The quagga, the passenger pigeon, the dodo, and the thylacine. What do all of these animals have in common? Unfortunately, these iconic creatures have all gone extinct in the last few hundred years.
You can imagine the surprise of the science community when they found out an animal that was thought to be extinct for over 60 years is actually alive and well! What is this sneaky animal? It's the Attenborough long-beaked echidna from New Guinea, named after the awesome science documentary narrator Sir David Attenborough.
The long-beaked echidna is a strange little animal, for sure. It's nocturnal and solitary, only meeting up with members of its species long enough to mate. It gets all of its nutrition from digging up earthworms, it balls itself up like a hedgehog when threatened, and it's a monotreme like the platypus, meaning it's an ultra-rare mammal that lays eggs.
Hailing from the Cyclops Mountains of New Guinea, the long-beaked echidna was never known for its huge population sizes. Even when the animal was declared its own species in 1961, only one specimen was ever actually collected. Scientists were pretty sure that habitat destruction and local hunting did the little echidna in, as none were ever seen since that initial encounter.
Fast forward to 2007, scientists started seeing clues that the Attenborough echidna wasn't long gone after all. Locals were talking about seeing the secretive creature walking around and finding "nose pokes," soil disturbances where the echidna would dig around for dinner, in the New Guinea forest floor.
Finally, in 2023, a group of scientists from Oxford University were hot on the trail. On the last day of their trip, armed with night vision video cameras, they got visual confirmation of the "extinct" echidna strolling about. Apparently, no one told him he wasn't supposed to be alive! 😂
According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a species is extinct when "there is no reasonable doubt that the last individual has died." This means there has been an extremely in-depth look at all the usual places a creature should be found, and the searchers have come up empty. The World Wildlife Federation estimates that 200 - 2,000 species go extinct each year. 😱
Before they're declared extinct, some species are categorized as "lost." A lost species hasn't been seen in the wild for 10 years. I was surprised to find out that organisms go from being "lost" to "rediscovered" more often than you might think. The graph below compares the number of species lost each decade to the number of species rediscovered.
And here's a breakdown of the different types of species that were lost and found between 2011 and 2020:
Here are a couple questions I might ask my learners about these graphs:
💡 What are the trends you see in lost and found species over time? Both lost and found species have increased over time. Overall, there are more lost species than found species each decade. There was a jump in the rate of found species after 1990.
💡 What could explain the trends you see? We might be tracking the lost animals better because we are concerned about extinction. We might communicate better now between countries to report on lost animals. Better technology like wireless cameras, satellites, and DNA testing might help rediscover animals. Social media spreads more information about animals so more people are able to look for missing animals.
💡 Can you think of reasons that amphibians and reptiles might have higher rates of being lost than birds and mammals? Amphibians are fragile organisms that spend their lives both in water and on land. Any disruption to either of these ecosystems, like water pH or ground cover, would harm the amphibian's ability to survive. Reptiles live in forests that are being cut down and are collected for the pet trade. Both reptiles and amphibians are frequently killed on roads. Reptiles and amphibians are not as cute and pretty as birds and mammals, so they get fewer protections. Birds and mammals are less secretive than reptiles and amphibians, so they are easier to find.
I guess the lesson we learn from the Attenborough long-beaked echidna is to keep looking for answers, even when it's tough - and if somebody tells you that you're supposed to be extinct, don't believe them. 😂
- Chris
graph data source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.17107
