Many animals go extinct because their environments change; others experience extinction from sickness. However, some animals are unfortunate enough to be hunted to extinction by humans. These 10 animals no longer exist thanks to us, the humans. Here, we remember them below.
Number Ten: Tasmanian Tiger. Extinct since 1936, the Tasmanian tiger was a threat to farmers because it would hunt their sheep, so to fight it, farmers began hunting it. It was trapped and poisoned for government bounties and eventually went extinct because of this.
Number Nine: Woolly Mammoth. The woolly mammoth roamed the earth for 250,000 years before going extinct. A recent study revealed that human hunting was the straw that broke the camels’ – or woolly mammoth’s – back, as a species.
Number Eight: Dodo Bird. The Dodo birds lived for centuries undisturbed, but once they were discovered by humans, they couldn’t hide. The flightless birds went extinct as a result of human hunting around the year 1681.
Number Seven: Stellar’s Sea Cow. This seal-like creature was hunted for its meat and fat, but humans went overboard in hunting it. It was hunted at more than seven times the sustainable limit and entered extinction in the year 1768.
Number Six: Passenger Pigeon. There used to be billions of passenger pigeons roaming the earth, but now there are none. Due to deforestation and over-hunting, the passenger pigeon went extinct in 1914.
Number Five: Bubal Hartebeest. A species of antelope, the bubal hartebeest was hunted for its meat. Unfortunately, the species could not cope with human hunting and entered extinction around 1954.
Number Four: Javan Tiger. During the 19th century, the Javan tiger was king of the Indonesian island of Java. Humans eventually overtook the tiger’s environment and cleared out everything on which the tigers depended.
Number Three: Zanzibar Leopard. Extinct since the 1990s, the Zanzibar leopard was a subspecies of leopard that only lived in a part of Tanzania. The leopard was an unfortunate victim of natives who believed the leopards were related to witches who wanted to scare other natives.
Number Two: Pyrenean Ibex. The last Pyrenean Ibex was killed by a tree, but the main force in driving this species to extinction was humans. They were hunted prolifically throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.
Number One: Western Black Rhino. Extinct since just 2011, the Western Black Rhino was killed for its horns, which are incredibly valuable. It was this desire to seek out horns that led to the rhino’s extinction.
