cannot burn down your house, and if you have certain types of property, you are prevented from destroying them. Animals are currently considered property, but in the law as it stands, they are protected from a wide range of damage (3).

As is clear to us; the regulatory proposals that have been made on the problem of endangered animals have served little - or nothing - to stop this serious situation and may even have aggravated the problem by generating incentives for the emergence of black markets in animals (4) that only harm the welfare and subsistence of these species that we want to protect so much. However, this discussion cannot be complete if we do not briefly comment on the postulates of a current controversy that advocates the recognition of legal personality of some animals, and with which we openly disagree for the reasons we will expose (3).

What does our project do?

This project is divided in two parts: the Google Chrome extension and the website.

The Google Chrome extension has three principal functions:

• Show to the people the distribution in the globe of the animal that they selected on
• the menu and their respective graphics.
• Show in a simplified way the impact of the human on the animals extinctions.
• This would be the principal source of income of the project by using ads.

The website has seven principal functions:

• The website has a global animal distribution too, but this not only shows you the information of one animal at the time, you can also see the information of every animal in a country when you click that place.
• You can find on the website courses about many animal topics, and specially, courses about how you can save the biodiversity, because, we don’t want to give to the people information only, we also want to teach them how they can take action in the problematic of the extinction of the animals caused by humans.
• You can find a future projection of the human impact on the biodiversity and how dangerous the future of the animals is, the projections will be in a statistics format.
• Show to the people the others organizations that are contributing in the animal biodiversity protection.
• Hand to hand with the last function, we intend to be a NGO in the future to receive donations, and with that money, keep the page active.

How does it work?

You have two different ways to use this program:

1. Website

• In the first page you can find who are we, an animal biodiversity gallery of photos and the donations apart.
• If you click on About Us, you can find information about our team and the members and why we decided to do this challenge.
• If you click on Our Extensions, you can find all the Google Chrome extensions that we made.
• If you click on Human Activity, you can find all the courses and educational resources that you can use to take action in the protection of the animals. You can also find here information about some animal protect organizations and the future projection of the human impact on the biodiversity.
• The last button is Contact, where you can find our Social Medias and Gmail link to talk to us.

2. Google Chrome extension

• To download the extension, you can enter on the Fire Whales website, click on the download button and install it. You can also install the extension directly from Google Apps.
• To select the animal that you want to have in your Google search, you have to click the menu on the corner of the screen and then search your favorite animal or the one that you want to have on the screen.
• After you click at the animal, you can see the distribution of these on the Earth that is at the side of the animal.
• You can customize your animal appearance unlocking the clothes, but the only way to unlock the clothes is seeing ads. These ads will be the principal source of income of Fire Whales, this money will be send to the organizations who center on tracking the Earth Data.
• In the side of your screen you can find a kind of thermometer that measures the quantity of animals that are already extinct or are in risk of extinction because of the human impact. If the liquid of the thermometer grows up, the animal on the screen get sick, but if the liquid goes to the top, the animal dies (probably if the animal dies is because of the number of animals in risk of extinction is extremely dangerous).
• You can find our Social Medias on the top corner of the screen.

Who is it for?

These platforms are for people of all ages who want to learn more about these topics.

Which are our future projections?

In a future, as we mentioned before, we intend to be a NGO to receive donations for the others organizations. In addition, we want to include more extension of more animal topics.

At first, we are going to start only with vertebrate animals, but in the future, we want to add some invertebrate animal species.