Extinct Animals People Caught On Camera
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00:00Aside from lines at the DMV, everything ends eventually,
00:05even entire species.
00:07In fact, it's estimated that 99% of all creatures
00:11that have ever lived on our big blue ball are now extinct.
00:14That's over 5 billion species.
00:17That means there are long departed animals
00:20none of us will ever get to see again.
00:23Well, today, I've got some extinct
00:25and supposedly extinct animals that we absolutely can see.
00:30From prehistoric beasties in our oceans
00:32to incredible footage of the last Tasmanian tiger,
00:36here are some extinct animals people caught on camera.
00:47Do the quagga.
00:49The quagga might sound like the name
00:51of a cheesy 80s dance hit,
00:53but it's actually what this odd-looking fella's called.
00:57But Mr. Amazed, that's just a weird zebra, I hear you say.
01:02And you aren't entirely wrong.
01:04Quaggas were a special subspecies of zebra
01:07with a unique pattern
01:08that made them look half-zebra, half-horse.
01:10The beautiful animals lived in South Africa
01:13and were first classified by European settlers in 1778.
01:17Almost immediately, however,
01:19the settlers began hunting them for their coats and meat.
01:23Why am I not surprised?
01:25Over a hundred years of this later,
01:27they were declared extinct in 1883
01:30when the last quagga passed away in captivity
01:32at Amsterdam's Artist Magistra Zoo.
01:35Man, the animal you've been seeing in these photographs
01:39isn't that one, though.
01:40It's a different mare that was housed in London Zoo
01:43in the 1870s.
01:44The London Zoo quagga is the only one ever recorded,
01:48so even the fact we have this small glimpse
01:51is insanely lucky.
01:52While they were alive, quaggas were sociable creatures,
01:55just like their plain zebra cousins.
01:58Unlike their cousins, however, they were more docile,
02:01which unfortunately made them easy prey.
02:04It might not be completely over for the quagga, though.
02:07In 1987, the Quagga Project was founded
02:09with the goal of selectively breeding modern zebras
02:12to produce offspring with quagga-like stripes.
02:15And it looks like they're well on their way.
02:17Unfortunately, the technology doesn't yet exist
02:20to clone them outright, a la Jurassic Park.
02:23But maybe that's not such a bad thing, eh?
02:28A Quoll Quandary.
02:30I wouldn't be surprised if you'd never heard
02:33of an Eastern Quoll.
02:35I certainly hadn't before like a week ago,
02:37but there's a reason for that.
02:39The cat-sized marsupial was declared extinct
02:42in its homeland of Australia way back in 1963.
02:46This grainy image published in a 1960s zoo guidebook
02:51was the last known photo ever taken of one.
02:53So what happened?
02:55Well, as humans migrated into Oz in the 1800s,
02:58they brought with them several new species.
03:01Chief among these arrivals was the red fox,
03:03which was only brought over
03:05so it could be recreationally hunted.
03:07Lucky for the foxes, many of them escaped and even thrived.
03:11Unluckily for the Quoll, they thrived by feeding on them.
03:15This, along with a mixture of disease, poisoning,
03:17and persecution eventually led to the Quolls
03:21being utterly wiped out by 1963.
03:23Or were they?
03:25Luckily, over in the neighboring island of Tasmania,
03:28a small population of the marsupials survived.
03:31Because of this, we've got some far better pics
03:34of the little fluffballs than that old photo
03:36I showed you earlier.
03:37Aww.
03:38In an effort to reintroduce the species to the mainland,
03:41WWF and several Australian charities got to work in 2018
03:45and released 20 captive red Quolls
03:47into Boudouri National Park.
03:50They were monitored by trail cams and trackers,
03:52and the park has an extensive fox management program,
03:55so it was hoped that they'd fare well.
03:58Sadly though, despite showing initial progress,
04:00none ended up surviving.
04:02And when a second group of 40 was introduced in 2019,
04:05they too had vanished by 2021.
04:08Geez.
04:09These first attempts haven't stopped further efforts though.
04:12In May 2023, the charity Aussie Orc released a new batch
04:15of 50 eastern Quolls
04:17into Australian Wildlife Sanctuary, Barrington Tops.
04:20They hope this latest and biggest load will be the push
04:23needed for the Quolls to finally take hold.
04:26Maybe third time's the charm.
04:28Hmm.
04:29What do you think?
04:29Let me know down in the comments.
04:33Tree Lobster.
04:35If you're creeped out by bugs,
04:37you might wanna look away right around now.
04:40Okay, meet the Lord Howe Island stick insect,
04:43fittingly nicknamed the Tree Lobster.
04:46Crikey, look at the size of this guy.
04:49Capable of reaching whopping lengths
04:51of eight inches and native to, you guessed it,
04:54Lord Howe Island in New South Wales.
04:56These fellas absolutely dominated the island at one point.
05:00In fact, the nocturnal vegetarians were so common
05:03that they were regularly used as fishing bait
05:05and still retained a strong population.
05:08But everything changed one fateful day in 1918.
05:12That year, an Australian ship, the SS Macombo,
05:16ran aground on the island and black rats
05:18that were hiding aboard rapidly spread across the land.
05:21This was a disaster.
05:24See, rats eat insects, making the tree lobsters
05:26all-you-can-eat buffets unequipped to defend themselves
05:29against the invasive species.
05:31Just two years later,
05:33all of the tree lobsters had disappeared
05:35and the species was assumed extinct.
05:38And for over 40 years, there was no reason to dispute this.
05:42Then in 1964, a group of climbers
05:44claimed to have spotted a few fresh-looking carcasses
05:47on the nearby Balls Pyramid,
05:49the remains of a long-gone volcano
05:5113 miles out from Lord Howe Island.
05:54They snapped some photos,
05:55but the spire of rock was so remote
05:57that nobody acted until 2001,
05:59when Aussie scientists David Priddle and Nicholas Carlyle
06:03set out to investigate the area.
06:05Though on behold, they found 24 of the stick insects
06:08alive and well in a shrub.
06:10How exactly they wound up on this strange spire
06:13in the ocean is a mystery,
06:15but the important thing is they existed.
06:17Two years later, researchers returned
06:19and collected two breeding pairs
06:21to try and establish an alternate population.
06:24The first pair went to a private breeder
06:26and the second to Melbourne Zoo,
06:28but the first pair promptly kicked the bucket,
06:30leaving the fate of the entire species on the second.
06:33No pressure then.
06:34So how did they do?
06:36Well, fast forward to today
06:38and there are over 800 adults
06:40and 3,500 nymphs at Melbourne Zoo.
06:43Wow, and even more are living
06:45in other zoological societies around the world.
06:49What's more, serious eradication efforts
06:51have been made to quell the hordes of harmful rats
06:54on Lord Howe Island
06:55and reintroduce the big bugs to their homeland.
06:58Incredibly, over 200,000 rats have been taken out
07:01and the biodiversity of the island is thriving again.
07:05Now that's what I call playing the long game.
07:10The ghost whale.
07:12I can understand people losing track
07:13of a stick insect species,
07:15but how could someone possibly lose an entire whale species?
07:19I'm talking about Omura's whale,
07:21a species that was officially discovered in 2003
07:24before almost immediately being considered extinct.
07:28Though small by whale standards,
07:29Omura's whales have still reached impressive lengths
07:32of around 38 feet,
07:34the same as two giraffes stacked on top of each other.
07:37But their population numbers were so low
07:40that only a handful of possible sightings happened
07:43in the years that followed their discovery,
07:45like this one photographed by whale watchers
07:47off the coast of Hualien, Taiwan.
07:50What's more, any potential sightings
07:52were likely to have been a super similar
07:54but far more common species, the bride's whale.
07:57So for over a decade, Omura's whales
07:59were thought to have all but disappeared.
08:02In 2015, however, marine biologist Salvatore Curcio
08:07and his team of researchers
08:08published a very special report.
08:11Over the prior two years,
08:12they'd been looking for the whales
08:14and found and photographed 25 of them
08:17off the coast of Madagascar.
08:19Now, for the first time,
08:21the world had definite proof
08:22that this big old elusive boy was very much still kicking.
08:26That said, they're still one of the least studied whales
08:29on the entire planet.
08:31I wish we knew a bit more.
08:33By G Blues.
08:38Dolphins are one of my favorite animals.
08:41They're just so cute.
08:42So when I heard about what happened
08:44to China's national dolphin, the Baiji, I was cut up.
08:49Traditionally, the river-dwelling dolphin
08:51was venerated by the Chinese,
08:53who saw it as a river goddess
08:54and actively worked to protect the species.
08:57Unlike regular saltwater dolphins,
08:59these freshwater cousins have a prominent snout,
09:01hunched back, and unfortunately, poorer eyesight.
09:05Back in the 50s, there were around 6,000 of them
09:08dwelling in the River Yangtze,
09:10but by 2006, they'd been declared functionally extinct,
09:14meaning not enough survived to effectively reproduce.
09:18This photo snapped in 2002 shows the last confirmed Baiji,
09:22Kiki, who died in captivity that same year.
09:26Damn.
09:27So what the heck happened to this once-flourishing species?
09:31Well, we've gotta go back to 1958.
09:34Chairman Mao Zedong's Chinese Communist Party
09:37had begun rapidly industrializing society
09:40in the Great Leap Forward, and as part of this movement,
09:43he denounced China's veneration of the Baiji.
09:46But spoiler alert, the industrialization didn't go well.
09:51Farmers were reassigned to other jobs
09:53and food was poorly distributed,
09:55leading to massive food shortages.
09:58So the people, stricken by the deadliest famine in history,
10:02turned to desperately hunting
10:03the now unprotected Baiji en masse.
10:06Most wanted dolphins for their meat,
10:08yet others hunted them to make gloves or bags to sell.
10:12Man.
10:13And even after the famine subsided,
10:15the Baiji couldn't catch a break.
10:17China's human population began growing fast,
10:20leading the Yangtze to be fished more and more,
10:23and the dwindling dolphins were accidentally slain
10:25by illegal fishing techniques like dynamite.
10:29In 1979, the Chinese government
10:31declared the species endangered,
10:32and in 2006, it was functionally extinct,
10:36which is one of the biggest falls from grace I can imagine.
10:39Not only had they once been revered in the country,
10:42Baiji were the only living representative
10:45of the Lipotidae dolphin family,
10:47and with their passing,
10:4820 million years of evolution came to an end.
10:52Damn.
10:53Man, that one was a real downer, wasn't it?
10:56It might cheer up a bit, though,
10:58if you hit those like and subscribe buttons.
11:00That way, you'll never miss any of my amazing content.
11:03All done?
11:04Okay, let's get back to it.
11:08Came and went.
11:11If I say spectacled caimans,
11:13you might imagine this group of snappy crocodilians
11:16are known for their snazzy-tasting eyewear.
11:18You'd be wrong, though.
11:20The name actually refers to the distinct ridge
11:22that sits between their eyes.
11:25Bummer.
11:26Among the various species,
11:28none were more mysterious or elusive
11:30than the Rheopoporus caiman.
11:32In fact, Rheopoporus was so unbelievably rare
11:36that we basically know nothing about it.
11:38I'm dead serious.
11:40We know it had an elongated thin snout,
11:42was pale with dark blotches, and lived in Colombia.
11:46That's basically it.
11:48The mystery snapper was first discovered
11:50as recently as 1955,
11:52but following this was hardly seen again
11:55until the last known specimen passed away at a zoo in 1989.
12:00Just 34 years after being discovered,
12:02the Rheopoporus was gone.
12:05There wouldn't be hide nor hair of the caiman
12:07for another 30 years, until a new hope emerged,
12:12an American conservationist named Forrest Galante.
12:16Galante is also a television personality
12:19and hosts a show named Extinct or Alive,
12:22which focuses on trying to find long-lost animals
12:24to see if they're, well, you get the idea.
12:27In 2019, the show took aim at the Rheopoporus caiman
12:31and Galante headed off into the Colombian forest
12:34to try and grab a live one.
12:37As unlikely as the idea sounded, though,
12:39he actually pulled it off.
12:40Galante was filmed catching one
12:42of the supposedly extinct beasties
12:44and the scientific community cheered, or did they?
12:48It turns out Colombian scientist Sergio Balaguerra Reina
12:52had been on his own expedition months before Galante
12:55and documented a whopping 105 of the caimans
12:58in an academic journal.
13:00Not only that,
13:00but he'd also given Galante crucial information
13:03in order for him to find them himself.
13:06Yet Sergio wasn't credited whatsoever in Galante's show
13:09and the American television host took all the credit
13:12for rediscovering the species.
13:14Aw, man.
13:16Now, I'm not saying Galante's all bad for this,
13:19but that's pretty shady, don't you think?
13:21Let me know your thoughts about it
13:22in the comments down below.
13:26Sea monster?
13:28It was January, 2023,
13:30and on a strip of land known as Assateague Island
13:33in the Atlantic Ocean,
13:34naturalist and photographer Alan Scalar
13:37made a discovery that left him shocked.
13:41Alan patrolled the tiny island
13:42between Virginia and Maryland regularly
13:45in case anything interesting washed up on the shore.
13:47But on that fateful day,
13:49he saw what seemed to be a prehistoric monster
13:52lying on the sands.
13:53Yep, huge armored beast that looked half fossilized
13:57was sprawled menacingly along the shore.
14:00What the hell was it?
14:02Some kind of ancient monster
14:03that had somehow survived since the time of the dinosaurs?
14:06Well, kind of.
14:08What Alan found that day was actually an Atlantic sturgeon,
14:11a colossal bottom-feeding fish
14:13that can reach around 15 feet in length.
14:15That's longer than a Volkswagen Beetle.
14:17The mega fish has remained largely unchanged
14:20since the Jurassic period some 200 million years ago.
14:25Whoa.
14:26That being said,
14:27they might be joining their dino friends soon
14:29if we aren't careful.
14:31Sturgeon species everywhere are disappearing rapidly
14:34as they're hunted for their meat and caviar.
14:36In fact, sturgeons are the most endangered species group
14:39on Earth.
14:40Man, how sad to think an ancient species
14:43that survived a mass extinction
14:45could disappear at our hands.
14:48Thankfully, the WWF and other conservation charities
14:51are taking measures to try and save our prehistoric pal
14:54by restoring its habitat and clamping down
14:56on illegal fishing.
14:58So here's hoping this big bony boy
15:00can make a speedy recovery.
15:04The Pinocchio Lizard.
15:07Over in Ecuador in 1953,
15:09some explorers were trekking through a forest
15:11when they came across a very strange little lizard.
15:15It would later become known as a Horned Anole
15:18or Pinocchio Lizard,
15:20not because of its penchant for lying,
15:22but for that immense schnoz.
15:24The distinctly hot creature had never been sighted
15:27in recorded history,
15:28so its discovery was super exciting.
15:31In the 13 years that followed, however,
15:34only five more were ever found.
15:36Then after the 60s, they disappeared entirely.
15:39Scientists scoured the Ecuadorian forest for decades,
15:42hoping to catch a glimpse of one of these nosy reptiles,
15:46but alas, the unique species was assumed extinct.
15:49Until that is, in 2005,
15:51when a group of lucky birdwatchers
15:53stumbled on this little fella crossing a road
15:56near where the very first one was found.
15:58The Horned Anole was alive, if incredibly rare.
16:02A photo did the rounds on the internet
16:04and eventually caught the attention
16:05of Anole expert Steve Poe in 2009,
16:09who led an expedition into the Ecuadorian forests
16:12to find more of them, and it was a success.
16:14Poe found a substantial number of the enigmatic creatures,
16:18observing that they move super slowly
16:20and live mostly in trees,
16:22where they're incredibly well camouflaged.
16:24No wonder they stayed hidden for so long.
16:27Because of this and their scarcity,
16:29we actually know very little about them.
16:32We do know that only males have that long nose,
16:35which is actually a proboscis,
16:36leading many to believe that they use it
16:38to show off to lady lizards.
16:41Personally, I wanted to believe they sword fought with them,
16:44but the snoot is apparently too flexible for that.
16:47Oh man, they can wiggle it though,
16:50which comes in handy when they wanna chow down
16:52on a delicious insect dinner
16:54without the hulking thing getting in the way.
16:56No word on what happens if they tell a lie just yet though.
17:02The Tombstone Thunderbird.
17:05And now it's time for something completely different.
17:08Let me tell you a tale about the Old West, partner.
17:12Our story starts in Tombstone, Arizona.
17:15Founded by a prospector in 1879,
17:18the town's early years were plagued by lawlessness.
17:21But in 1890, something happened that was far stranger
17:24than a saloon gunfight.
17:26An article appeared in the local newspaper
17:28claiming that a colossal 160-foot winged beast
17:31had been shot down just outside of town.
17:35The monster dubbed the Tombstone Thunderbird
17:37was supposedly hairless and featherless
17:40with wings like a bat and a mouth full of sharp teeth.
17:44Jeepers!
17:45After managing to shoot it out of the sky,
17:47a group of men dragged the carcass back to Tombstone
17:50where they strung it up for everyone to see.
17:53Or at least that's how the tale goes.
17:55Now you might think this is all a load of hooey,
17:57but what if I showed you this photo of the beast?
18:01What the heck?
18:02Yep, in fact, it's not the only photo
18:04purporting to show the winged monstrosity.
18:06Several others have popped up online over the years too.
18:09Spooky.
18:11What could it have possibly been then?
18:13If you ask me, it looks a lot like a pterosaur.
18:17You know, that giant winged dinosaur
18:18that went extinct 66 million years ago?
18:21Okay, actually, that sounds way too wild to be true.
18:25And sorry to disappoint, that's because it probably is.
18:29Those photos?
18:30Yeah, they're big fat phonies.
18:32While a story about a giant bird
18:34did appear in Tombstone's newspaper,
18:37the pics are actually from a TV show
18:39that aired back in 2000 called Freaky Links.
18:43The show featured an episode on the Thunderbird legend
18:46and created props in order to recreate it.
18:49Since then, conspiracy theorists
18:51have spread said photos online,
18:53but unfortunately, it's nothing but misinformation.
18:57Unfortunately, however, I'm totally happy
19:00with pterosaurs remaining long extinct.
19:05Wakanda forever!
19:07Ah, the black panther.
19:09Such a cool superhero and a cool animal.
19:12But did you know rather than their own unique species
19:15of big cat, black panthers are actually
19:17an incredibly rare variant of leopard?
19:19Yep, they have a super high concentration
19:22of the pigment melanin,
19:23which gives them their intense black color.
19:26Unfortunately, it also makes them
19:28very attractive to hunters.
19:30Hunted for their pelts and forced out of their habitat
19:33by deforestation, African black panthers
19:36were largely MIA for over 100 years.
19:39In fact, the last confirmed specimen
19:41was photographed all the way back in 1909,
19:44a snap that's sadly been lost to time.
19:47This grave outlook led many to question,
19:50had African black panthers gone extinct?
19:52In an attempt to find out, wildlife photographer
19:55Will Barad-Lucas set out on an expedition
19:58to Kenya in 2018 to try and capture a pic of one.
20:01Will set up camera traps to watch
20:03for the majestic beast and waited.
20:05At first, he got nothing.
20:07The second night, also nothing.
20:08Then several nights later, his heart leapt.
20:11There it was.
20:13Because of copyright blah, blah, blah,
20:15I can't show the actual photos here,
20:17but they looked almost exactly like this.
20:20Wow!
20:21He tracked the feline for several days afterwards
20:23and snagged even more incredible snaps,
20:25including this crazy footage captured
20:27with the help of researchers from San Diego Zoo.
20:30Then the job was done.
20:32After 100 years without evidence of their existence,
20:34Will rocked up and proved they were still alive
20:37and well within days.
20:39Man, that's great news for Will,
20:41but even better news for the panthers.
20:45The dino rat.
20:47Way back in the Mesozoic era,
20:49during the time of the dinosaurs,
20:51mammals were pretty low in the pecking order.
20:54The world was ruled by the terrible lizards
20:56and our ancestors were mostly tiny subterranean creatures
20:59that kept out of their way.
21:01The Cuban solenodon is a bizarre holdover from this time.
21:06Only recently thought to be extinct,
21:08the solenodon is actually the last survivor
21:11of an ancient species of insectivores
21:13that lived some 76 million years ago.
21:17With a long snout, sharp teeth and a venomous bite,
21:21it certainly sounds like it belongs
21:22in a Jurassic Park movie.
21:24We humans first came across our savage little friend
21:27in 1861 when German naturalist Wilhelm Peters
21:30found a small number of them in a Cuban forest.
21:33Over the next 29 years, 36 more specimens were found,
21:37but after 1890, nada, zilch.
21:40By 1970, many had concluded that the Cuban solenodon
21:44had joined the dinosaurs in that great museum in the sky.
21:48That is until just a few years later.
21:51In 1974, scientists stumbled upon a single specimen
21:54in the Alexander Humboldt National Park
21:56and this miraculous discovery encouraged others
21:59to scour the park for the elusive mammal,
22:01but it didn't prove easy.
22:03By 2016, a grand total of 11 have been found
22:07with far fewer being photographed.
22:10See, as well as their seemingly tiny population,
22:13solenodons are burrowers and only infrequently emerge
22:17from their subterranean homes.
22:19I mean, I get that, but only 11?
22:22Hey, at least they can just about form their own soccer team.
22:27The Living Fossil.
22:30We all have that one friend who disappears for months on end
22:33then just reappears again and acts like nothing ever happened.
22:36Well, back in the 1900s, biologists dealt
22:39with the most extreme example of this imaginable.
22:42Around 420 million years ago, the colocanth appeared
22:46in the oceans of the Devonian period.
22:50This ancient fishy was covered in armor-like scales
22:52and hosted eight fins,
22:53which moved kinda like our arms and legs.
22:56The colocanth thrived for hundreds of millions of years,
22:59but then it suddenly vanished from the fossil record
23:02at the end of the Cretaceous period, 66 million years ago.
23:06As you might be aware, an asteroid crashed into Earth
23:08at this time, causing the mass extinction
23:11that wiped out over 60% of all life on Earth,
23:15so it seemed logical that the colocanth
23:17was one of the many casualties.
23:20Imagine the absolute shock on the faces of scientists
23:22then when this thing just turned up again.
23:25That's right, in 1938, Marjorie Courtenay Latimer,
23:28curator of the East London Museum in South Africa,
23:31was informed of a supremely bizarre fish
23:34that had been caught in a trawl net.
23:35She went to see the beast
23:37and immediately knew it was something special,
23:39but it couldn't be a colocanth, could it?
23:43Well, after contacting a local fish expert,
23:45she was flabbergasted to find her suspicions were right.
23:49It was, the scientific community flipped the heck out
23:53and immediately began looking for more, and they succeeded.
23:56Since then, we've encountered many
23:58of these ancient sea dwellers,
23:59giving us some truly incredible images.
24:02They're still rare finds hidden away in deep volcanic areas,
24:05but they're very much alive.
24:07Okay, but if the colocanth disappeared
24:09from the fossil record 66 million years ago,
24:13how the heck did it just reappear after all that time?
24:16Well, your guess is as good as mine.
24:18It's possible that colocanth fossils
24:20from later eras do exist,
24:21but we just haven't discovered any of them yet.
24:24It's also possible that colocanths living
24:26in different parts of the ocean
24:28were subject to wildly varying conditions,
24:30some of which ultimately eroded evidence of their existence.
24:34Alternatively, of course,
24:35they could have all been abducted by aliens
24:37millions of years ago,
24:38then dropped back off in the 1900s as a joke.
24:42Anything's possible.
24:45The Tassie Tiger.
24:48Of all the animals we've seen so far,
24:50none have quite as tragic a tale
24:53as the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger.
24:56Despite that nickname,
24:57the beautiful creature wasn't actually a tiger at all,
25:00but a marsupial, a mammal with a pouch for its young.
25:03Indeed, Tasmanian tigers were more closely related
25:06to dunnarts and quolls than big cats.
25:09The strange beast went extinct on mainland Australia
25:12around 3,500 years ago,
25:14but a small population remained on the island of Tasmania.
25:18When European settlers first arrived on Tasmania in 1803,
25:21there were around 5,000 of them left.
25:24Thylacines were carnivores
25:26that preyed mostly on other marsupials,
25:28small birds and rodents,
25:29and they could open their jaws almost 80 degrees
25:32to snap them up, which looks pretty scary.
25:36But they were infamously shy creatures
25:38who kept their distance from humans whenever possible.
25:41Can't say I blame them.
25:43Because of how little they interacted with people though,
25:46many came to incorrect conclusions about the Tassie tiger.
25:50A common belief was that they regularly preyed on livestock
25:54like chickens and sheep.
25:55This photo in particular was widely distributed as proof,
25:59but it had been cropped to hide the fact
26:01that thylacine was actually in captivity.
26:04And even if they did sometimes nap chickens,
26:06it's now believed their jaws were far too weak
26:09to hunt sheep.
26:10Regardless, people at the time began to blame the animal
26:13for all their farming woes.
26:15So a Tasmanian farming corporation
26:17named Van Diamonds Land Company
26:19started offering a bounty on thylacines as early as 1830.
26:24Man, that's rough, but it got worse.
26:27Starting from 1888,
26:28the Tasmanian government got involved too.
26:31They began paying one pound for every head
26:34of the poor creature that was brought to them.
26:37About $210 in today's terms.
26:39Between then and 1909,
26:41the government claimed it paid 2,184 bounties,
26:46though it's believed far more were slain than was reported.
26:50From there, the animal never really recovered,
26:52and the species would be hunted until 1930
26:55when the last wild specimen was taken out by a farmer.
26:59Ah, though it had been driven from the wild,
27:02it wasn't quite gone yet.
27:04The very last thylacine in existence lived in captivity
27:07at the Hobart Zoo in Tasmania, where it cut a lonely figure.
27:11This incredible footage lives on,
27:13but sadly, thylacines didn't.
27:15They went extinct in 1936.
27:18The last one was left out in the cold
27:20and passed away due to neglect,
27:22just 59 days after the government
27:24had finally decided to protect the species.
27:27Jeez, that's awful.
27:29There have been occasional supposed sightings
27:32of the creature since the 1930s,
27:34but none of these have ever been confirmed.
27:36Action was taken far too late to save them,
27:38and researchers are determined to prevent
27:40such a tragic loss from happening again.
27:43In a wild twist, several organizations have even set out
27:46to investigate cloning the species.
27:48One such company is Colossal Biosciences,
27:51which have successfully extracted DNA
27:54from a preserved thylacine specimen.
27:56They aim to one day revive the Tassie tiger,
27:59return it to its homeland, and help it flourish again.
28:03I don't know about you guys,
28:04but I thoroughly hope they succeed.
28:06We killed him off, seems only fair
28:08that we bring him back, right?
28:12Perfectly preserved.
28:14Sometimes extinct animals can be seen in the flesh
28:18without the help of old footage.
28:19And no, you don't need to take a trip in the Tardis.
28:22See, in some extremely rare situations,
28:24animals become naturally mummified when they pass.
28:28This is when extreme cold, dryness, or a lack of oxygen
28:31prevent the normal decaying process from happening,
28:33and instead preserve the bodies incredibly well.
28:36Which is exactly what happened
28:38with one of these big boys, the Moa.
28:40This huge wingless bird could grow up to 12 feet tall
28:44and was native to New Zealand,
28:45where nine species roamed the country
28:48for thousands of years.
28:49Until humans arrived, of course.
28:51Yep, when Polynesian settlers turned up
28:54in the late 13th century, they needed to eat,
28:56and the giant birds proved easy meals.
28:59Completely unequipped to defend themselves
29:01from human attack, all nine species of Moa bird
29:03were wiped out by hunters around 600 years ago.
29:06Man, I wish I could have seen them.
29:09Well, I can, or at least parts of them.
29:11This is a mummified Moa foot,
29:13and I can't decide if it's more creepy or awesome.
29:16Either way, it's a remarkable glimpse
29:18at what this creature really looked like.
29:20The menacing claw was discovered in 1987
29:23by cave explorers in a New Zealand cavern
29:26with the skin and muscles still attached.
29:28And there's more.
29:29Check out this mummified head.
29:31Okay, this one definitely teeters more towards creepy,
29:34but it's still amazing.
29:35This specimen was supposedly sold
29:37to a New Zealand museum in 1943,
29:39though we don't know much more than that.
29:42But if birds aren't your thing,
29:43I've got something even more impressive for you,
29:45the woolly mammoth.
29:47Probably the most iconic ex-animal,
29:49second only to the T-Rex.
29:51Roaming the earth from around 300,000 years ago
29:54until just 3,900 years ago,
29:57mammoths were eventually felled
29:58by a combination of hunting and climate change.
30:01However, given that they lived during an ice age,
30:04when things were pretty darn cold,
30:05mummified mammoth remains are actually relatively common.
30:08With that said, meet Yuka,
30:10the most perfectly preserved woolly mammoth ever found.
30:13Wow.
30:15Discovered in Siberia in 2010,
30:17she's estimated to have been between six to eight years old
30:20when she passed some 39,000 years ago.
30:23She probably fell into water or got bogged down in a swamp
30:27and couldn't resurface,
30:28causing her entire body to freeze,
30:29after which it lay undisturbed for all this time.
30:33So if you wanna look as good as you do now
30:36for your 40,000th birthday, you know what to do.
30:40But what if old Yuka isn't actually as old as we think?
30:43What if she's so well-preserved
30:44because mammoths still walk the earth today?
30:47Like most extinct animals,
30:48there have been countless supposed sightings
30:50of both moas and mammoths over the years.
30:53This photo was posted on Reddit fairly recently,
30:57and the OP claimed it's an old pic
30:58taken by one of his family members
31:00and shows a hunter posing with a slain mammoth.
31:02But like all of these claims, it's almost definitely bogus.
31:06The dude's leg looks kinda wonky, right?
31:08And what about his complete lack of hands?
31:11Yeah, this is a poorly-generated AI pic
31:14with some filters applied to it to hide the imperfections
31:16and make it seem old.
31:18If mammoths walked the earth today,
31:20we'd definitely know about it.
31:22But that's not to say they'll never walk the earth again.
31:24Mummified animals are often excellent sources of DNA,
31:28and because we have such well-preserved specimens,
31:30both the moa and mammoth are prime candidates
31:33for resurrection via cloning.
31:35Hell, researchers were even able
31:36to extract flowing blood from Yuka's remains.
31:39Wow!
31:40Whether or not we'll ever be really able
31:42to resurrect these ancient creatures remains to be seen,
31:46but the idea sure is exciting.
31:48What do you think?
31:48Will we ever see woolly mammoths walk the earth again?
31:51And should we even be messing with such power?
31:54With that ethical quandary, I'll take my leave.
31:58Which of those extinct and not-so-extinct creatures
32:00did you find the most amazing?
32:02Are there any other long-gone lifeforms
32:04you wish you could see?
32:05I'm all ears, so until next time, thanks for watching.