Back from the Dead!

extinction have been greatly exaggerated. I'm joined today by a very special guest who has traveled the world looking for quote unquote extinct creatures. Then we'll talk about some animals who truly are extinct, we think, and other creatures who we hope to bring back through mad science. Discover this and more as we answer the angel question, is that a giant tooth in your face? Patrick? Are you just happy to see me? How do we know when an

animal goes extinct? The truth is we don't. Obviously, we'd probably notice if a giant ground floth was hiding out in the Hollywood Hills. But sometimes animals can be more elusive in dense forests, remote wilderness, deep in the oceans. Lurk animals we thought were long dead but may still be kicking. Take for instance, the wonder Why tree kangaroo of Indonesia who hadn't been sighted for ninety years and

was presumed extinct. Naturalist Michael Smith, who was looking for rare flowers, happened upon this find and snapped a photo of the reddish, brown, dog sized tree dwelling marsupial with a cute quaw like nose in a thick fluffy tail. Because this adorable critter is believed to be restricted to a small remote area of montane forests in New Guinea and may have a small population, it's no wonder it

has gotten unnoticed for so long. Stumbling upon the rarest thought to be extinct creatures of the world may be an incredible, happy accident. But how do you become a biodiversity private detective tracking down ghosts of species path Joining me to answer that question is outdoor adventure biologist and post of the Animal Planet show Extinct or Alive for us Galante. Welcome, Thank you, thanks for having me. I am incredibly excited to have you on good I'm excited

to be here. So first I just want to give people an understanding of what you do. What's your show about what's your mission as you travel the world getting into all sorts of interesting situations. Yeah. Sure things. So, first of all, I'm not a typical TV person by any means. In fact, I'm very little interest in TV. I am a wildlife biologist and a tracker. Um. I

grew up in the southern African bush of Zimbabwe. I spent my childhood working with rare and endangered wildlife, then went to school for that, and then continued to pursue that until I landed in the job of it now, which is traveling the world searching for animals that have been deemed extinct. I believe wrongfully, and we've had some major successes and we have incredible adventures all along the way. So what started your interest in biology and biodiversity. I

know you had a really interesting childhood. I did. Yeah. So I was the son of safari business owners in Zimbabwe, Africa. UM. I grew up barefoot on the land in the bush. Um you know, to this day, I remember my first time putting on a pair of shoes, which I don't know how many kids can say that. I was about six um and so yeah, I've just always been surrounded by wildlife, and you know, you know that feeling when you're a little kid and you flip over a log

and you see an earthworm. You're like, oh my god, look at that earthworm. It's so cool, it's so interesting. It's slimy and slithery. Well, most people grow out of that. I grew worse. I grew into it, you know where. I wanted to know everything about that earthworm? What makes a tick? Where does it go once it disappears from under the log? Who's eating it? Who's it eating? You know, so on and so forth, and so I just decided at a very young age that I would always pursue wildlife.

I didn't know it would land me in the career i'm in now, or have the specialty that it does. But I just always been fascinated by wild animals. So why did you decide to look into to animals who are thought to be extinct or are near extinct. That's

a great question. I mean, you know, growing up where I grew up in Zimbabwe, because the country went through such terrible political turmoil, I first handedly saw animals disappearing from the bush that I had loved, and I knew how horrific It was um on a on a mass scale, you know, seeing them disappear, and I also saw how elusive and clever they could be. Where I grew up on our farm, we used to have a leopard that would come and frequent and actually steal some of our livestock.

But everyone in our immediate area said leopards hadn't been in that part of Zimbabwe for for thirty years. However, I caught multiple glimpses of this leopard, so I knew beyond any doubt that this animal was, you know, the world champ of Hide and Seek, you know, a master of cryptic camouflage, and that there was a leopard there. And I think little instances like that have always driven

this fascination. But I think on a bigger scale, you know, it the world's a big place and there's a lot of places to hide, and just because one scientist or group of scientists haven't seen something in a long time doesn't necessarily mean it's extinct. Yeah, when you think about the scale of our earth, especially when you look at the forests and oceans, it's there's a lot of places that we haven't gotten our grubby little hands on yet. Definitely, thankfully.

I mean, this is a less impressive anecdote, but I have a fish tank from my childhood. I've always loved taking care of fish. And my mom was pretty sure since the last time I had bought any fish was when I was in high school, that all the fish were dead. And she's like, well, we've got this empty fish tank, just full of gross water. I think we're going to get rid of it. I said, well, you know, empty it out. I'll take the fish tank to my new place and I'll restart up the fish tank it.

So she did that and I took it and the bottom was kind of it wasn't completely drives a little murky, and I started emptying out some of the rocks to clean it out, and there are these two coolie loaches, which is a type of fish, just still in in. It's like these must be ancient, first of all, like over a decade old, and they survived for I think a month without any food and with about two inches of water, maybe one inch of water. It's so it's I believe it. I believe if a coolie loach can

do it, I think most animals can do it. And think of that scale, you know, you're talking about a two foot long fish tank. Yeah, in in plain site. Yeah yeah, so uh yeah. Just imagine I don't know, twenty billion of those fish tanks, and that's about the Earth maybe. And I think, you know, the thing is what we do, and I say we because I have to credit my team as well and myself, is it's more than just about the animals. Certainly, nobody wants to

downplay the severity of extinction. It's incredibly topical, and it's incredibly important, and it's sad, but it's a It's more than just about those two loaches in the bottom of the town bank, or about the tree kangaroo that you mentioned, or some of the animals that we work on. It's about showing the world and the reason I love the

media of television that I get to work in. It's about showing the world these incredible ecosystems and habitats that do still exist and all of the animals that occupy them currently and why they're worth saving. I mean, I really enjoyed that I watched the show, and I love, first of all, I love the scene where your camp gets invaded by bees. I'm sure you didn't. I'm sure you didn't enjoy it at the time. I'm sorry for

enjoying your suffering, but it is pretty astounding. I love that they decided to make a home out of one of your crew members shirts. Just overnight, they they had almost completely colonized that shirt. Uh. It's it's incredible because it's nature sometimes moves so quickly. They just felt right at home. As you guys were sleeping, obviously a bit of a problem for you. You got stung up quite a bit. Uh. And also just as you were, you were looking for the Dracula monkey. Uh. That's also called

the Miller's Grizzled Linger. Correct, and you just happened upon that incredible snake. What was that called the mangrove cat snake. Yes, this huge snake, beautiful bright yellow and black stripes. Uh. Venomous, but not really that doesn't necessarily correc re fang so hard to inject the venom, but still not something you want to do, something you want to like tease pretty much exactly right. But yeah, so you're you're just like, well, here's the snake. Well, you know, I'm I'm like a

kid in some regards. And what I mean by that is I just helped myself. Um, even though I'm out there searching for a Miller's grizzled Langer and seeing, you know, an eight nine ft long mangrove cat snake has nothing to do with finding the monkey. That's a species. And there's a lot of these species that I've wanted to encounter in the wild my entire life. I've seen them in the pet trade, I've read about them in books.

You know, I'm very familiar with them, and so to be able to see one and work with it and feel it and encounter in its natural habitat, it's just I lose all concepts of everything else going on, and I'm so smitten by this gorgeous creature in front of me that I kind of forget why I'm even there. Yeah, I can relate, although I'm not going around holding snakes, But I do love to torture my friends by I find a cool insect and I pick it up, and it's like, look at this huge insect, and please go away,

stop putting that in my face. Well, my friends are the opposite. They're like, oh yeah, let me see it next put it in my face. So what's been You're like, You're probably pretty used to seeing. I mean not I'm sure you don't get tired of it, but you're you've grown accustomed to seeing pretty incredible sites. But what's something that has really caught you off guard on your adventures,

like your most jaw dropping h sighting or adventure. Good question, You know, there's a lot, and I think it depends on what uh what capacity you're speaking to. Uh some of we. I've seen horrific things that have shocked me to my core, such as witnessing the grind where they slaughter whales in the Faroe Islands. And at the same time, the Faroe Islands is one of the most strikingly beautiful scenic places. It's beyond anything in Avatar or Star Wars

or anything that our imagination can even make up. It is so incredibly beautiful. And that's in one location. I had both of those experiences, and and that's just, you know, that's a micro example of what happens regularly. I go to these amazing places, and sometimes I see just the worst habitat destruction or wildlife cruelty, and yet they're just such there's such beauty within them. Still, so it's it's

hard to really define one. I mean, there are there are many places that are you know, not that beautiful, not that great, and then some of them that are just so striking. I think that's a big theme that we keep touching on on this show, which is we often escape into these fantasy worlds like Star Wars and uh An Avatar, and I think it's important to remember that we actually do of in a planet that has things that are just as if not more spectacular as the you know, million dollars c g I that is

on your screen. And so one of my favorite moments actually was it just loved the creativity of how you put you nailed a dog brush to a treaty to capture uh fur, and I just that came across as something which it wouldn't have ever occurred to me, like, oh, yeah, I mean that's a that's a simple kind of little

fur trap to get get some genetic material. Uh. Are there any examples of like when you've had to get really creative or kind of improv a bit to be able to find an animal or yes, Oh my goodness, I don't even know where to begin. So one of the fun things about what we do is there is no formula for it, right if you there's no handbook on how to find extinct animals because until I started

doing and it wasn't a thing, right. Um, And so you know, we have the luxury of yes, we follow scientific protocols, but we also incorporate hunting technologies, military grade thermal optics and drones, our own imagination, creativity, things like the dog brushes from Peco, which I've been carrying around in that pelican for about three years, knowing that at some point I'm gonna need him for a fur trap.

And then it all clicked in Borneo. But um, you know, a great, a great example of something that that worked, that was totally a concoction of our imagination, but you know, grounded in scientific merit was the meat tree. Okay, and let me explain the meat tree. So we're in Zanzibar, off the eastern coast of Africa looking for a leopard deemed extinct twenty five years prior, and this creature hasn't been seen. However, locals are reporting that it could still

be there. In fact, they're even saying the witch doctors used them to do evil bidding. There's a whole bunch of lore and culture associated and we're striking out left and right. You know, sometimes I get little clues that this animal could still be here because you know, this thing is happening or that thing's happening. But in this instance,

we're literally just kiking out. We're not getting anything. So, because Zandy Bar is such a densely populated island, for a change, we weren't just staying intense in the middle of the bush the whole time. We were actually going to a hotel at night. So my producer and I are sitting in our hotel room feeling super deflated. We haven't had any successes with regards to finding this cat whatsoever. And he's telling me the story about how his cat is just obsessed with this like little toy tree that

he has right where. He's got all these toys dangling from a piece of driftwood or something like those cat trees exactly to run around and scratch, and they have a little dangly balls and things exactly. So I think he's describing this to me, and all of a sudden I turned him and I go, Patrick met tree. He says, what tells a meat tree for us? And I go, So let's make a giant cat toy out of meat. You know, we know that leopards and old cats for

that matter, love these dangly toys. Right. We know they have a decent sense of smell, not the best but good. They have great visual responses. Let's go to the Let's go to the market tomorrow morning. Let's buy two hundred pounds of goat beef, you know, any meat that we can get, and go back into Josanni, the national forest where we've been working and make a make a giant cat toy. And we did this right, and it's it's

the most ridiculous. If I told my advisors going you know, my old academic advisors going into the field, that I was going to make a meat tree to find an extinct leopard, they I think they'd kick me out of school. But anyway, we go and we buy this meat, and we go back into Josanni and we start hanging all these dangly bits of goat head and foot and meat

and everything on this fallen over tree. And sure enough, two days later we checked trail cameras and we uncovered footage of a leopard that hasn't been seen in twenty five years. It's amazing. Now, I do want to caution our listeners not to go to www Dot meat tree dot com. That's not going to be what you're hoping. It's not going to be a leopard playing. Um, but that is that is incredible. I love how big cats are. Basically they are literally just big cats exactly right, uh

quote unquote, domesticated cats. The only reason they don't kill us is they're small, and they are the same behavior as they They love to play, and it's it's pretty incredible. So I want to talk about a couple of the animals that were thought to be extinct that you've rediscovered. So first, did you want to talk about the Fernandina tortoise that I think you found under a pile of leaves?

Pretty much? Yeah? Pretty much? Um, yeah, with pleasure. You want me to just tell the story, Yeah, yeah sure. So you know when we, as I said, what we do is travel the world looking for evidence that animals believed extinct may still be out there. The reason that we do this, the overall arcing reason is for conservation. Of course, once an animals declared extinct, all funding drives up for it. Right, who's going to pay to preserve

something that doesn't exist any longer. So we do this in the hopes that if we find something, we can preserve not just the species and bring it back from the brink, but also the habitat in which it exists. So that's my that's my little spiel pitch on what we do. But I say all that because when it came to the Fernandina Island tortoise, we had an animal that wasn't necessarily checking all of our boxes. And what I mean by that is we have a we have

a very we have a checklist of variables. Right, who's seeing the animal, when was it declared extinct? How many were there, who's reporting it? Is there sufficient habitat? And a lot of these questions were coming up with nose. You know, this is an animal that lives on the second most active volcano in the world. Only one other single individual of this species has ever been found a hundred and fourteen years ago. Uh. You know, people live

in the Galapagos and there's there. They have literally the world's best tortoise scientists. They're like, there's no reason that they shouldn't be able to find this animal. So it wasn't checking all of the boxes that lead us to go on an expedition. But that being said, I had a colleague at the Turtle Conservancy and he told me he'd seen bite marks in a cactus. And basically what I'm getting at is my gut instinct, which goes against scientific protocol, said to go look for this animal. This

for an Indiana Island tortoise. And it was hell It was absolutely hellish. I mean, the island was boiling hot. There was heat radiating up from under the ground. Because it's an active volcano. It's literally on the equator. The average daytime temperatures were around degrees. It's a little by, little bomby. Yeah. The terrain was five foot tall shards of glass, so to speak, from lava rock. You know. We went through three pairs of boots like in a couple of days each um. It was boiling hot. There

was no vegetation nowhere to hide anyway. Long story short, We get to this island, middle of nowhere, Galapagos, the most remote island in the Glapa Goes. We climb up said volcano and in the far far distance we see a single isolated green patch that looks like if there's anywhere that life could be on this island. It's in this green patch that doesn't look like the rest of the Moonscape, that is this boiling hot island. And we travel over Lava Rock for seven hours or so, and

we finally get to the green patch, killing ourselves. I mean, if you see the episode, I'm bright red, I'm so sunburned. Everybody's got heat and sunstroke. Uh, it's boiling you know, we're running out of water, you name it. I feel like an island that's made out of boiling glass is like not super friendly to people now, and no one goes there of that reason, and of course the Glapacos

has very strict rules. But um, anyway, we get to this little pocket of green vegetation, and after days on this island, after a hundred and fourteen years since anyone's found a specimen of the species, we find the first piece of evidence, which is towardois scat, a ga tortoise poop. And the only other animal large animal on the island are iguanas, and their scot looks very different. There long

and narrow, and this is round and towards. The happiest you've ever been to sea poop, Yes, hands down, and in the episode, I pick it up, and I'm like, I'm like, have this ridiculous smile on my face, and I'm like elated and like shouting about how happy I am at this poop in my hand. Um. But you know, less an hour later we find what looks like an active betting site where an animals actually dug into the

sand to try and cool down a little bit. And five minutes after that, hiding under one of the few bushes on the entire island. Uh, is this absolutely incredible large old female Glapacos towartoise. That's incredible. I mean, it's I think that really points to one of the big reasons that there are a lot of animals we think are extinct but may still be alive, is just how inaccessible they are. You have to hike across burning glass, get heat stroke. Uh, and then you finally like find

an oasis of poop and then a turtle. And you know you mentioned the wonder white tree kangaroo earlier. Uh, you know the gentleman who discovered that he spent two or three weeks hacking through bamboo forest to get up into that habitat. Again talking about how impenetrable it is, it took them two weeks just to get into the correct habitat, and he wasn't even looking. He was looking for for rare plants or plants that plants exactly right. Yeah, but he knew when he saw it, like that's not

supposed to be here, exactly right. I want to talk a little bit about a few animals who were thought to be extinct or or near extinct and then they were rediscovered and they're really incredible. So uh, First is the pinocchio lizard, uh, which is one of my favorite lizards. They're also known as the Pinocchio annul or Annula's proboscis um. And I'm betting people are going to guess why they're called. So. They're from the mountainous forests of Ecuador near Mindoh. This

is within the Tombez Choco Magdalena Biodiversity Hotspot. That's like it's such very rich, very similar similar in biodiversity to the Amazon, and it's got a huge range of habitats as well. There's dry wet moist forests, forests of like varying degrees of moisture um and it's was thought to

be extinct since nineteen fifty three. And they're a small lizard there, about two to three inches long, and there's a lot of animals that because they're small and they blend into their environment, well, it's easy to think that they're extinct because you know, they look they're about the size of a leaf, so they're really beautiful. They're green and orange. They have these enormously long, orange pointy proboscis

is sprouting from the tip of its nose. It looks like it looks like a hard horn, like it would be a rhino horn, but' sexually really squishy, it'shah yeah. And so originally it was thought that it was like for sword fighting between males, but it's too it seems like it's probably too squishy to actually be a weapon of any kind. Correct. The generally accepted theory now is that it's like a peacock's tail. Yes, sexual selection, Yeah, like, look look at my giant nose horn exactly. How sexy

is that? It's like it's like a squishy unicorn basically. Uh. And it's since its discovery in three very few if any sightings have occurred. Um And it was thought to be extinct for over forty years, and then it was rediscovered in two thousand and five by a group of bird watchers, So again another group, who in a way

does that? Like, may you really annoyed when people, uh just accidentally happen upon a thought to be extinct creature when you're like chucking through boiling glass to find that's a good question that the short answer is no. The more that people can discover and promote conservation, the better. It doesn't need to be me. I don't care who does it, um, you know, I think that's a perfect

example of knowledge is power. Right, Here's a group of bird watchers and I'm guessing one of them either snapped I don't know the story of the actual discovery or at least the details of it, but I'm guessing one of them either snapped a photo or one of them had some herpetological knowledge and was like, wow, look at what this is. This is insane, right, And that led to this massive discovery, which to me is just phenomenal.

Like I'll tell you why that doesn't upset me because now I don't have to go to Ecuadore and climb up the mountain forest to look for this lizard. And I'm sure you know, you know, about it, and and it's it's now global news. So it's great. I don't care who finds them as long as we're finding them and protecting exactly. No. I figured that was the case,

but it is. It is. It's like really just happened upon the sty There's a guy who was climbing Lord Howie Island and found this giant stick insect the same way. He was just a climber and he's like, that's a cool rocket. And it's like he's like trying to hold onto a twig and it's like, whoa, this is exactly right, exactly right. Um. They obviously thought it was notable, so they took a photo sent it to herpetologist, and the

herpetologists probably like freaked out, freaked out um uh. Team of researchers surveyed the area to find the lizards, and they're really difficult to spot during the day, so they waited until night and they kind of, like a lot of amphibians and reptiles, their skin kind of changes, uh uh, following like diurnal patterns, and so they kind of turned this pale ish, ghostly color and as they shone their lights up into the trees, they saw these pale, little

ghostly lizards hanging out at the tips of the branches and and literally hanging out. I don't know if you know this, but knolls when they sleep at night, they actually go to the very end of a blade of grass or a leaf and hang can can basically climb out and reach them, right like if a snake is trying to come out and reach them, it'll fall because it's right at the very end of a thin piece down, Yeah, exactly, and so literally hanging like stillag tights might's wait, which

are the ones that come down? Tights gotta be tight on the ceiling or maybe stalagmite's got to be mighty. It's a useless but regardless, you get my point. They're all they're hanging out of these trees. And that's you know I've done. I've done Cuban and null work and some other null work. And that's how you find them. You find them at night hanging and in this case, this ghostly glistening white. I mean, imagine that discovery. It

sounds like a fairy tale, doesn't it. Yeah. They were obviously very excited and so to find out what they did during the day, like scientists often are, creepy. They stocked them. That's what we do. And so they found that the lizards like to hang high in the canopy during the day and they move extremely slowly. And it makes sense that we didn't realize they were still around because they are extremely well camouflaged. They're basically moving like

a sloth in a way. They're kind of similar to chameleons in terms of how they managed to remain unseen, where they're very slow moving. They have those that very ponderous kind of movement uh. And they blend in really well.

It's their only defense. Being cryptic is their only defense exactly. Uh. And so another really cool horny thought to be extinct animal that was found in Ecuador is the horned marsupial frog, which is a nocturnal amphibian beautiful, strange looking frog uh and it's got a certain uh behavior that is even more freaky than its appearance. Uh. It's also found in the Tomb Bays Choco Magdalena Biodiversity Hotspot. This is a great area for red discovering thought to be extinct animals

uh in western Ecuador. It's in a tropical rainforest habitat. It's a little frog about like two to three inches. Would you say it has spiky horns above each eye flap, kind of like a weird mascarrow or like clown makeup where it's like two little triangles, just like yes, yes, maybe it's mable line. Maybe it's uh, the marsupial frog. And they have these beautiful gold eyes. H they're very they're gorgeous looking. Um it has it's like it hadn't been seen for over a decade and it had been

thought to be extinct or in your extinction. And then biologists were trekking through the forest I think again on kind of an unrelated exploration. Um, but I think these were herpetologists, uh, and they heard an unfamiliar frog call, which is said to kind of sound like a champagne cork being pulled out, so I haven't, yeah, like a sort of chirping like you know, like that squeaking sand as you pulled out. And they looked up and they saw a horn frog just sitting on a palm leaf

and they started jumping around and screaming. I know. So they actually found as they explored more, they found a few individuals, including a pregnant female, which was really exciting because that indicates they have it at least somewhat stable population. Yes, speaking of pregnant females, this is one of the most incredible things about this is their method of pregnancy. So a lot of frogs have really interesting reproduction strategies in

terms of protecting the tadpoles and the froglets. Uh. And these frogs have a pouch on their back like a kangaroo, like a backwards frog kangaroo, and that's why they're called the marsupial frog despite not even being in the mammal family. These eggs are inside a flap of skin on their back and they will pop out of the pouch as froglets rather than tadpoles, so they look like little, tiny,

fully formed frogs. Um. They look when you look at a pregnant female, it looks like a pea pod almost like you know, the lumps, or like it's got a really dread Yes, yes, it's pretty. It's a little creepy actually. Um. And inside the pouch, the embryos have these mushroom like external gills that breathe through gas exchange on the pouch wall, which sounds very science fiction e um. As many amphibian

larvage small salam androids. They have that the very feathery, interesting gill structure, and so it's it's it's it's interesting because axlttles are a permanent juvenile stage of that that salman and so, but we don't get to see it's cool to see the ax lottle because we often don't get to see the sort of um these interesting developmental stages for long in these animals, and especially at that size.

You know, sometimes we can find, like even here where we live in California, you can go into some of our streams and find the rough skin newt larva and they look just like a perfect xlotl but there you have to look a micro scales. Once they pop out, there just these little, tiny cute frogs and they sometimes hang out for a little bit on their mother's back

right after being born. So you'll see this uh mother maybe with a slightly loose skin on our back and then a bunch of these little frog let's just hanging out. It's a little bit of body horror with the lumpy back, but the product is adorable, absolutely, And you know what's so wonderful about that discovery, Katie is uh amphibians worldwide are facing a huge threat with kittred fungus um to the point that they're likely the the group of animals

most at risk of mass extinction. And so you know, to hear oh a frog species has gone extinct, it's almost an expectation now, and it's not necessarily it is at the hands of man, but it's it's due to

this kittured fungus. And so to find that an animal like that marcipial horn frog is still in existence and either resistant to kittured fungus or hasn't been exposed to it, when either way we assume it's one or the other, we assume it has either been exposed or or is obviously not um able to tolerate the kittened fungus is a fantastic thing because it helps with our amphibian diversity

which is so struggling currently. Yeah, and as we'll talk about, we're going to talk about the gastric brooding frog in a little bit, and that is another victim of a pathogenic fungus, and especially in this area, the Tombays Choco Magdalena ecoregion is suffering a lot of biodiversity loss um, there,

it's a lot of it. There is obviously man made problems, so like deforestation, climate change is all really affecting it, and it I think it's not as I mean, we know and it's a good thing that we know about the Amazon and the importance of the Amazon, but I think this region isn't as discussed as being like here's another huge tract of rainforests that is incredibly important, holds a lot of really incredible animals, and it's disappearing really quickly.

Uh So, I think it's great that we have, like when you have on the show showing people these areas, and I think it's also good to give people hope that we're not too far gone like things. Even though we are in danger of losing a lot of animals something, it's not. It's not a hopeless cause, like we can

we can do things now. Yeah. I I hate ecophobia, which is a term, you know, coined for the thing that we basically see every day, which is where we wake up and see the headline this has gone extinct or you know, we're all going to die because of global warming, or the sea surface levels are rising and the Maldives are going underwater. You know, we we see all these things every day, and that's ecophobia. And first of all, no one wants to listen or read that,

you know, listen to it. Nobody wants to hear how the world is coming to an end. It's it's miserable, and we've become callous to it as well. We've heard it so much that we just brush it off. You know, who cares of the rhinos are going extinct? I read that three days ago, you know, so I personally, and there's a number of scientists that fall in this vein of thought. Cannot stand that ecophobia thing. So we just

throw it out all all together. It's not that it's not warranted, it's it's important and significant, and there is major problems. But let's show the good side of conservation. Let's show the winds. Let's show the animals we're discussing, you know, the Lazarus tax on that have literally come back from the dead. And if these creatures are capable of hanging on by a thread, you know how much

inspiration and hope does that give for the planet. Yeah, I think pointing out the winds, pointing out the things that people are doing that are helping is really important because I do get this sense that people think, oh, we're doomed anyways. I mean, there's there's a lot of cynicism to it, to where it's like, well, if we're doomed anyways, why even bother trying? Yeah, why care? Why?

And it's really not black and white. It's not going to be like an apocalyptic event like oh, we'll all be wiped out in like a week or something and then that'll be it'll be over. It's got it's a it's a what we decide to do now as a species is going to affect quality of life on sort of a sliding scale of good or bad, And it's all it depends on what we decide to do now. And I think so that's why I think it's like it's so important to like say like, no, we're not

we're not doomed. In fact, things that we thought were doomed may not be. There's a chance. We just have to really uh care about it at this point. And as you said, it's it's it's a decision that needs to be made on a species level by us human beings. You know. It's it's not about one person doing conservation perfectly or doing sustainability perfectly. It's about everybody doing it imperfectly. Yeah.

We talked about that on our our Amazon episode where I think that people can get fatigued if you feel like, well, I can't be you know, I still use plastic as will do this thing. But you know, I try to be vegetarian, but sometimes I drink milk or something and it's like, well, you don't have to be perfect. Just do what you can do. And if everyone does that, we're in great shape. And you limit yourself, you know,

think about it this way. If you're not going to drive to work and it work is where you save the planet. Who's going to do it right? You know what I mean, You've got to get there, like you know, there's it's it's everybody has to do a little bit imperfectly. Is the way to make the che if if a frog can give birth out of its back, you can do something to help the environment and you don't have to I mean, look, these frogs give birth out of

their backs, but they don't kill themselves doing it. I'm trying to make a stretched metaphor about the marsupial frog, and I feel like it's working. It's working. Once we've found the surviving members of a species on the brink of extinction, is there a way to bring them back? There have been a handful of successful conservation stories. Take

for instance, the Noble West Indian manatee. These beautiful, buoyant creatures, once thought to be mermaids by screwby riddled mariners, had decreased in number to only a few hundred off the coast of Florida and more endangered worldwide, but conservation efforts, coupled with improvements made to their environment brought them back. They have now been upgraded to merely threatened, and there

are over thirteen thousand mermaids or manatees worldwide. And one of my favorite animals, the California condor, was almost a victim of an anthropogenic human caused extinction. New to poaching, lead poisoning, pesticide poisoning, and habitat destruction. The California condor is a large vulture with a wingspan of up to nine feet, the largest wingspan of any bird in North America. They have a fluffy black body and a bright pink naked head, all the better to dive into carrion without

getting messy. They have long life spans almost comparable to a human, and they're highly social, even engaging in play behavior. They're very devoted in particular parents. They only raise a single chick at a time, making them especially vulnerable bolts of depopulation. California condors were once on the brink of extinction. There were only twenty two individual condors remaining, so the

California Condor captive breeding program began. These individuals were captured and bred in order to increase the rate of breeding. They took advantage of the condora laying two eggs at once. Typically only one chick will be raised to maturity. Conservationist retrieved the other egg and raised the chick with a realistic condor puppet so they wouldn't think that humans are their mommy's. Then, slowly, as their numbers grew, they were

released back into the wild. There are now hundreds of California condors, with over two hundred flying free in the wild. When we return, we'll talk about some animals who are most definitely, assuredly probably extinct. For now, we'll be right back. Traveling is stressful, and the worst part for me is having to look around a big cluky suitcase through an airport, so I was beyond excited when Away Suitcases sent me

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suitcase for twenty dollars off of suitcase. Visit away travel dot com Slash creature and use promo code creature during checkout. That's a way, Travel dot Com Slash creature and use promo code creature during checkout. Some animals who went extinct long ago were terrifying and well pretty metal. The puris or Us was a genus of South American crocodile that included many species of giant crocs, the largest of which being Sarkas sUAS that lived around one hundred million years ago.

This big boy waited at four tons and reached up to thirty feet in length. These are the stretched limas of crocodiles. Speaking of lank, the titana boa, an extinct species of snakes that slithered upon the earth about sixty million years ago, grew up to forty two ft long, so they could fit about seven average sized adult men in their stomachs. You may be grateful that these giant monsters have gone extinct, or I don't know, maybe you want to fill a park up with them and allow

children to roam around unsupervised. Either way, in today's world, the animals who go extinct are typically no threat to humans, instead, they're far from it. They're priceless wanders and could in fact have helped mankind. So before I get into some of the more contemporary extinct animals, I do want to talk about Thyla Cosmolus atrox, the extinct saber tooth marsupial. Yeah,

the it's a metallarian saber tooth cat. I think, yeah, it's marsupial lion is Yeah, and there it's like a it's like a sister sort of group to actually true marsupials. The metallarian saber tooth cat really sounds like a Star Wars name true um. So it's more closely related to marsupials like kangaroos and koalas than it is to placentals, which is the rest of us basically um, except for monotreams like kidnas and um. But it is not actually

a feline, because a feline is a placental um. It is a uh sparso danta, which is Greek meaning tearing teeth, which is great. I love I love it when they just go all in for the super metal, gritty names. So the resemblance to it does look like a saber tooth tiger at and that's where the name comes from exactly. But this is an example of conver rgent evolution. Um.

So they were about the size of a jaguar. They had really big heads relative to their body, which I suppose in some frame of mind is scary, but it's also really do feel like it's kind of like a big bubble head. Um. And maybe the dou fiest part of all, which was huge fing pockets on their lower jaw. So they basically got kind of a j Leno look going. They got this giant jaw. They had these huge two front canines, so very similar to this sabertooth tiger like

huge blade like looked like mouth sides coming down. Um. And but they had a sheath on the lower jaw is this bony protrusion called the symphysical flange um. And this was uh, it would like it was a job part that was between the two teeth, so the teeth would come down. Um. Like imagine you had like two huge vampire teeth and a long job in between them to support them, but your lips didn't close over them.

You look about as doofy as the thilacaus millis. Their things would self sharpened by rubbing against the lower canines shuch as a handy feature. Um. And my favorite part about them is, uh, it's sort of speculated that they probably didn't have a really crushing jaw strength. So jaguars and a lot of big cats today have really powerful jaws and they can almost like they can strangle an animal with their jaws. They can crush a skull with

their jaws. Um. But with this guy, they think that maybe he would come up behind the prey, ambush predator and then like executioner style, stab them. They had really powerful strong next to support that huge head and just kind of like an like an executioner's axe. They have this huge ax like head and which is like chopped down onto the animal's neck. They look, they're they're fantastic. I think, like you said, it's a perfect example of

convergent evolution. You know, Australia is completely isolated with all of the marsupials that it has there, and so it's developed creatures that we we tie parallels to, such as the wolf. You're right, we have the thyls scene, the marsupial wolf, and this this big cat which is really not a cat at all. It's another marsupial, but it looks like what we know as a cat, and that's

how these creatures get named. Even though they have and they do have similar morphological variations, you know, in the way they move, in the size of their feet and their tails for balance and things like that, but they have absolutely no relationship to cats and wolves as we

know it. Yeah, which I think is it's spooky and inspiring that nature was just so determined to have a big cat like animal with giant executioner jaws that it happened exactly multiple times in different places around the world without them ever connecting. Yeah. So, speaking of this, uh, this really interesting extinct animal, Uh, would you like to tie a little bit about the Thighla scene, the Tasmanian tiger that you've been hunting for not literally yes, yes,

if you found one, you would not kill it. Yeah. So the thila scene, you know, known as the Tasmanian tiger or in some cases the marsupial wolf. Again, it's an animal that we've drawn parallels to h two animals that we know of, but it's really none of those things. It's much more closely related to a kangaroo. It is a true marsupial had a had a pouch. It's not

a placental mammal, and it's an incredible looking creature. It had a canine like head um, large jaws that could open very very wide, similar to a snake's um, had stripes a bit like a tiger on its back, which is where it gets the name from, and used its tail like a rudder the same way a kangaroo does for balance. So just you know, we were talking earlier about Star Wars type creatures, this is a perfect example

of you are like a Doctor Seuss animal totally. I remember seeing these pictures as a kid as an exam ample of how sad extinction is, and probably a lot of listeners have seen it too. It looks it's like a long it looks like a long dog, almost like a cross between a weasel and a dog and a tiger. And it's quite it's bigger than a dog. It's ah, what would you say, it's about the size of a wolf. It's maybe like chiot Okay, yeah, and they are they're

really fabulous looking. They look like you kind of took a bunch of animals, scrambled their genetics up and popped out this really interesting, guys, So exactly, and so you're you're you're hoping maybe that they're not completely gone. Yeah, So look, the animal was deemed extinct in six The last one died in a zoo in Hobart, Tasmania. Did this animal is very interesting and I'll explain why they're kind of the poster child for um. They're the poster

child for Lazarus taxon. What a Lazarus taxon is an animal coming back from the dead, even though they've never been proven to come back from the dead. And so the Thilat scene had an immense range all the way from Papua New Guinea all the way down to Tasmania. Now they were driven to extinction in as far as we know anyway, Papua New Guinea, Australia and Avenge first, and the reason being when humans settled those regions, they brought with them dingoes dogs, and the dingoes out competed

the thi La scene and wipe them out. They were stronger, better, more adaptable predators for the habitat. But dingos never made it to Tasmania, so they lasted in Tasmania up into the thirties. Like I said, which is where Westerners were, you know, settling and cattle ranching and and seeing them regularly, so much so that they were placed a bounty on the thi La scene's head um to exterminate them so

they would stop killing sheep. Now, this is very confed, extremely ruined, extremely sad, and extremely controversial because they've actually never been proven that the Thila scene actually even took down any Yeah, it was mostly it was mostly understood and we only figured this out later that it was packs of feral dogs running around at night killing people sheep that belonged to the ranchers, and then the falsely accused of taking down sheep and this wasn't Was this

in the eighteen hundreds or early nine hundred hundreds. Yeah, here's this strange animal. We've never seen it before. Better killer and so um. To get to your question, this is funny really because I've been on I've probably spent a total of three and a half four months in the bush of northern Australia where sightings have been reported and Tasmania where sightings have been reported, and I've never had any conclusive evidence that the animal is still there.

And yet I'm completely convinced that it is in very small numbers, likely functionally extinct, meaning might still be there, but is on its way out because of the numbers, and less intervention takes place. Um, And I'm just completely convinced. So I've spent a lot of time there. I've been in Tasmania. It's a very wild place with a low population. I've been in Northern Australia, very wild place with a low population density, however very heavily impacted by a base

of species, which is a bit of a problem. And my next expedition to look for this exact species will take me to Papua New Guinea. Wow, Wow, excellent. I mean your gut has proven you correct before, so I wouldn't. I'm really glad that you're optimistic about it. I think that's important because otherwise we would just never look anymore for these animals. I think it's you've got to keep You've got to keep a certain amount of faith to uh,

to keep looking. Yeah. Yeah, it's in a sense, it's like playing the lottery, right, Like you don't you kind of expect to win because your odds are one in a zillion, But you still have to play. And you know what's interesting about the thil scene, and this is where kind of the cycle is self perpetuating, So you have to be careful and with these feedback loops. But there are so many disconnected similarities coming being reported from people.

Oh I saw it at this time at night. It looked like this, it moved like this, it did this, and these people don't know each other that reporting it. That keep popping up over and over again, even so much so that the Australian government just released, i think two weeks ago, released a whole list of of sightings that they had been keeping confidential that you just kind of have to believe. But it is a feedback loop, right, because it's just like the black panther in the southeastern

United States or or Bigfoot up in Oregon. Once people start hearing about and imagining it, of course, then it creates more likelihood for someone to think that they've seen that creature and report it. So it's a very delicate balance that you have to play, and you have to take all of those anecdotal observations with a grain of salt. Well, what's interesting about that is human observation is not infallible, so we do a lot our brains do a lot

of interpretation. We think our eyes are sort of impartial judges of the world around us. Not true. Our brains has to go through our brains, which can often be dumb or at least prejudiced. So what's interesting to me is a lot of sort of supernatural attings like say um UFOs and stuff is or interpretation of say, sleep

paralysis is very culturally dependent. So and one culture with sleep paralysis will think it's UFOs and that happens after War of the worlds, and we have this influence from our culture and another culture it's ghosts, like saying like Victorian England, sleep paralysis may have been. And so sleep paralysis for those who don't know, it's like when you're sleeping your sleep cycle is disturbed. I actually get it.

Occasionally it's fun um but and so you kind of half wake up, so some of your sensory information is getting in. Maybe you can see the room, maybe you're kind of hallucinating, but your body can't move. And often a characteristic as you feel this menacing presence and something sitting on your chest, which is what I get. So I think like for me, as someone who listens to true crime. I think a serial killer is sitting on

right exactly. But depending on your cultural environment, you're going to interpret it as maybe aliens, maybe as demons, maybe as a witch, maybe as ghosts. So it is a tricky thing with citing say an animal where uh we we had an episode where we talked about moth Man, where we think maybe it was a sandhill crane, maybe it was an owl. But people see these things and now they think they're moth man because that's the mythos

of the area. So but then when it comes to actual real animals like the Tasmanian tiger, maybe the cultural influence of oh maybe this exists, so maybe you see an animal who's similar, and then you kind of interpreted as was like, oh, is that a stripe? Is it? Not undeniably right, but exactly a dingo with a limb,

you know anything. And I don't want to get too off topic, but so much so that that it's so culturally significant and impacts our observational ideas of what we're seeing that I think a lot of people don't realize and I'll probably get angry people from listening to this, that the black panther that we you know, make movies about have this high school mascots. Doesn't exist in the United States, it's never been proven to in the Southeast.

If you go to Florida and talk to people that hang out in the swamps, they'll tell you there's black panthers around. They've never been proven to exist. We've never seen a melanistic mountain lion, which is the species of panther running around the Southeast. It's never been proven to exist. Right, And black panthers are not it's not a distinct species. It's a it's a melanistic version of like of a panther,

but exactly right. Yeah, and and depending on where you are, because there are black leopards, there are black jaguars, but what we have natively in the United States is the mountain lion. And there's never been a black mountain lion, right, But yeah, it is. It's it's got to be a real complication for trying to find out where an animal

is based on scattered sidings. But on the other hand, a lot of times if scientists don't actually listen to locals or local legends or what's considered to be a mythos, you'll miss out on important information. That actually can lead you to a discovery. Well, and everything's grounded in something right. And what I mean by that is even if one out of a thousand reported Thilocene sightings is accurate, that means one is accurate. Right. And so you know on

my work, I two gentlemen that I've worked with. One um in Tasmania was a wildlife scientist. So this isn't you know, some crackpot hillbilly. This is a guy whose entire career, like mine, is based off of observing wild animals and identifying them correctly. He told me, looked me dead in the eye and said, I'm telling you ten fifteen years ago, I forget the timeline. I saw a thighla scene. Right. I know every single animal that lives in Tasmania. I've worked on them for twenty five years.

This is what I saw. I don't have proof, but I saw it. You have to take that observational report a little bit more seriously than the guy was like, yeah, you know, I left the pub at three am when I was driving driving down this windy road and I saw one's butt go into the bushes. And another instance up in Northern Australia was a gentleman who was a a eco tourism guide, so literally same thing. All he did for a career was take people to see wildlife

in northern Australia. And he told me, you know, clear his day, twenty five yards away, I watched my dog play with three of them. Literally, my dog got up, he growled, the hair on his neck stood up. I saw these sets of eyes and was like, what on earth is that? Shawn My light and my dog ran over there and was running amongst them, playing with them, and then they moved off. He's like, I couldn't get the camera out in time, blah blah. This was five

years ago. You know, both these sightings, both these people were the opposite of what you'd expect. They were extremely reluctant to tell me this information at risk of being called coops. Yeah, they didn't want to be considered crack exactly. And and and that to me holds so much more weight than the guy that's jumping up and down going I gotta tell you about my sighting. I gotta tell you about my sighting. You know, that's someone who wants

recognition or fame, or or has an ulterior motive. These guys were hiding that they had seen these animals at fear of being called crazy, and they themselves could barely believe that they'd seen it. It's good to be skeptical. It's good not to be completely credulous and believe everything you hear. But I think it's also good to not

always dismiss information that's unexpected. So you know, if you're thinking, Okay, this seems like it shouldn't be around anymore, we know we do have evidence that animals who we have thought to be extinct, and even larger animals like the like the waterway like is pretty it's you know, it's comparably sized animal um. So it's not just the little tiny insects that of course, those pop in and out of existence all the time, but yeah, it is. It's possible.

So the tourists we found the animal um. And you know, what's what what my team and I do, and for anybody that's listening that has any interesting information, we take

every single piece of it and compile it. You know, we have spreadsheet upon spreadsheet and we put every bit of data in and whether you're you know, the person reaching out to me seems credible or not, we still take it into account and we place it on a map where we at least the closest near area that we believe the sighting came from was regardless of what the extinct species is. So that when you know, say, the next time comes around for me to go search

for the thilo scene in Tasmania. Well, it turns out since that first episode of me searching for the Tasmanian tiger and I don't know what it was, a two thousand fourteen aired, I've now received seven hundred new reports of them. Well it turns out, you know, six d and fifty of them are in a completely new area and they're densely clustered in one zone. Well that tells

me where to at least begin my search. Yeah. That reminds me of like you might know about the the naturalist movement, where it's getting just regular people, citizen scientists. I do not live in anywhere near nature basically lived dead in the city. I saw an alligator lizard mating on my walk, took a photo of a put it online. Yeah. Yeah, so it's it's something that I think is especially with

these rare animals, you know. Um. I talked to Dr Greg Paully, he's one of the herpetologists at the museum, and he got a report of this lizard that is not indigenous, that like someone just took a photo of and it turned out to be sort of a briefly invasive species that didn't it didn't actually I think that they didn't find any more specimens, but it's like a little pocket of these lizards that reproduced and lived for

a little while in this one little neighborhood. So it's you never know what you're gonna find, and I think that it's great that. Yeah, of course, some people are going to be pounded back white close and going like yeah, I saw I saw a big foot, But you know, often it's it's interesting information. And by the way, that's how that, uh you said you watched our expedition to Borneo where we uncovered the evidence of the Miller's Grizzled Langer. Um,

that's how that came about. And what I mean by that is there was a research group working in this region of Borneo where the Miller's Grizzled Langer had never historically been reported to be and one of the I think he was a grad student, maybe he was an undergraduate student took a photo of a monkey that he's like, that's a cool, weird looking monkey and showed it to his primatologist professor my friend Stephanie's heart and Stephanie goes, oh my god, that's a screaming and exactly, and back

to the cycle of crazy biologist jumping around getting excited, right right, yeah, yeah, I just I think it's and I think that kind of ties into people feeling optimistic and empowered about nature rather than feeling paralyzed by oh, everything's going extinct. Like no, you can help too, by like keeping your eyes open. So now I want to talk about a species that has gone extinct more recently. Um it is the gastric brooding frog. And it is this is really sad. I this is again one of

my favorite animals. Um. So these were a little frog with they had like the marsupial frog. They had an amazing breeding strategy, one of the most incredible ones I think in the world. They lived in the mountains of Queensland, Australia. Um. There were two species. They were southern and northern, very similar. Um. The southern was about it it was a little smaller, it was like about two inches long. In the northern

was maybe three inches long. And they're very tiny, cute, adorable frogs, like I'm a big I think most frogs are adorable. These are some of the most adorable. They just have these big bug eyes. They're really cute. Their calls were described as sounding like m It's like it's the cutest sounding thing, like they say. It had an uptick at the end, like I just want yeah, um, I don't it's just spelled phonetically, so I'm just literally

really um. So it kept its eggs in its stomach uh, and they would sort of like the most stupial frog, they would develop into froglets, and she, the female, would give live birth essentially because they would vomit up shook up their babies, which were now fully developed a little froglets up to twenty five at a time, which is insane, it's incredible. So they lay eggs um and then it would swallow its eggs and then that would keep them

safe as they're developing. So in order to prevent getting digested, the eggs were covered in prostaglandin, which is a chemical that would signal the mom to stop producing gastric acid in her stomach and then once they developed into the tadpoles, they'd hatch and just continue developing in her stomach. Yeah, and uh, their gills were covered in mucus that would protect them from stomach acid. But to be frank, we

don't know everything about how this worked. We didn't get a chance to study them as long as would have been helpful. And it's a new biological process that we're on. We really don't understand, not just on this species level, but on any level, how exactly that it works, right exactly. Uh. And so the gastric brooding frog mom would stop eating we don't know how um, and her stomach would expand, so her lungs would collapse under the pressure of all

of these babies. And then she would breathe through her skin, which is a trick that amphibians can do. But uh, then she would exorcist style vomit up her babies through what's called propulsive vomiting, which is the cutest and yet more most horrifying like Russian nesting doll frog situation. As you can imagine, this is an incredible way to give birth. Uh. And very sadly they went extinct about thirty years ago. So I don't think we know exactly the single cause

for why they went extinct. We do know that human encroachment into their habitat probably didn't help. So like logging, uh, feral pigs, uh weeds, and water flow problems were all thought to have contributed to their extinction, but also the pathogenic fungus, which is responsible for the deaths of many many adorable amphibians. I it makes me sad because I think, I mean, as someone who's stomach is not always great

at functioning, so like getting stomach aches. It's like, hey, if even if their story isn't doesn't capture your affection, which I think it should, and you don't want them back just because they're amazing, it's we could have learned a lot from them for human medicine, so um, stomach cancer, um, you know, irritable bowel syndrome, ulcers, all these things that have to do with the hormone causing like overproduction of stomach acid, all these we could have learned so much

from them undeniably. And I you know, I think I don't want to get two grandiose, but I think there's something we can still learn from them, and that is that you know, we made that mistake in a time and place where perhaps we didn't realize we were making it. You know, I don't think we knew that they were going extinct when they went extinct thirty years ago, but we do know that now about some of the species that we are driving towards extinction, and we can correct

before it's too late. You know, Let's learn from this exact species and our mistake that we made, you know, the fact that we've missed out on what could be a world changing discovery being you know, the gastric brooding frog stomach anatomy. Let's learn from that and realize that there's a lot we don't know and that things are worth saving because you never know what can come of it. You know how Gretted Tunberg says we're entering a mass

extinction event, Well she's not wrong. A scientific analysis published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that in recent decades there has been a global massive loss of wildlife that they call quote a biological annihilation. Well, not to scare you too much, so not only are animals going extinct at faster rates, but even animals not yet considered endangered are losing their populations at much faster rates. So this sounds kind of psychop hathic to ask. But

why should we care? Obviously, if you listen to the show, you probably care just for the sake of animals, bio diversity, and the protection of the planet. But say, hypothetically there are people out there who don't care about the environment, who would be like that. I don't know, But honestly, the more selfish you are, the more alarms you should be about the current crisis. When humans go extinct, it's

very likely that life on Earth will continue. Life finds a way even in the wake of devastating natural disasters. Will it be the same kind of life we have now? Probably not. I mean, look at what happened after the mass extinction of dinosaurs. Of course, if we unique the entire planet, the only kind of life that might come back for a while maybe creepy crawley extremophiles in bacteria,

but life in some form will probably march on. It's just that it's up to us to decide whether we humans want to continue on or if we're happy to drive ourselves to extinction while dragging plenty of other animals down with this. But like we've talked out before, we actually have a choice in whether we want to do this. We're not helpless victims of our circumstance. When we return, we'll talk about bringing animals back from the dead using mad science. Is this a good thing or is this

a quote? Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could they didn't stop to think if they should. Situation so clones, let's talk about cloning. Even if we drive animals to extinction, can't we just bring them back through the miracle of science. Well, as you probably know from the acclaimed documentary Jurassic Park, the answer is a bit more complicated. First, the science of bringing species back

from the dead is complex. You need a viable DNA sample from a specimen, and you need a related, compatible surrogate species egg in which to implant the DNA. But even if you have all the ingredients necessary, it's still difficult to create a viable embryo. Gene splicing is another technique with similar challenges, and reverse engineering an extinct animal from their closest living relatives through selective breeding is possible, though it won't really quote bring the original species back

to life, but create a sort of effect simile. Even once we reach the point where we can bring species back from preserved specimens or mosquitoes trapped in amber, should we is dead sometimes better? Well, there are arguments for and against the extinction. Proponents site the importance many extinct species have environmentally and for biodiversity. Skeptics warns that this

may have unintended consequences. Loss of habitat and changes in the environment make reintroduction of dead species a challenge and could potentially lead to unforeseen negative interactions with other living species. We could also, I don't know, accidentally bring back dangerous retroviruses hiding in extinct animal genomes. There's also the argument that spending money to resurrect extinct creatures means less money to help save animals that are not white yet extinct,

but soon could be. So let's take a look at some of this weird science, and then we'll talk to Forest about his non laboratory approach to finding nearly extinct creatures. So I gotta kind of make a just a catch all statement. I'm not an expert on this, so I can only make a judgment on whether it's good or not. To bring back species based on my opinion, which is

take it for what it's worth. And it's a really complicated moral and ethical issue that I think is I don't know if there's one really distinct answer of whether it's good or bad. I think it's very contextual, but it's not. It's not like, oh, obviously it's good to to use science to bring something back, because there could be as any time when we try to do things as humans, we try to kind of maybe play god a little bit, sometimes we can do go really wrong.

Um So remember our friend the gastric rooting frog. How could you forget? A team of researchers at University of New South Wales is trying to bring it back from extinction. So they've inserted the DNA of the southern gastric brooding frog into the egg of a barred frog, which is a very close relative. They were able to successfully grow it into an embryo, but then it's self terminated so

they weren't able to develop it further. It's uh. This is called, as we mentioned, de extinction or resurrection biology, which sounds a lot more magical, which is, you know, literally bringing an animal back from the dead. I think I think what's interesting is I kind of fall sort of uh somewhere on the edge of like, I don't know if like, just bringing back a mammoth is such a good idea because the world has changed so drastically. I don't know if it's even fair to the mammoth

because where would you put them? He As we know, elephants are highly social, highly intelligent. Would a mammoth be able to have a family with elephant or would it feel weird and lonely because it's the only hairy eleve

in our hown? Um. But you know, I have heard interestingly compelling arguments about like, say, the passenger pigeon, which is a somewhat recently extinct bird that UM had a lot of impact on the environment UM and is a candidate for it because we do have living relatives and we have so many specimens of it, there's plenty of DNA. The passenger pigeon went extinct in nineteen fourteen. About UM, it's called an anthropogenic extinction. So that's when we we

screwed it up. Basically, humans humans were the jerks who did it. The pigeons look a little bit like mourning doves, though they're not related at all. Um the males had a reddish orangey pink chest and blue gray backs. Um they so Revive and Restore is a conservation organization whose mission statement is to quote apply biotechnology to bio diversity challenges. They say that the passenger pigeons are a good candidate, as we have plenty of specimens, we've got its closest relative,

and that they would be useful to bring back. They say it would help conserve Eastern America's woodlands. And to kind of see what their side of the argument is, we kind of have to look at the history of passenger pigeons and what they are. So passenger pigeons used to be so numerous in Eastern US that they would

completely black out the sky. And if you can't imagine, you can imagine bird flocks and with the murmurations which is where they kind of shift direction, and you see this sort of like weird strobing effect of the birds. It must have been really spectacular to see unless you were you know, like a like an eighteenth century nineteenth century guy who's like, oh, these these birds are pests, which, yeah, so they were considered agricult trill pests because a flock

of them could. To be fair, they were good at destroying crops because there were so many of them, but I mean they kind of came first, so we hunt them, we did. We hunt the numbered in the billions can be wiped out so quickly, exactly. So they were highly social, so that's why they had such enormous flocks, and they were had kind of a pigeony utopia because they wouldn't really fight with each other. There was maybe some arguments,

but there was very little violence. They were very pro social, kind of like there's a lot of bat species now that have these huge flocks, big big colonies, even with like different kind of species all hanging out, and they're pretty chill. It's kind of amazing. Uh. This is part of the reason they may have been so big, as a survival technique called predator saturation, and that's where there's just too many of too many to pick from. Your chance of being one out of like a flock of

ten thousand is pretty pretty small, exactly. So they were doing really well until humans, specifically European settlers, because for twenty thousand years their population was stable in the US, which included the time that Native Americans lived and hunted the pigeons, but they just didn't hunt them in the volume that European settlers did well. And European settlers began hunting them as commercial food. Yes, yes, especially once the railroads came in and we could ship huge amounts of

dead birds. So, uh, they were very easy targets because they were not used to being shot at with guns, and they their whole strategy was just like, there's lots of us and we're pretty chill. You know, you cannot possibly kill all of us. And then uh, in America we were like, in America, we can do anything. I mean, it's sad. They were almost not even considered game foul because they were so easy to shoot, so easy to catch,

these poor little sweeties. They could be caught in vast numbers with large nets just draped cross a few trees and they would just fly right in and you'd get like several hundred of them at a time. Stool pigeons. So this is an interesting etymology lesson. So stool pigeons were pigeons who had their eyes sown shut, so they

were blind. Really nice thing to do. Um. And then when a flock of these pigeons would fly by, they were shoved off the stool, so it looked like they were they found some food on the ground, right exactly, and that was used as bait because the other the other pigeons, being highly social, look at the queue of this pigeon, They're like, oh, there must be food there, um, And then they flocked down and then we kill all

of them. And so that's where the term stool pigeon comes from, as being sort of like someone who's going to lead you to the rest of the flock. Hunters would even use alcohol soaked grain to drug the birds. Real real nice nice move there. And in the nineteenth century, the passenger pigeon hunting reached a fever pitch as railroads allowed for mass commercial transportation of dead pigeons. Just cars and cars of trains chock full of dead pigeons. Yeah.

One hunter actually was alleged to have shipped three million dead birds to the city like on his own, which is insane. The just the just like, yep, this seems like an okay thing to do. The mass pigeons slaughter, um, people weren't too concerned about it. They thought they were pests. They thought it was impossible to kill them all, but yeah, we did it. Interestingly enough, there's actually evidence to support that the passenger pigeon was around. The last pair was

around about twenty years after they're declared extinctions. The way, Yeah, it's interesting. By the way, let me preface this by saying, I'm no expert of the extinction either. You know, I'm a tracker and a wild life biologist. I'm a field guy. Yeah, what you do is very fundamentally different. Exactly that being said, I certainly have a stance on it, and I think it's a stunts. I think it's a very clear middle ground stance that I imagine most people would take. And

I'll tell you what it is. Do I think that we should be creating Jurassic Park and bringing back mammoths and dinosaurs. Absolutely not that it was as cool and interesting as it would be. That's a waste of resource

dollars that could go towards viable conservation. Do I think that we should right our wrongs that humanity have committed, such as bringing back the passenger pigeon, replacing the thile scene in an environment that's absolutely overrun by meso predators and smaller marsupials to the point that disease is becoming a massive problem. And the list goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on. Yes,

I do now. I think one thing that we haven't mentioned today in our discussion is that this technology does not exist yet. It's great in theory. There are people working on it, and I'm very grateful that they are because I'd love to see the Thile scene back. I'd love to see the Carolina parakeet, the passenger pigeon. And again, the list goes on. But this technology, it doesn't actually exist.

I mean, the closest we've gotten so far has been that gastric brooding frog experiment where they just started to get an embryo and then it's self terminate heartbeat right now, heartbeat didn't didn't last very long. But it's it's an encouraging step. That's not to demean what they're doing. It's very impressive. But yeah, like you said, it is not we can't just like, like, you know, take a dead passenger pigeon, like get a syringeful of genetic material and

plug it into their closest living relative, you know. But it's it is possible. It's just I think it is important to stress that we cannot like it's it is still a huge deal when an animal goes extinct, because we cannot just snap our fingers and be like, oh, we'll use science to bring it back to life, because there's a lot of complications even once we get the technology.

Reintroducing an animal, especially when is highly social as a passenger pigeon, is really complicated because they may not know even how to act because uh, animals, they do. They are often born with a lot of instincts, that's true, but they also learn, Like birds are very social, they learn. That's how bird's song has learned. They have a Chris stilization period as juveniles where they learned songs and they

incorporated into their lexicon. You know, if you it, it's sort of be like if you if humans went extinct and you just dropped off a bunch of babies and be like, well, you got your fig um. And not only that, but my understanding and this could be wrong because again I'm not an actual expert in the genetics of the extinction, is that you know, all of these double helix, all the DNA degrade over time, so when

we're trying to bring an animal back. Say it's the passenger pigeon, right, we look at our double helix and there's these little pieces missing from it. So in order to create this animal, we have to pull those little pieces from its closest living relative and plug it into that DNA sequence, right into that double helix. And then the offspring. Although this is the case in nature because nothing is ever the same, right, No two organisms are identical.

The offspring isn't a true passenger pigeon, nor is it you know, it's closest living relative. It is a slightly warped version similar. Yeah, it's a fact similar of the passenger pigeon. It's very very close. It might be physically identical, but it's it will never be the truest form of what the animal wants was. And then we have sort of the problem of genetic bottleneck, where once we bring

back one, what next? How do we how do we get a thriving population from one sort of embryo and then like create enough genetic diversity that it isn't just wiped out by a virus as soon as we get like ten individuals going, and we see that, you know, we see that genetic bottlenecking as an issue in wildlife sciences today, like before, trying to bring it back from one species that we're cloning. So um, it is a problem.

Uh you know that being said, if we get to the point where the technology allows us to bring species back from the dead, we can probably tweak them enough that there's a lot of them and a lot of Yeah, I think, who knows it's got there's gotta be some way we can figure out how to overcome that those problems. But again it's it's not it seems like we're really close. But the more you think about all of the problems, the more you kind to realize how much technology has

to advance for us to get there. And one of the reason the passenger pigeon may be important to bring back is that they are engineers of the environment. So by pooping, eating seeds and breaking branches by mass roosting, they actually are sort of gardeners of these these American forests. So um, there they kind of it's like a wildfire or a storm where you you know, it's it's a little counterintuitive maybe, but you have there has to be some destruction of vegetation and of force in order for

it to keep growing. It's called the intermediate disturbance hypothesis. And what that means is a place that stays exactly static has very low diversity. Right. Take tide pools for instance. If you're a tide pool in an area where no waves ever hit it, one type of algae takes over the whole tide pool, one species. If you're in a tide pool area an inner title zone where the waves are pounding it all day every day, nothing can live there, right,

it's too much disturbance. But if you're in the middle there where sometimes you have a great tide pool and sometimes it gets a little hammered by waves, but new species can come in and colonize it and change the environment. You have massive, rich diversion species diversity. And that's yeah, that's the intermediate disperse That's a great metaphor for how I interact with my own anxiety, where a little bit is great, keeps me motivated too much and I just

lie on my bed. Yeah. So these pigeons are basically you know, poopin roost in gardeners of the forest. Also, they're massive piles of guano, which is bird poop. Um as fertilizer creates these little microbiomes for decomposers. Uh, they provided a lot of meat for predators. They have provided meat for humans as well, And I mean we coexisted with them for twenty thou years. And before we get into that, I mean, I think you know you you said earlier, at some point during our discussion, you said,

why care? Right, it's a cynical look, But why care? Well? I think this is the fundamental thing that a lot of people don't digest and absorb is everything has a place in the ecosystem. Nothing evolves for no purpose. Right, it doesn't come into the sphere this environment without a purpose, and everything is balanced within that. The passenger pigeon, as

you're explaining, is a perfect example. But when it was here, things were better because it was here, because of its presence, because of its being a docent of the forest, so to speak, and it's fertilizer that it created, and it's breaking the branches and it's intermediate disturbance. It created a healthier, better ecosystem. So why should we care? Why should we care?

If the thylo scenes gone from Tasmania, if the passenger pigeons gone from North America, and the list goes on, because these creatures are meant to be here for the health of our environment, and that that goes, you know, it goes much further than we even understand. There's a reason the gastric brooding frog was here, you know, more so than us discovering it's it's possible cure for stomach cancer.

It may have played an incredibly vital role in its ecosystem that we don't even know about yet that could be leading or at least contributing to collapse. I mean, one of the sad things as there's there are animals who will probably go extinct that we don't even know existed, who go extinct that we have no idea what they were, what they did, and then we may there may be some ramification that we're like, why is this happening, and

we'll have no idea it's too late. Yeah. Uh. And well, one of the direct things that may possibly have resulted from the passenger pigeon going extinct is the prevalence of lime disease because they I mean, this is a counterintuitive thing again, because their existence um decreased the white footed mouse's population, not because they were predators, but because they were competitors, they kept the white footed mouse population in check.

And so after the passenger pigeons when extinct, the white footed mouse population kind of exploded, and then they are carriers of lime riddled ticks. And now lime disease is a much, yes, much more prevalent, much bigger problem in lyme. Disease is awful for he is awful for animals as well.

But that's a I mean, and that's just the extremely direct, easily identifiable problem that happens, and there are so many other It's like a Jenga tower made out of animals where you take one block out and like it looks like the tower is fine. You're like, it's fine, I mean, it's still standing. But the more you take out and then suddenly it's just like this class That is a wonderful analogy. I'm going to steal that. I've never thought

of it as a Jenga tower. That's so clever, and I've tried to explain this to so many people how important each pieces, and the Jenga tower is the perfect analogy. It's a It's great because from my childhood of never winning Jenga is has inspired me to be educate people via the metaphor of Jenga. That's great. So I want to talk a little bit about some of the animals that you're trying to rediscover. One of them is okay, So a lot of these I don't actually know that

much about some something you can tell me. The dwarf hippo is the one. I mean, I've seen chures of them. They're cute. So you've seen pictures of the pigmy hipp the pigmy hippo, hippo, different species, right, where is this this little hippo found? So the pigmy hippo is a very tiny species of hippo that's kind of hybrid between a pig and a hippo that occurred in Central Africa. The I say pig and a hippo because of the size and behavior still looked like a hippo. And you said,

as you said, you've seen pictures. It's not an actual like it's not an actual cross breeding with no. No, no, no, no, yeah, sorry, let me be clear. No, no, it behaves a bit more the way that a pig would, but it's just a tiny hippo. Now, the Southern African hippo, the hippo that we all know and think of as hungry hungry hippos. They had an offshoot of their species, the same way many many animals had offshoots of their species on the island of Madagascar. And this was the pig, sorry, the

dwarf hippo. And that was literally a dwarfed African hippo. So imagine your African hippo, the one that we all know that just got shrunken down through insular dwarfism. Now, insular dwarf is um is a ace where animals get stuck on an island. There's not enough resources for them to be the size that they've historically been, so over generations of you know, restricted diets and small habitats, they've got smaller and smaller and smaller. The opposite of deep

sea gigantism, exactly, that's exactly right. It is the opposite of deep sea gigantism insular dwarfism. There's also insular gigantism, but we won't talk about that right um anyway. So yeah, So on the island of Madagascar, the theory is that, you know, many many years ago, when sea levels were lower, a couple of hippos made the long swim across the channel from Mozambique to Madagascar, got stuck there. Um started reproducing. Found out, Hey, this isn't a really great place to

be a hippo, and I'm pretty hungry. So I'm getting smaller and smaller and getting more and more terrestrial, staying out of the water, especially because the western coast of Madagascar where they first populated, was very dry. There wasn't a lot of rivers and streams. Anyway, this is a long winded way of explaining how they got to Madagascar. I got to Madagascar and a big shiny metal bird called airplane to go and search for them. And uh, you know, I'm not gonna say whether we were successful

or not or not. Gonna have to watch the show. You guys, You're gonna have to watch. It's a it's a very difficult expedition in a very remote, very harsh region. Um. We have some close calls, and we do uncover some very interesting science. Yes, I mean this. I'm I'm very excited about your new season because there are so many really interesting animals that you guys are looking at. Um. Of course, I know the outcome of the Fernandina tortoise

and the Dracula monkey. But there's so many you're looking for cape lions, the Caribbean monk, seal, the ivory build woodpecker. Uh. So there's and species I've never heard of, like the southern rocky mountain wolf. Uh, the selo, which is some we love cute deer on this show cut deer like or or any kind of cute tiny ungulate. We we have a running thing where it's like we like dick Dick pick picks here. Um, So I really I'm I'm wishing the best of luck to you to find Yeah,

thank you. And I'm just I'm just curious because of what you've been through with getting stung by bees and climbing up trees in a gilly suit for hours. Uh, what's like the most danger you've been in during your explorations of the world, Like my goodness, heat stroke when you're on Glass Island. No, I mean that sucks, but I never thought we were going to die. You know the scar right here that's from a shark by the

show this year. Um, you know. But the thing that I tell people, and keep in mind, I've been in two plane crashes, I've been bitten by a shark, stung by man of war, jellyfish, stung by a stingray. Uh. You know, the list goes on, and on Mobbi line, the list goes on. I've had a lot of these run ins. But the thing that I try and tell people is the wildlife fest of all is never to blame. But secondly, is not the dangerous thing. The dangerous element is the people in some of these places. And a

perfect example of that is Uh. In April of this year, we charted a to World War two d C three cargo plane to lie into a private cocaine dealer's airstrip in the middle of the Colombian Amazon, interesting to hide from the FARC rebels who are fighting the Colombian government,

to search for an extinct crocodilian. So you know, am I worried about the anacondas we encountered, or the Cayman species that we were targeting that that have not taurus or have historically, and people not even a little bit. My mind was on the FARC rebels that grow and and smuggle cocaine out of the jungle, and how they have made a lot of their money on kidnapping and the last expedition of Westerners to go into their thirty

years ago all got kidnapped. So to me, the dangers come from the human element, not from the wild element. In a way, animals I think are a little more predictable than humans. Yeah, I mean, I'm glad, glad, you're all right. I think that people think about animals as being scary, like a shark being terrifying. But I mean I that Scar, it's it's pretty cool, Scar, But you're fine.

But you're fine. And I think that it's you know, we're not only more of a threat to each other, we're much more of a threat to the animals than they ever are to us, million times over. So what's uh, Just as we conclude here, what's an animal that you wish more people knew about that you want to tell my listeners about. Well, you mentioned the sala. This is a fascinating species, so let's do it. Because they love they love cute deer, We love cute deer. Let's get

a mental pick pick of this non dick dick um. So, okay, the sala is a fascinating animal. It's the most recently discovered large animal. It was only discovered in double check that. But it is known as the Asian unicorn. And the reason it's no the Asian unicorn is it has such a striking symmetrical profile. Then when looking at it sideways, the horns visually merge into one to look like it has a single horn like a unicorn. This is an

incredible animal. It's abovid, meaning a family member of the cattle family, only, like I said, recently discovered in in Laos and Vietnam in the Ammonite mountains, which is incredibly rich biodiverse. Ere a huge animal, you know, talking about a hundred plus pound creature, and it's got a fascinating story about the only one that was ever captured. It was captured alive for a Leo is crazy wealthy la Ocean king who was a collector of wild animals, and

when it died they ate it. They didn't even preserve the specimen. I mean, just the story is it's mind blowing. Where it lives is insane. And I think more importantly, aside from it being an incredibly beautiful, unique creature, it's its own genus, meaning it doesn't even really have any close relatives except for the cattle. The bovid family, has sink glands on its face that it rubs on the trees.

I mean, just such a unique creature. But it it lives in an area that is desperate for conservation and the ala Osian Mountains on the border of Vietnam, where everything's on the menu for human beings, and it's been war torn for a number of years, and it's it's just not only is it a beautiful animal, not only is it recently discovered it could be extinct. I don't believe that it is, but it's an animal that lives in an area that needs attention and exposure. Yeah, it's

it's a really beautiful animal. It looks I only speak in terms of the vocabulary of animals that I know, so it looks like a mix between like an ibex uh cow and a deer that's pretty accurate with with painted markings that don't resemble anything, with white spots on its face, which are curious. I wonder what those are for. I'm sure we don't exactly not do um. But yeah, and then they're beautiful kind of mahogany color. They're gorgeous. Um. Yeah,

please please do look up pictures of these. It's the soula salula sala um and they are They're gorgeous, so that's another They're not a deer, but they are an ungulate. They are a cute ungulate to uh, to include into our library of cute ungulates that we love on this show. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. This has been in ubibly illuminating. I am just so I love the work that you do. Uh, and guys, please do check out the show. It's called Extinct or Alive? Right,

and where where can they catch that? Extinct or Alive? Currently airing on Wednesdays on Animal Planet at nine pm, Super family friendly. You know, there's nothing bad in it. It's uh, it's very adventure driven. It follows me on these journeys as I get stung by bees, bitten by sharks, flying in World War two planes to look for these

animals that I believe have been wrongfully deemed extinct. Yeah, that's that's fascinating and it is really it's it's really intense because I love watching you as you're like going through all of your forest cams looking for and you're just on the edge of your seat hoping that that you get that get that siding can people find you online or yeah, yeah, I have you know, all the

regular social channels. My name Forest Galante its force with two rs g A l A N t E. I have Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and and I you know, I see everybody's messages. I really do. I look at every things people are sending me instances of rare animal sighting. So by all means, please follow me, hang out. I'd love to chat with you about wildlife. Yeah, if you

if you see something, say something especially to Forest here. Um. Yeah, you can find us as always on the internet, uh www dot Now I'm not going to do Creature feature pod dot com, Creature feature Pod on Instagram where you can mostly see pictures of my dog, Creature feet pod on Twitter, that's f e A T f e E T is something very different. You can find me at Katie Golden on Twitter, and I am also at pro bird Rites, where I advanced the cause of birds throughout

the Greater United States. Uh and mostly advocate poor Avian complete control of the world. But anyways, yeah, yeah, it's a it's a good good activism. Burn Overlord, burn over all arts. I mean, I for one, welcome them. Thanks to the Space Classics. For their totally tubular tune. X Alumina Creature features a production of I heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

listen to your favorite shows. See you next Wednesday, m