In 2014, Marius, a perfectly healthy two-year-old giraffe, was killed and fed to the lions in Copenhagen Zoo. It caused an outcry at the time but, as a new Horizon documentary explains, it made perfect sense – and lifted the lid on something happening in zoos across the world, which they rarely admit to. Every […]
Tag: extinct animals
De-extinction Versus Wildlife Conservation
How possible is de-extinction anyway? Due to how degraded and incomplete most samples of DNA are it would seem to a take a long time to amass enough DNA to complete a full genetic sequence for an animal genome (the genetic data found in gamete cells that are used in reproduction). However, after many samples […]
13 year search for Taiwan’s top predator comes up empty-handed
After 13 years of searching for the Formosan clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa brachyura), once hopeful scientists say they believe the cat is likely extinct. For more than a decade scientists set up over 1,500 camera traps and scent traps in the mountains of Taiwan where they believed the cat may still be hiding out, only […]
Could the Tasmanian tiger be hiding out in New Guinea?
Many people still believe the Tasmanian tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus) survives in the wilds of Tasmania, even though the species was declared extinct over eighty years ago. Sightings and reports of the elusive carnivorous marsupial, which was the top predator on the island, pop-up almost as frequently as those of Bigfoot in North America, but to […]
New prehistoric animal named after Johnny Depp due to its ‘scissorhands’
Half a billion years after an arthropod with long triple claws roamed the shallow Cambrian seas, scientists have named it after Hollywood movie actor, Johnny Depp: Kooteninchela deppi. Depp, known for his versatility as an actor, played Edward Scissorhands—an artificial man with long scissors for hands—in a popular 1990 film. “When I first saw the […]
Humans killed over 10 percent of the world’s bird species when they colonized the Pacific Islands
Around 4,000 years ago intrepid Polynesian seafarers made their way into an untamed wilderness: the far-flung Pacific Islands. Over a thousands or so years, they rowed from one island to another, stepping on shores never yet seen by humans. While this vast colonization brought about a new era of human history, it also ended the […]