Are species going extinct at an alarmingly fast and increasing rate? While many have been led to believe this is true, a recent study in the journal Science indicates that extinction rates have been grossly exaggerated. According to the study, researchers from New Zealand, Australia and Britain set out to examine estimates that there were 100 million species globally and they were dying out at a rate of five percent every decade. What they found, however, was there were only 5 million species, and the extinction rate is less than one percent a decade, or one-fifth the level of previous estimates. Here’s hoping the hype about extinction rates, and not the animals themselves, begins to die off permanently.