Time Flies Like an Arrow, Fruit Flies GET NO SYMPATHY FROM THIS HIGHER LIFEFORM

Fruit flies are trying to molest my bananas. I have yelled at them repeatedly, but they do not understand that since I am a mammal, I deserve the banana more than they do, and that I am millions of times more important than any of them, and just plain better, and so on, but they don't get it. I'm going to have to eat all of my bananas tonight and it's just because of these sickly insects. I tell you, what's the point of inheriting the earth after the death of the dinosaurs if arthropod revivalists keep trying to reestablish the glory days of lesser invertebrates? Take a look at this:

Without delving into the issue of extra-human spirits, can we say unequivocally that this image alone is enough to strike terror into any chordate's soul? What if this creature, the Jaekelopterus rhenaniae, comes looking for me because I beat up on its kid brothers? Or, even worse:

ARTHROPLEURA!!!

Lucky for us, our species' global manifest destiny isn't really in peril because of these guys. Among the reasons I'm not extremely concerned is that neither of them has existed since at least the Devonian period, i.e. millions of years before even dinosaurs showed up. (The picture of the "ARTHROPLEURA!!!" above is from the BBC special "Walking with Monsters". Also it is greatly exaggerated because, hey, television is demanding.) And even though arthropods and such can evolve much faster than, oh, all vertebrates thanks to immensely greater reproductive rates, modern atmospheric oxygen content and other factors pretty much set a physical limit for the largest possible arthropods to be around the size of what they are now:

So the next time that you think twice about swatting that pesky Drosophila, don't. It had its time. We've totally got another few million years coming to us and I'm going to use the next few hours of said inheritance to eat my rightful spoils before they are, well, spoilt.

END ECTOTHERMIC WELFARE
VIVA LA VERTEBRAE
I ♥ MY K-SELECTED POPULATION
etc.