Extinction

“It’s Not a Dog, Wolf, or Tiger. It’s Actually a Marsupial?”

This is a collage I made (using www.photovisi.com) that shows a few pictures of the Tasmanian tiger before they went extinct.

            When you look at this creature you’re probably thinking a lot of things, like “what the hell is it?” because that’s exactly what I was wondering too. At first glance, you would probably think it was some type of dog/wolf or maybe even the mysterious chupacabra. I can assure you that it’s none of those things and you probably wouldn’t guess that it’s a marsupial either. But it is in fact a marsupial that has been extinct for almost 80 years now which is actually pretty recent as far as history goes. This is a learning experience for me too since I’ve never heard of this animal before and it lived on a completely different continent than my species does. We inhabit a much different habitat than this creature did as well. So I come back to my first question… “what is it?” It’s called a Tasmanian tiger (or Tasmanian wolf) and I’m about to find out what exactly it is.

            This animal called the Tasmanian tiger is actually very famous but also one of the least understood native animals of Tasmania, Australia. Much like other animals that I have blogged about, they were misunderstood so many people killed them out of fear. They also faced competition with other animals being introduced into their habitat like the domesticated dog. It only took about 100 years after the white humans settled to push the Tasmanian tiger close to extinction (http://www.dpiw.tas.gov.au/inter.nsf/webpages/bhan-53777b). Since they’re extinct, I’ve never seen one in a zoo or up close and personal in the wild so I had to look up their information. Although they have stripes like a tiger and a body that looks somewhat like a dog, they are actually carnivorous marsupials. Although they’re marsupials, they are distantly related to kangaroos and more closely related to a striped insect-eating animal called a numbat which looks kind of like a squirrel to me (http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/01/12/tasmanian-tiger-extinct.html). It’s hard to see what color they were since the only pictures I could find were in black and white, but they had brown fur with dark brown-black stripes towards the back half of their body. They were about 6 feet long, 2 feet tall, and they weighed up to about 60 pounds (http://www.dpiw.tas.gov.au/inter.nsf/webpages/bhan-53777b).

            Since they’re marsupials, the mothers would carry 2-4 babies in her pouch just like a kangaroo would. The difference is that the Tasmanian tiger’s pouch is rear-opening which is opposite of the forward-opening pouch that kangaroos have (http://www.naturalworlds.org/thylacine/introducing/what_is_thylacine_1.htm). As you can see from one of the pictures in the collage above, they had the ability to open their mouth/jaw extremely wide which is actually one of the widest of any mammal in history. By the way, that photo is completely real and not photoshopped. Crazy, right? If you look at me you can clearly tell that I’m a snow leopard, I’m covered in spots and I’m a big wild cat. But you look at the Tasmanian tiger and you don’t really know what you’re looking at. It’s like it was created by a bunch of different body parts from different animals, which I think is pretty cool and then it opens its mouth and looks like it could eat you! Strangely enough, it behaves really similarly to my species. They were shy, secretive, and avoided contact with humans just like I do. Despite its relation to the crazy Tasmanian devil, they had a “nervous temperament” and they typically gave up without a struggle when they were captured. Sadly many would die soon after that and the last known living Tasmanian tiger died in the Hobart Zoo in 1936 (http://www.dpiw.tas.gov.au/inter.nsf/webpages/bhan-53777b). It was that year, 1936, that the Tasmanian tiger was added to the “list of protected wildlife” but by then it was too late. In the many years before their extinction, they were mistreated and hunted for money. There were bounties put on their heads which destroyed their population and genetic diversity. Once they became rare, zoos around the world wanted to buy them and finally in 1986 they were declared extinct (http://www.dpiw.tas.gov.au/inter.nsf/webpages/bhan-53777b). But are they really extinct? Some speculate that there could be Tasmanian tigers out there hiding and avoiding all contact with humans. There have been hundreds of sightings and evidence found since their extinction that could prove that they still exist. I really hope that’s true because I want to see one for myself!

This is a YouTube collage-like video giving some history on the Tasmanian tiger with pictures and actual video footage of the Tasmanian tiger in captivity. 

1. “Mysterious Planet: Return of the Thylacine?” youtube.com. 22 May 2009. YouTube – Broadcast Yourself. 19 February 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-V-v_SGtnb0>.

            This is a YouTube video that gives some history on the Tasmanian tiger. There is some written information about their habitat which includes a map of where they lived, and several physical descriptions of the animal with pictures to show it. Towards the end there is actual video footage of the Tasmanian tiger in captivity. As a side note, “thylacine” is another common name for the Tasmanian tiger because it’s part of its scientific name “Thylacinus cynocephalus”.

            I liked this video because it compiled a lot of things about the Tasmanian tiger including pictures, video footage, and several descriptions of the animal. It also took into account that there have been many sightings of possible living Tasmanian tigers in the Tasmanian area. A suggestion when watching this is to turn the volume off because the music to the video is really creepy and doesn’t fit the mood that I want others to have while watching this.

2. “Tasmanian Tiger.” 23 June 2009. Native Plants & Animals- Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water, and Environment. 19 February 2012. <http://www.dpiw.tas.gov.au/inter.nsf/webpages/bhan-53777b>.

            This webpage is part of an Australian government website that gives detailed descriptions of the Tasmanian tiger including physical descriptions, breeding, diet, habitat, reasons for extinction, possible existence, and sightings and searches of the Tasmanian tiger. There was so much good information that I had to pick and choose what I actually wrote about in my blog. It was extremely helpful and it had some historical information about the Tasmanian tiger as well as several pictures.

            I used this webpage as a source for a lot of the information found in my blog. There was enough information on here to write another blog or two about the Tasmanian tiger so it made it easy for me to create a good posting. It had plenty of descriptions of the Tasmanian tiger and anything you wanted to learn about it could pretty much be found here. I especially liked the two timelines they had for “Why are they extinct?” and “Sightings and Searches” because it gave me a better understanding of how things happened.

3. “The Thylacine Museum- A Natural History of the Tasmanian Tiger.” 1999-2006. naturalworlds.org. 19 February 2012. <http://www.naturalworlds.org/thylacine/>.

            This website is called The Thylacine Museum and it’s full of information about the Tasmanian tiger and its history. There are subpages about the animal like “What is a Thylacine?”, its history, alleged sightings, anatomy, behavior, and much more. There are plenty of pictures and video clips as well. This website was also very helpful in writing my blog even though I didn’t use it as much as the other website.

            I liked this website a lot because it had so many sections about the Tasmanian tiger and seemingly endless information. A few cool things from this website are the many pictures of the Tasmanian tiger’s skull as well as side by side comparisons of other similar looking skulls. There are lots of pictures and video footage to show what the Tasmanian tiger looked like and how it behaved. I could basically find anything I wanted to know on this website too.

"It Looks Like a Zebra and a Horse"

 This is a collage (made using www.photovisi.com) showing the only photographed living Quagga in the London Zoo in the 1800's and a picture of Henry, the most Quagga-like foal, born in 2005 through The Quagga Project.

            This animal interested me for the same reasons the Tasmanian tiger (or Thylacine) did. I know nothing about it and it looks like a mix between two or more different types of animals. So one of the main questions I have is, “is it a horse or is it a zebra?” Maybe it’s a hybrid between a horse and a zebra or maybe it’s not even related to those two species but that’s what I want to find out. I want to find out what its origin is, when it existed, why it went extinct, and anything else I come across. Who knows, maybe one of my ancestors ran across one in the wild and killed it. I also chose this animal, called the Quagga, because of “The Quagga Project” that is working to re-introduce the species into existence using genetics and selective breeding. Selective breeding just means that humans pick specific individuals that look like the Quagga, and possibly have similar genetic information as the Quagga, to basically breed the species back from extinction. The Quagga, like the Tasmanian tiger, went extinct in the last 80-130 years so its extinction is fairly recent which makes it easier to find information on it as well as pictures or even videos in some cases.

            So what is the Quagga? The Quagga wasn’t a different zebra species, it was actually a subspecies of the Plains Zebra (which are mostly still around to this day). Since the Plains Zebra is still around it means that some of the Quagga’s genetic information is still present. In history, the word “Quagga” was mistakenly used for any kind of zebra until scientists started looking further into their DNA and found that they diverged from the Plains Zebra during the Ice Age which was around 120,000 to 290,000 years ago. This study also suggested that the Quagga was created because it was isolated, which allowed the Quagga to quickly evolve its body type and coloring (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/09/050928084511.htm). Speaking of its body type and coloring, the Quagga was striped on only the front half of its body. It had a light brown-caramel color on the upper half of its body while its belly and legs were more whitish (as you can see in my collage picture above, the picture on the left). The picture of the Quagga above (on the left) is the only living Quagga photographed which was taken at the London Zoo in 1870 before it went extinct. Only 13 years after that photo was taken, the last living Quagga died in 1883 at the Amsterdam Zoo (http://www.southafrica.info/about/animals/quagga.htm).

            The Quagga behaved like other species in the horse family by feeding on wild grasses which could have been a small cause of its extinction since grasslands were sparse in the Karoo (a region of South Africa) where Quaggas lived. But its main threat was aggressive hunting, the same threat as so many other endangered and extinct animals. Human settlers thought that the Quagga was just a pest (go figure) because it couldn’t be domesticated therefore it didn’t benefit them or seem useful. The Quagga was also seen as competition for their livestock like sheep and goats so they were ruthlessly hunted into extinction. Their meat and skin was used by humans until the Cape governor banned the hunting of the Quagga in 1886. Unfortunately it was too late by then since the last known living Quagga died 3 years earlier in the Amsterdam Zoo as I said earlier (http://www.southafrica.info/about/animals/quagga.htm). But the good news is that once scientists figured out that the Quagga was a subspecies of the Plains Zebra, they thought that they could breed the Quagga back from extinction. A German man named Reinhold Rau had this very thought in 1969 when he became interested in the Quagga after he had the duty of re-mounting one in a South African museum. He collected dried (and dead) tissue from this mounted Quagga and a couple of other ones to investigate. This is when he found that the Quagga could possibly be re-born through selective breeding and this is how the Quagga Project was founded (http://www.quaggaproject.org/quagga-Reinhold-Rau.htm). This project is attempting to selectively breed a population of Plains Zebras to create a similar or identical Quagga population to the ones that went extinct over 100 years ago. They have actually been somewhat successful because in January 2005, a third-generation foal named Henry was born through the project. He is the Quagga Project’s most Quagga-like animal so far and I’ve included a picture of him below!

 This is a picture of Henry, the most Quagga-like animal born so far in the Quagga Project. As you can see he still looks a bit different than the extinct Quagga but there are obviously many similarities too so there's still hope!

1. Yale University. "How A Zebra Lost Its Stripes: Rapid Evolution Of The Quagga." ScienceDaily. 28 September 2005. Web. 24 February 2012. <http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/09/050928084511.htm>.

            This is an online article from ScienceDaily about the evolution of the Quagga. It describes how the Quagga descended from the Plains Zebra and developed its distinct body type and coloring. The article is brief but mostly focuses on the DNA and genetic background of the Quagga. There is also a picture comparing the living zebra’s to the extinct Quagga which makes it easy to see how they are similar and different to each other.

            There wasn’t much to this article but I thought the information was helpful because it gave a possible explanation for how the Quagga descended from the Plains Zebra. It also stated how the Quagga species “opened the field of ancient DNA studies on extinct animals” which I think is pretty important. The research team mentioned in this article used specimens, including the only skeleton in museums, of Quaggas from museums to compare the mitochondrial DNA markers and learn more about the creation of the Quagga.

2. “Bringing back the quagga.” SouthAfrica.info- Gateway to the Nation. 3 October 2006. Web. 24 February 2012. < http://www.southafrica.info/about/animals/quagga.htm>.

            This is a website that has a lot of information about South Africa, including animals and plants, which is how I found a subpage about the Quagga on it. It gives many descriptions of the Quagga and reasons for why it went extinct. There is also a brief section about Reinhold Rau who basically started the whole project and research of the Quagga. It also mentions the Quagga Project for breeding new Quaggas and the birth of Henry in 2005. There are a few pictures too that show the extinct Quaggas versus the second generation zebras that are less striped and Henry, the third-generation foal.

            I cited this website a lot because it had a lot of useful information that I could use in my blog posting. It gave a lot of background history on the Quagga including where it lived, when it went extinct, its physical characteristics, and how the Quagga Project started with Reinhold’s curiosity. I liked how it ended by talking about the Quagga Project and new discoveries like Henry’s birth in 2005. It also had a lot of pictures that are helpful in seeing the difference between zebras, the extinct Quagga, and the selectively bred Quaggas like Henry.

3. “The Quagga Project South Africa- The Quagga Revival.” Quaggaproject.org. February 2011. Web. 24 February 2012. < http://www.quaggaproject.org/>.

            This is the official website for the Quagga Project of South Africa. There are many useful subpages on this website like “What is a Quagga?”, a description of the project, their objectives, history on the founder, FAQ about the Quagga, and a large photo gallery of the project’s efforts. I especially enjoyed the “Latest Quagga News” section that gives updates over the years of new advancements in the project.

            This website is pretty much as good as it gets when it comes to useful sources. Since it’s the Quagga Project’s official website, it has everything Quagga related on it. There is an in-depth description of what a Quagga is, how the name “Quagga” originated, why the Quagga went extinct and how it’s related to other zebras, and even a small section about criticisms of the project. The large photo gallery was fun to look at so you can see what the project is actually doing.

“The Goddess of the Yangtze”

These are a couple of pictures I found on Google Images of the Baiji river dolphin. You can see their grayish/white color and that their fin looks like a little flag (which is why they are sometimes called the white-flag dolphin). Why would we push this shy, delicate creature to the brink of extinction.

           What do you think of when you see a fin coasting just above the water’s surface? That it’s a dolphin of course! If I was near the Yangtze River in China I would hope that the fin was a Chinese river dolphin which is also known as the Yangtze River dolphin, baiji, white-flag dolphin, and white-fin dolphin (http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/species/mammals/cetaceans/chineseriverdolphin.htm). You’re probably wondering why I would want it to be that dolphin… well, that’s because the Baiji river dolphin is “functionally extinct”. So what exactly does “functionally extinct” mean and why is the Baiji river dolphin put into this category? I chose to write about this dolphin because I know nothing about it and it has been considered extinct (kind of) since around 2006 which is very recent. Also, I haven’t chosen any marine animals to write about yet and I think dolphins are beautiful creatures. So I want to know… why they are “functionally extinct” and how did they get that way?

            The Baiji dolphin looks similar to other dolphins because of its pale blue/gray/white color. Little information is known about them and their behavior but they are a very gentle, shy, and delicate freshwater creature. They have been known as the “Goddess of the Yangtze” by fisherman in China that saw them as their goddess of protection. They have slightly smaller eyes than saltwater (ocean) dolphins and they are usually around 8 feet long and 500 pounds. In earlier history, just like other river dolphins, the Baiji dolphin’s ancestors lived in the ocean. Over time, the ocean-level lowered so the dolphin transitioned to freshwater and evolved into the Baiji or Yangtze river dolphin. Since the Yangtze River is very murky and the dolphin is nearly blind, they use underwater sound to communicate and see where they’re going (http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/species/mammals/cetaceans/chineseriverdolphin.htm). So I refer back to my earlier question, what does it mean when an animal is considered “functionally extinct”? What this basically means is that the animal’s population is very low in numbers and that small number of animals can’t repopulate the entire species alone (because of inbreeding and loss of diversity).

            The Baiji dolphin was considered functionally extinct after a group of scientists went on a six-week search and found no sign of the dolphin in 2006. A scientist from the search, August Pfluger, said that “if there are any Baiji left in the river, they won’t have any chance of survival”. He also said that it’s possible they could have missed a couple of dolphins during the trip but that they were functionally extinct (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/12/061214-dolphin-extinct.html). If his team is right, the dolphins will be the first large aquatic mammal to go extinct since the 1950’s when the Caribbean monk seal went extinct. It doesn’t help when the Yangtze River has turned into an industrial and economic playground for humans. The river suffers from pollution and there are always ships travelling on the water. Add in overfishing, dams, and habitat destruction and you can easily cause a species to go extinct. So yet again, the humans force us animals from our natural habitat and into extinction.

1. Lovgren, Stefan. "China's Rare River Dolphin Now Extinct, Experts Announce." National Geographic. National Geographic Society, 2006. Web. 12 Mar 2012. <http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/12/061214-dolphin-extinct.html>. 

            This is an article from National Geographic’s website describing the (somewhat) extinction of the Baiji dolphin in 2006. It gives some of the dolphin’s characteristics and background information as well. The scientific team that searched for the dolphins, with no success, was mentioned in the article. The man who financed the expedition, August Pfluger, was interviewed over the phone and talked about the results of their trip.

            Although this article didn’t have a lot of detail about the dolphin itself, it was very helpful because it mentioned details about August Pfluger’s expedition. This expedition was very important because it allowed the scientists to determine if the dolphin was extinct or not. Ultimately they discovered that the dolphin is functionally extinct and that its chances of survival are very unlikely. The article also gives some reasons for why the dolphin is going extinct.

2. "Chinese River Dolphin / Baiji /Yangtze River Dolphin." NOAA Office of Protected Resources. NOAA, 2012. Web. 12 Mar 2012. <http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/species/mammals/cetaceans/chineseriverdolphin.htm>. 

            This article from a government website had a lot of detailed information about the dolphin like its characteristics, history, and habitat. It also had other information about the dolphin like its taxonomy, physical description, behavior, diet, and mating habits. Most importantly it talked about the many threats that the dolphins face as well as conservation efforts that have been in effect since the 1980’s.

            This website was extremely helpful for me since I didn’t know anything about the Baiji dolphin. It listed plenty of physical descriptions and habits of the dolphin that were useful for my blog posting. I liked that it gave a detailed history of the dolphin and how it became a freshwater dolphin. Also, it mentioned the continuous decline in the dolphin’s population over the years and August Pfluger’s expedition. It included a lot of reasons for why the dolphin is going extinct and conservation efforts that have been taken. These things are critical to learn so this tragedy can be prevented for other species and possibly for the Baiji dolphin itself.

3. World Wildlife Fund. "Baiji Dolphin Previously Thought Extinct Spotted In The Yangtze River." ScienceDaily, 31 Aug. 2007. Web. 12 Mar. 2012. < http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070831123429.htm>.

            This is an article written in 2007, one year after Pfluger and his team were unsuccessful, by ScienceDaily about a possible Baiji dolphin sighting. A local Chinese man filmed a large white colored marine mammal with his digital camera. A leading scientist in Baiji study, Professor Wang Ding, confirmed it to be the Baiji dolphin. This was the first sighting of a Baiji since the unsuccessful expedition in 2006.

            This sighting of the dolphin was significant because it gives us hope that they can still be protected from extinction. The World Wildlife Fund saw this as an opportunity to take action and protect the dolphins. It was also significant because it wasn’t just a hoax or mistaken sighting because a Baiji scientist confirmed the sighting. The WWF suggests that the dolphin could be brought back from the brink of extinction, like other species have, through “intensive conservation efforts”. This could be the light at the end of the tunnel.