- 6 days ago
Subscribe and chill with me while I explain the universe one strange fact at a time.
00:00 The Passenger Pigeon
01:36 The Great Auk
03:13 The Steller’s Sea Cow
04:41 The Thylacine
06:11 The DodoThe Dodo
07:42 The Irish Elk
09:26 The Moa
11:13 The Aurochs
12:41 The Elephant Bird
14:16 The Quagga
00:00 The Passenger Pigeon
01:36 The Great Auk
03:13 The Steller’s Sea Cow
04:41 The Thylacine
06:11 The DodoThe Dodo
07:42 The Irish Elk
09:26 The Moa
11:13 The Aurochs
12:41 The Elephant Bird
14:16 The Quagga
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LearningTranscript
00:00So, let's start.
00:01Number 10, the passenger pigeon.
00:04Not long ago, the skies of North America were filled with birds called passenger pigeon.
00:09They were once the most numerous birds on Earth.
00:13Early settlers wrote about flocks so large that they could block out the sun.
00:17When the birds moved across the sky, the sound of their wings could be heard for miles.
00:22Some flocks were estimated to contain billions of birds flying together.
00:26For centuries, the species seemed unstoppable.
00:30But during the 1800s, everything changed as cities grew across North America.
00:35People began hunting passenger pigeons in enormous numbers.
00:38They were easy targets because of how tightly they traveled in flocks.
00:43Hunters used large nets, guns, and even smoke to trap thousands at a time.
00:48Railroads and telegraph lines made the situation worse.
00:51Hunters could quickly learn where the birds were nesting and travel there in huge numbers.
00:56entire breeding colonies were wiped out in a matter of days.
01:00The pigeons depended on their massive flocks to survive.
01:03When the population started shrinking, it became harder for them to find mates and raise
01:08young successfully.
01:09By the early 1900s, the once endless flocks were gone.
01:13The final known passenger pigeon, a female named Martha the Passenger Pigeon, lived in captivity
01:19at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden.
01:22She died in 1914.
01:25In less than a century, a species that once filled the skies disappeared completely.
01:29It remains one of the most dramatic examples of how quickly human activity can erase even
01:34the most abundant animals.
01:36Number 9.
01:37The Great Auk.
01:38Along the cold coastlines of the North Atlantic once lived a strange seabird called the Great
01:44Auk.
01:44At first glance, it looked similar to a penguin.
01:47It had black and white feathers, a large beak, and short wings that were too small for flight.
01:53Instead of flying, the Great Auk was an excellent swimmer that hunted fish beneath the ocean surface.
01:59For thousands of years, the birds nested on rocky islands across the North Atlantic from
02:04Canada to Northern Europe.
02:06Their problem was simple.
02:07They were extremely easy to catch.
02:09Because Great Auk could not fly, hunters could simply walk up to them and capture them by hand.
02:16Sailors and fishermen quickly realized how valuable the birds were.
02:20Their feathers were used for pillows, their meat was eaten, and their oil was sometimes burned
02:25as fuel.
02:26Entire colonies were slaughtered.
02:28By the early 1800s, the remaining birds were scattered across only a few isolated islands.
02:34The species was already close to disappearing.
02:37Then collectors made the situation worse.
02:40Museums and private collectors wanted rare specimens, so hunters began searching for the
02:46last remaining birds.
02:47The final confirmed pair of Great Auk was killed in 1844 on a small island near Iceland.
02:53With that, the species vanished.
02:56Today, the Great Auk is often remembered as the original bird that inspired the name
03:01penguin.
03:02The penguins we know today live in the Southern Hemisphere, but early sailors used the same
03:07name because the birds looked so similar.
03:09Unfortunately, the original penguin was hunted until none were left.
03:13Number 8.
03:14The Stellar's Sea Cow.
03:15In the cold waters of the northern Pacific Ocean, once lived one of the largest marine mammals
03:21ever discovered by humans.
03:22It was called Stellar's Sea Cow.
03:24The animal was first described in 1741 by a naturalist named George Wilhelm Stellar, who
03:32encountered the species while exploring the waters near the Commander Islands.
03:36The sea cow was enormous.
03:38Some individuals grew over 9 meters long and weighed several tons.
03:42Despite their size, they were slow and gentle animals that spent their time grazing on seaweed
03:47in shallow coastal waters.
03:49They were also completely harmless.
03:51Stellar wrote that,
03:52the animals rarely tried to escape when humans approached.
03:55They moved slowly and often stayed close to the surface.
03:59For hunters, this made them extremely easy targets.
04:02Sailors who passed through the area quickly began hunting the animals for their meat and
04:07fat.
04:07The sea cows provided huge amounts of food which made them valuable for ships traveling long
04:12distances.
04:13But, the species had one major weakness, they reproduced very slowly.
04:18Because of this, the population could not recover from heavy hunting.
04:22Within just a few decades of being discovered by Europeans, the animals were almost completely
04:28gone.
04:28The last known Stellar's sea cow was killed in 1768, less than 30 years after scientists
04:34first described the species.
04:36It remains one of the fastest human-caused extinctions of a large animal ever recorded.
04:41Number 7, the thylacine.
04:43One of the strangest animals humans hunted out of existence was the thylacine, also known
04:48as the Tasmanian tiger.
04:49Despite the name, it was not a tiger and not even a cat.
04:53The thylacine was actually a marsupial, meaning it carried its young in a pouch like a kangaroo.
04:58But its body looked almost exactly like a dog, with stiff stripes across its back that made
05:03it look like a tiger.
05:05For thousands of years, the animal lived across Australia and the island of Tasmania.
05:10When European settlers arrived in the 1800s, the thylacine quickly gained a bad reputation.
05:16Farmers believed the animal was responsible for killing sheep and livestock.
05:20Whether this was always true is still debated, but the belief alone was enough to start a
05:25large-scale hunt.
05:27The government even introduced a bounty system.
05:30People were paid for every thylacine they killed.
05:33Hunters used traps, poison, and guns.
05:36Over time, the population collapsed.
05:38Habitat loss and disease likely made things even worse.
05:42By the early 1900s, sightings became rare.
05:45The final known thylacine lived in captivity at the Bomare Zoo.
05:49The animal died in 1936 after being accidentally locked outside its shelter during a cold night.
05:55Today, old black and white footage of the thylacine pacing inside its cage still exists.
06:00Watching it now feels strange, because the animal moves like something that should still
06:05be alive.
06:05Instead, it became one of the most famous examples of a predator humans pushed into extinction.
06:11Number 6.
06:12The dodo.
06:12Few extinct animals are as famous as the dodo, but the real story behind its disappearance
06:17is more complicated than many people realize.
06:20The dodo lived on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.
06:24With no natural predators on the island, the bird evolved in a very relaxed environment.
06:29Over time, it lost the ability to fly.
06:32The dodo became a large, ground-dwelling bird with strong legs, a big, curved beak, and a
06:38round body.
06:39It spent its time walking through forests and feeding on fruits and seeds.
06:44Everything changed in the late 1500s when European sailors began landing on the island.
06:50The birds had never encountered humans before.
06:53They showed almost no fear and were easy to capture.
06:56Sailors hunted them for food, sometimes killing large numbers during short stops, but the
07:02real damage came from animals that humans brought with them.
07:05Ships carried pigs, rats, and monkeys that quickly spread across the island.
07:11These animals raided dodo nests and ate their eggs, because the birds nested on the ground,
07:16they had little defense.
07:18Within only a few decades, the population collapsed.
07:21By the late 1600s, the dodo was gone.
07:24The strange part is that very few complete skeletons exist today.
07:30Most of what we know about the bird comes from scattered bones, drawings, and written
07:35descriptions from early sailors.
07:38The dodo disappeared so quickly that scientists barely had time to study it.
07:42Number five, the Irish elk.
07:45During the Ice Age, enormous deer-like creatures roamed across Europe and parts of Asia.
07:50One of the most impressive was the Irish elk, also known as the giant deer.
07:55Despite its name, the animal did not live only in Ireland, it lived across large areas of
07:59northern Eurasia.
08:01But many well-preserved fossils were discovered in Irish peat bogs, which is how the species
08:06got its famous name.
08:08The Irish elk was huge, males could stand about 2 meters tall at the shoulder, but the most incredible
08:14feature was their antlers.
08:16These antlers stretched up to 3.5 meters across, making them some of the largest antlers ever
08:22grown by any deer.
08:23They looked almost like enormous tree branches attached to the animal's head.
08:27For many years, scientists believed the species disappeared mainly because of climate change
08:32at the end of the Ice Age.
08:34As forests spread across Europe, the giant deer may have struggled to find enough open
08:38land and food.
08:39But evidence suggests that human hunting also played an important role.
08:44Early humans shared the same landscapes as the giant deer.
08:47The animals were large, slow to reproduce, and very valuable as a source of meat, skin,
08:53and bone.
08:54Archaeological sites show that humans hunted them regularly.
08:57Over time, a combination of environmental change and human pressure likely pushed the species
09:04past the point of recovery.
09:05Around 7,700 years ago, the last known populations disappeared.
09:11Today when museums display the massive antlers of the Irish elk, they often look almost unreal.
09:17Standing beneath them gives a sense of how enormous these animals truly were.
09:21It is hard to imagine creatures like that once walking across ancient landscapes that humans
09:26also shared.
09:27Number 4.
09:27The Moa.
09:28For thousands of years, the forests of New Zealand were home to one of the largest birds
09:33that ever lived.
09:34It was called the Moa.
09:36Unlike most large birds, the Moa had no wings at all, not even small ones.
09:41Its body was built entirely for life on the ground.
09:44Some species stood more than 3.5 meters tall when they stretched their necks upward, making
09:50them taller than many humans.
09:51Before people arrived, these giant birds had no natural predators.
09:55They wandered through forests and grasslands, feeding on leaves, fruits, and branches.
10:00But everything changed around the late 1200s, when the first Polynesian settlers arrived
10:05in New Zealand.
10:06These settlers who later became the Maori quickly discovered the enormous birds.
10:11For hunters, the Moa was an incredible source of food.
10:14A single animal could provide large amounts of meat, bones for tools, and feathers for clothing
10:20and decoration.
10:21Because the birds had never evolved alongside human hunters, they were slow and relatively
10:26easy to approach.
10:28Large hunting parties were able to kill many of them at once.
10:32Over time, Moa bones began appearing in large numbers at ancient cooking sites.
10:38Archaeologists have found piles of bones showing that entire groups of birds were hunted and eaten.
10:44The species also had another disadvantage.
10:47Moa reproduced slowly, laying only a small number of eggs.
10:51When humans began hunting them regularly, the population could not recover fast enough.
10:55Within only two or three centuries after humans arrived, the giant birds were gone.
11:00Their disappearance also caused another extinction.
11:03The host's eagle, the largest eagle known to have existed, depended heavily on Moa as prey.
11:09Once the giant birds vanished, the massive predator followed not long after.
11:14Number three.
11:15The aurochs.
11:15Long before modern cows existed, the wild ancestor of cattle roamed across Europe, Asia, and North
11:22Africa.
11:22This powerful animal was called the aurochs.
11:25The aurochs looked similar to modern cattle, but much larger and more intimidating.
11:30Bulls could stand nearly two meters tall at the shoulder, with long, forward-curving horns,
11:35and powerful bodies built for survival in wild landscapes.
11:39For early humans, the aurochs was both dangerous and valuable.
11:43Ancient cave paintings in places like Lasko Cave showed detailed images of these animals,
11:48proving that humans hunted them tens of thousands of years ago.
11:53The animals provided large amounts of meat, hides for clothing, and bones for tools.
11:58But hunting them was not easy.
12:00Aurochs were known to be aggressive and capable of defending themselves against predators.
12:05Over time, however, human populations grew.
12:08Forests were cleared for farmland, and the wild habitats of the aurochs began shrinking.
12:14Hunting pressure also increased.
12:16By the Middle Ages, the species had already disappeared from most of its original range.
12:21Only a few small populations remained in protected royal hunting forests in Eastern Europe.
12:26The final known aurochs lived in Poland.
12:28In 1627, the last recorded individual died in a forest called Jaktoruv Forest.
12:36With its disappearance, the wild ancestor of all modern cattle vanished from the earth.
12:41Number two, the elephant bird.
12:43On the island of Madagascar, there once lived a bird so large that early travelers struggled
12:48to believe it existed.
12:49It was called the elephant bird.
12:51Despite the name, it had nothing to do with elephants.
12:54The name likely came from legends about enormous eggs that people discovered across the island.
12:59Those stories turned out to be true.
13:02Elephant birds were among the largest birds ever to exist.
13:05Some species stood about 3 meters tall and weighed close to 500 kilograms.
13:10They were flightless birds with powerful legs and heavy bodies, but the most incredible feature
13:16was their eggs.
13:17Elephant bird eggs could hold over 150 times the volume of a chicken egg, making them the
13:23largest eggs laid by any known animal.
13:25For thousands of years, the birds lived across Madagascar with no major predators.
13:30Then, humans arrived on the island roughly 1,000 to 2,000 years ago.
13:36Archaeological evidence shows that people hunted the birds and collected their massive eggs
13:42for food.
13:43Even a single egg could feed several people.
13:45At the same time, forests were cleared for farming, which reduced the habitats where the
13:51birds could live and nest.
13:53Because elephant birds reproduced slowly, their population declined steadily.
13:58By around the 1600s, the giant birds had disappeared completely.
14:02Today, fragments of their enormous eggshells are still occasionally found buried in the
14:07sands of Madagascar.
14:08Holding one of those pieces gives a strange sense of scale, because it once belonged to
14:13a bird larger than almost any that exists today.
14:16Number 1.
14:17The Quagga.
14:18One of the strangest animals humans hunted to extinction looked almost like something
14:22unfinished.
14:23It was called the Quagga, a unique relative of the zebra that once lived across parts of
14:29South Africa.
14:30At first glance, the animal looked like a zebra in the front and a horse in the back.
14:35The head and neck had the familiar black and white stripes people associate with zebras,
14:40but as the stripes moved toward the body, they slowly faded away.
14:44By the time you reached the back half of the animal, the stripes were almost completely gone.
14:49The result was a creature that looked half zebra and half plain brown horse.
14:53For many years, people believed the Quagga was its own species.
14:57Today, scientists know it was actually a subspecies of the plain zebra.
15:02But its appearance made it one of the most distinctive animals in Africa.
15:07Unfortunately, that uniqueness did not protect it.
15:10During the 1800s, European settlers began spreading across southern Africa with large farms and livestock.
15:17To them, the Quagga was simply another wild animal competing with cattle and sheep for grass.
15:22Hunters began killing them in large numbers.
15:25Some were hunted for meat, others for their hides, and many were simply shot to clear grazing land.
15:31Because the animals lived in open grasslands and traveled in visible groups, they were easy targets.
15:36Over time, the population dropped quickly.
15:38By the late 1800s, Quaggas had almost completely disappeared from the wild.
15:43The final known individual lived in captivity at the Artis Royal Zoo.
15:47In 1883, that last Quagga died.
15:50The strange part is that people did not fully realize the animal was gone until years later.
15:55At the time, scientists had not carefully documented the species, so its extinction happened quietly.
16:01Today, the Quagga is remembered as one of the clearest reminders that an animal can disappear before people even fully
16:08understand what it was.
16:09Thank you for watching and sticking till the end.
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