10.Tilacine.
The carnivorous animal, also called the Tasmanian tiger and the Tasmanian wolf, was a marsupial that preyed on rodents and kangaroos mostly at night. Although tilatsin looked pretty tough, they were actually quite timid and trusting animals, and they paid the price for it - they were easy prey for hunters. In 1999, scientists attempted to clone a tylacine using the DNA of the animal's puppies, which were preserved in a museum. The attempt failed.
9.Quagga.
This subspecies of the burchell zebra, which lived in what is now South Africa, became extinct in the late 19th century. The quagga was widespread in a relatively limited area but then began to gradually become extinct 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 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.
8.The northern white rhinoceros.
As of March 19, 2018, only two females of this subspecies remain, making the northern white rhino functionally extinct. Both females belong to the Dvur Kralove Zoo in the Czech Republic, but live in the Ol Padgeta Nature Reserve in Kenya and are guarded 24 hours a day by armed gamekeepers. There, by the way, lived the last male, who died of old age at the age of 45. True, this story has a good ending. In the summer of 2019, one of the females gave birth to a healthy northern white rhino calf through IVF.
7.The Blue Acre.
The last male to live 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, is the main cause of extinction, but not the only one. African bees, nicknamed "killer bees," have occupied all the nesting cavities in the area and simply evicted the blue macaws from their favorite habitats.
6.The Wandering Pigeon
According to some estimates, the population of the traveling pigeon was in the millions or even billions when the first Europeans began to settle in the Americas. The traveling pigeon was an important food source for Native North Americans, but they hunted pigeons in humane ways and within reasonable limits. After colonization, hunting became more intense and sophisticated. Traveling pigeons were killed with such ease that they were not even considered feathered game. The last known bird died in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.
5.Orange Toad.
A small but devilishly colorful toad that lived in a limited area of the Costa Rican rainforest. It was first described in 1966, but was never seen again after 1989. After several unsuccessful attempts to locate the extinct toad in the 1990s, scientists began debating the possible causes of its extinction. It is believed that chytridiomycosis, a deadly skin disease, wiped out this toad population, which was already vulnerable due to its limited habitat.
4.The Zanzibar Leopard.
Endemic to the island of Unguja in the Zanzibar Archipelago, part of Tanzania. In the 20th century the conflict between the locals and the leopards on the island escalated, so that the image of leopards was demonized and extermination became deliberate. The last meeting of a scientist with a Zanzibar leopard took place in the early 1980s. Since then, there have been no credible sightings of it.
3.The West African Black Rhinoceros
This subspecies of black rhino has been officially declared extinct as of November 10, 2013. Like all other rhinos, it is the victim of a ridiculous superstition, based on nothing, about the miraculous power of the horn. In the 1970s, during the period of rapid growth of wealth in the oil monarchies of the Persian Gulf, many black rhinos were hunted for the fashion in these countries for daggers with horn handles, which were considered an obligatory attribute of a rich Arab. Nowadays, rhinoceros horn is in constant demand in Chinese medicine, although according to scientific data, it has no medicinal properties whatsoever.
2. the Javanese tiger
A subspecies of majestic cat that lived on the Indonesian island of Java. It is thought to have become extinct in the 1980s due to hunting and habitat destruction. First preconditions of subspecies extinction appeared since 1950s, when the number of tigers on Java was reduced to 25 individuals. By 1972, the number of Javanese tigers had decreased to seven in the Meru Vetiri Forest Reserve and, possibly, five more in other reserves. In 1979, only three individuals remained. The exact time of the subspecies' extinction remains unknown; it probably occurred in the mid-1980s.
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