(ORDO NEWS) — Sometimes species die out for natural reasons, this is normal and natural. Recently, the animal world has been actively thinning out thanks to us and our activities, and this is already bad.
Often the interference is direct, such as poaching for large trophies or animal tusks, and sometimes it is indirect, such as when reclaimed land disrupts habitats and entire ecosystems.
We picked up a dozen completely extinct animals that recently lived among us, but now they are history.
Thylacine
The carnivore, also called the Tasmanian tiger and the Tasmanian wolf, was a marsupial that hunted rodents and kangaroos primarily at night.
Although thylacines looked very stern, in fact they were quite timid and trusting animals, for which they paid the price – they were easy prey for hunters.
In 1999, scientists attempted to clone the thylacine using the DNA of puppies of this animal, which are preserved in the museum. The attempt failed.
Quagga
This subspecies of the Burchell zebra, which lived in what is now South Africa, became extinct at the end of the 19th century.
The quagga was widespread in a relatively limited area, but then began to gradually die out as a result of uncontrolled hunting, its small range and competition for food, oddly enough, with livestock.
The last wild quagga died in 1878, and the last quagga in the world kept in the Amsterdam Zoo died on August 13, 1883. After that, for a long time, this zebra was not considered extinct and was recognized as such at the international level only in 1900.
Northern white rhinoceros
Since March 19, 2018, only two females of this subspecies have remained, making the northern white rhinoceros functionally extinct.
Both females belong to the Dvur-Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic, but live in the Ol-Pageta Nature Reserve in Kenya and are guarded around the clock by armed rangers.
By the way, the last male also lived there, who died of old age at the age of 45. True, this story has a happy ending. In the summer of 2019, one of the females gave birth to a healthy northern white rhinoceros calf through IVF.
Blue macaw
The last male living in the wild disappeared in 2000, the species is no longer found in the wild. True, there are still several dozen living birds in private collections and zoos. Man, of course, the main cause of extinction, but not the only one. African bees, nicknamed “killer bees”, occupied all the hollows suitable for nesting in this area and simply evicted blue macaws from their favorite habitats.
Passenger pigeon
Passenger pigeons are estimated to have numbered in the millions and even billions when the first Europeans began settling in the Americas.
The passenger pigeon was an important food source for the natives of North America, but they hunted pigeons in a humane and reasonable manner. After colonization, hunting began to be carried out with more intensive and sophisticated methods.
Passenger pigeons were killed with such ease that they were not even considered game birds. The last known bird died in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.
Orange toad
A small but damn bright toad that lived in a limited area of the tropical forests of Costa Rica. It was first described in 1966, but no one has seen it since 1989.
After several unsuccessful attempts to find the extinct toad in the 1990s, scientists began to debate the possible reasons for its extinction. Chytridiomycosis, a deadly skin disease, is thought to have decimated this toad population, which was already vulnerable due to limited habitat.
Zanzibar leopard
Endemic to the island of Unguja in the Zanzibar archipelago, which is part of Tanzania. In the 20th century, the conflict between local residents and leopards on the island escalated, as a result of which the image of leopards was demonized, and extermination began to be targeted.
The scientist’s last encounter with a Zanzibar leopard took place in the early 1980s. Since then, there has not been a single case of reliable observation of it.
West African black rhinoceros
This subspecies of the black rhino has been officially declared extinct since November 10, 2013. Like all other rhinoceroses, he fell victim to an absurd, unfounded superstition about the miraculous power of the horn.
In the 70s, during the period of rapid growth in the wealth of the oil monarchies of the Persian Gulf, a lot of black rhinoceroses were mined for the sake of the fashion that appeared in these countries for daggers with horn handles, which were considered an indispensable attribute of a wealthy Arab.
Today, rhinoceros horn is in constant demand in Chinese medicine, while it has no healing properties, according to scientific data.
Javan tiger
A subspecies of the majestic cat that lived on the Indonesian island of Java. Presumably died out in the 80s of the XX century due to hunting and habitat destruction.
The first prerequisites for the extinction of the subspecies arose already since the 1950s, when the number of tigers in Java was reduced to 25 individuals.
By 1972, the number of Javan tigers was reduced to seven individuals living in the Meru Betіrі Forest Reserve, and possibly five more individuals lived in other reserves. In 1979, only three individuals remained. The exact time of the extinction of the subspecies remains unknown, it probably occurred in the mid-1980s.
Abingdon elephant tortoise
When Darwin visited the Galapagos Islands in 1835, it was full of these huge tortoises. But very quickly their numbers were reduced to Lonesome George – the last purebred representative of the Abingdon elephant tortoise.
But on June 24, 2012, the body of a unique reptile was discovered without signs of life by the caretaker of the reserve Fausto Llereno, who had been caring for the turtle for the past 40 years. Lonely George died at the age of about 100 years without giving offspring.
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