re: Rare footage of extinct animals - a thread

Caspian tiger pictured in Northern Iran, circa 1940s. The Soviet army wiped out hundreds of these in the early 20th century.

There was a female Ivory billed in the Pearl River WMA over a decade ago.

That is one big cat!

They are gone and have been for a very long time. When you combine minimum viable population with a large flying creature that nests in trees, you come up with virtually zero chance they are around. The 1944 sighting was the end.

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occasional credible sightings persist. Some with videos. Some with distinctive recordings of calls.

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100% Pileated.

The only thing that would save big game in such a situation is that the predators (us) would be killing each other as fast as we would the prey.

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It’s hard for me to fathom how it’s possible to overhunt a bird species to extinction in such a short period of time when there were 5 billion of them.

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Their very nature made them highly susceptible to hunting (or over hunting). They nested in huge, unfathomably huge, communal groups as a means of predator defense. Because there were so many of them in these communal nesting areas they evolved to have just one chick (maybe two, but not likely) per clutch, and they left their fledglings much earlier than other bird species. Those fledglings, provided with all the food they would need at the nesting sites, fended for themselves until they were fully fledged.

Passenger Pigeons were a food source for Native Americans. They were harvested for both meat and oil. However, the young were not harvested as a practice.

When American settlers began their mass hunting of the Passenger Pigeon both adults and young were incredibly easy targets. A single blast of birdshot could take out a dozen or more in one of the giant migratory flocks. Netting was an efficient way to catch huge numbers, as their migratory paths were predictable. And, the young were dispatched easily on the communal nesting grounds. An entire generation of a particular communal flock could be wiped out in a day or two by just a few "hunters".

There are stories of railroad boxcars being packed to the brim with dead birds. The biggest challenge facing these hunters (as far as keeping the birds commercially viable as a food source) was keeping the massive amount of dead birds from spoiling.

The Passenger Pigeon was the perfect target for unscrupulous and unknowing "hunters", and conservationists realized the error way too late to prevent the extinction.

Passenger Pigeons simply would not (could not, really, due to centuries of evolution) mate and reproduce in small numbers. Their security in numbers was gone, and it would have taken a complete rewiring of that species evolution to change their mating habits. Captive breeding and subsequent reintroduction was never a viable option.

Their communal instincts protected them as a species from every predator on earth up until the ultimate apex predator learned to use it against them.

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We have dumbasses today who shoot whooping cranes and bald eagles just because they’re something to shoot at.

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It is definitely retarded to shoot a bald eagle. I hate those dumbasses, primarily because their eggs are so delicious.

There is a fun podcast called "How Many Geese?" that I like a lot. It is two British dudes talking weird and interesting animal and nature facts. The last episode of their most recent season dealt with endlings for certain species, lost and "found" species thought to be extinct, and efforts to find other species declared extinct. It is worth the listen.

Oh, they also try to figure out how many Bonobos (a chimp cousin that is prone to seeking peace and orgies) they could take in a fight.

How Many Geese? - Diet Chimp