What do recently extinct animal species look like?

Unfortunately, due to human intervention, the Earth is slowly losing various animal species. We’re sorry and we show you what recently extinct animals looked like.

Iberian ibex

The Iberian ibex was officially extinct in 2000, making it the only animal to become extinct twice. It was “resurrected” almost a decade later, in 2009. Using DNA from preserved epidermal samples, scientists created a clone of a female Iberian ibex that could survive pregnancy and even birth before dying from lung deformation shortly afterwards.

Reason for extinction: Intensive hunting in the 19th century.

marsupial wolf

The thylacine, a predator also known as the Tasmanian tiger and marsupial wolf, was a nocturnal animal that hunted rodents and kangaroos. Although thylacines looked fierce, they were actually quite shy and could be “caught without a fight,” according to LiveScience. Reports of sightings of thylacines were so frequent over the past century that they led to an investigation of the status of their existence.

Reason for extinction: Dingoes are believed to be a threat to the thylacine as well as overhunting by humans.

passenger pigeon

When the first Europeans began settling the Americas, the passenger pigeon population was estimated in the millions, perhaps billions. MentalFloss reports that in the late 1800s, Wisconsin was home to the largest known nesting site.

Reason for extinction: People hunted and ate the pigeon until extinction, and the last known bird died in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.

Quagga

The quagga was native to Southern Africa and became extinct in the late 19th century. For a long time, the quagga was considered an independent species until it was discovered that it was closely related to the plains zebra and was actually a subspecies of it. Quaggas literally looked like a mixture of two animals: a zebra in front and a horse in the back, thanks to their characteristic stripes.

Reason for extinction: People hunted the swamps until they were completely destroyed.

Paulie

Native to Maui, Hawaii, the pouli, or black-faced honey plant, was only discovered in the 1970s. Birds lived on the southwestern slope of the Haleakala volcano. But the population declined rapidly, and by 1997 there were only three known policies remaining. Efforts to breed the remaining birds failed, and seven years later the species was officially declared extinct.

Reason for extinction: Habitat loss, disease, predators and the decline of native tree snails, which are a food source.

Abingdon elephant tortoise

These Pinta Island turtles were present when Darwin visited the Galapagos in 1835. Unfortunately, a male named Lonesome George was the last purebred of this subspecies and passed away in 2015.

Reason for extinction: Goats brought to Pinta Island by humans destroying their habitat, mice preying on young turtles (also introduced by humans), and humans killing the turtles for their meat.

Schomburgk’s deer

The Schomburgk deer (native to Thailand) is named after German-born explorer Sir Robert H. Schomburgk. Some scientists believe that a small number of these deer may still exist in the wild, although they were officially declared extinct in 2006 and the last known moose was reportedly killed in captivity in 1938.

Reason for extinction: Schomburgk’s deer were hunted by local tigers and leopards, as well as by humans. To date, only one deer head is known, located in the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.