Extinction V: Modern Extinctions

When many people hear the word "extinction" they often think of something that happened in the distant past, such as the extinction of the dinosaurs. (Be sure to read my article "Extinction II: The Cretaceous Extinction". Unfortunately, however, many species have gone extinct in recent times, many within the last 100 years.

One of the more famous recent extinctions is the dodo. The dodo was a turkey-sized flightless bird that went extinct around 1681. It lived in rainforests on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean (near the island of Madagascar, off the southeastern coast of Africa). The dodo had no natural predators on Mauritus until humans arrived; sailors hunted the dodo for food and ate its eggs, they also introduced dogs and other animals which preyed on the dodo and its eggs.

The passenger pigeon was a bird that lived in the eastern half of North America. Early European settlers of North America found the passenger pigoen to be an easy source of food. Large numbers of the pigeon were killed by professional pigeon hunters. By 1880 the decline in numbers was so obvious that attempts were made to breed the passenger pigeon in captivity without success. The last passenger pigeon died in the Cincinnati Zoological Garden in 1914.

The Carolina parakeet was the only parrot native to North America. It fed on seeds, and when large numbers of them began feeding on fruit and grain crops, they were subjected to eradication as an agricultural pest. Deforestation further decreased its numbers. Like the passenger pigeon, it was already rare by the mid 1880s. The last flock was seen in 1920 in Florida.

The Tasmanian wolf (also called the Tasmanian tiger-wolf) was a marsupial that lived in Australia. Like the dodo, it lived on an island and had no natural predators. When humans settled Australia, however, they pushed the Tasmanian wolf into a much smaller habitat, and hunted it when it preyed on their livestock. Additionaly, the introduction of many non-native placental mammals such as the dingo (about 4,000 to 5,000 years ago), competed with the Tasmanian wolf in mainland Australia, and also decreased their numbers. The last Tasmanian wolf died in captivity in 1936.

These are only a few of the animals that have gone extinct within historical times. Many other animals have gone extinct due to human influences, either through hunting, destruction of habitat, disease, and the introduction of non-native species. Many species of plants, animals, and insects go extinct without even being known to science. Is the large number of species that have gone extinct in recent times or a in danger of extinction a sign that we are currently in the middle of a mass extinction event? Remember that extinctions do not occur suddenly, it can take years or even centuries for a species to go from abundant to endangered to extinct.

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