If you look, you'll see the signs of death. Scientists have warned for years that the beginning of a mass extinction is imminent because of the decline in animal diversity around the globe.
Not everyone agrees that this grim phenomenon is happening all around us.
Robert Cowie is a bioscientist from the University of Hawai'i at Mnoa.
The denial is based on a biased assessment of the crisis which ignores the majority of biodiversity, which is mammals and birds.
In a new study, Cowie and his fellow researchers try to refute the deniers by focusing the spotlight on the decline of invertebrate creatures, which receive less attention than vertebrate animals in discussions of biodiversity loss.
Cowie and colleagues write that the Red List is biased.
Almost all birds and mammals have been evaluated against the criteria of the World Wide Fund for Nature.
The researchers say that 1.5 percent of mammal and bird species have gone extinct since 1500CE, which isn't far off the 'background' extinction rate that exists in between mass extinction events.
The situation looks worse if we take into account estimates of extinctions not considered by the IUCN.
The researchers focused on mollusks, which are the second largest group of animals after arthropods, with themselves representing the vast majority of known animal species.
According to the researchers, between 7.5 to 13 percent of all the 2 million known plant and animal species on Earth could have gone extinct in the last 1500 years.
Cowie says that it was important to include invertebrates in order to confirm that the sixth mass extinction in Earth's history is happening.
Some species are faring better than others in the current crisis, with marine species extinctions and plant extinctions not yet looking as grave as the rate of extinctions seen in many land animals.
The researchers say that the Red List's suggestions of extinction rates are not a good indicator of the full picture.
The authors say that current extinction rates are higher than background rates.
The use of Red List extinction data to determine current extinction rates inevitably leads to dramatic under-estimation of rates, except for birds, mammals and perhaps amphibians.
The researchers don't know if these trends can be stopped. They note that denying the crisis or failing to act upon it is an act of moral cowardice, and that scientists and environmentalist should keep drawing attention to the crisis.
We likely won't be able to save all the species currently going extinct, but if we act with care and haste, we might at least be able to preserve most of them.
"Dedicated biologists and agencies are doing what they can to save birds and mammals from extinction, among which some species may be saved from the extinction that would otherwise occur," the researchers explain.
Scientists may achieve some successes, such as that a significant component of currently extant global biodiversity can be preserved in the wild, and that many species that will be lost from the wild can at least be preserved in museums for future generations to study.
The findings are reported in a journal.
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