Short Stuff: 5 Lazarus Species

if you believe that stuff. And a Lazarus species is a organism that has been brought back from extinction or that we thought rather it was extinct, not one that's like threatened, and we do a good job with it, but people are like, well, there's no more of those. And then years later so I's like, oh my gosh, there's another one of those, right, And we actually did a whole episode on one of these already, the Cela

canth That's right, That's what I was referring to. Number one. Yeah, it has like an amazing story behind it, which will briefly go over again because, um, it has four lobes, meaning it had like kind of these proto limbs, um. And when they found it first in the fossil record in the nineteenth century. It was, you know, a four hundred million year old fossil, and they're like, this is the missing link between you know, animals in the sea and animals on the ground. And we love the Cela

cant for this reason, but it's long dead. I think the most recent fossil they'd found was from sixty six million years ago, So we just thought it was another very very interesting prehistoric fish, right, and it was very sad to not be able to study those in modern times. And then boom, not too modern. But in ninett they caught one or they discovered one off the coast of South Africa, and that was a big, big deal. And then since then they've gotten quite a few more of

these live specimens on record. If I remember correctly, it was a woman's scientist to who was the one who recognized it for what it was and was like, the this is a big deal. Yeah, aren't they like not bottom dwellers, but they're pretty deep guys, right, yes, And I remember they see I'm enough that now that we're like, okay,

these are definitely not extinct. They're still around. I think they Yeah, they just don't inhabit areas we frequent very much, and they're like, this is clearly not trying to grow arms and legs, but nice effort, right, So we got one under our belt, Chuck, What about the takahi. The takahi is native to New Zealand, one of our favorite places. Hello are Kiwi friends, And this is a flightless bird that's a member of the rail family. It's very pretty,

about the size of a goose. They're kind of blue green, they're they're really really nice looking, and even from the beginning they were really rare. I think they were discovered by European explorers in eighty seven and they were never abundant. No, apparently, UM. After the second specimen was found, only four were found in the nineteenth century. When the guy who found the second one described it, um, he said that there's there these are gone like this whatever I just found maybe

the last of it. He said, it's unlikely any further living specimens will be found. Um and that was that. That closed the book on it. But um, fifty years later, there's another guy named Jeffrey Orbell who was like, I, for some reason, I cannot accept that the taka he taka he is just gone forever and set out searching for him. Yeah. I mean it's amazing and I'm glad people like Jeffrey Orbell are out there because, uh, Jeffrey Orbell found one of these things on the South Island

in nine of New Zealand. And you know, this kind of brings up something we did mention at the beginning, like how can science be wrong about something being extinct? And you know, it's it's fairly easy to happen. You know, the world is a big place, the Earth is a

big place, and they do their best. But you know, at a certain point, when something isn't around for a certain amount of time, they get together and they feel comfortable saying this thing is extinct, and you know, if it comes back to life, is a lazarous species and that's great. It's not like science hangs their head in shame, like the can't is back. But um, it is sometimes tough to see, especially if it's a rare thing to

begin with, that they're truly extinct. Yeah. The International Union for Conservation of Nature is the ones responsible for declaring something endangered or extinct in the wild, and their definition of extinct is that when there's no reasonable doubt that the last individual has died when exhaustive surveys and known and or expected habitat at appropriate times diurnal, seasonal annual throughout its historic range have failed to record an individual.

So it's not just like nobody's reported one of these things for a while. It's like they go out and really try to find it, and if they can't find it, they're like, I guess it's extinct. Then they hang their heads in shame. That's right. I saw a great meme the other day. That's very appropriate for these times here in the United States. Uh. Something about science is not truth.

Science is the search for truth. Uh. And basically, when things it was much more scinct than this, but um, when things change, science continues to search for that truth. It's not flipping and flopping on the truth. Right. Let's just leave it at that and take a commercial break. Okay, Chuck, So we're back with I think my favorite it's my favorite, too good. We're talking about the lord how island stick insect. Yeah, not a great name. There's a better name for it,

don't you think. Yeah. Leave it to Australia to uh have an insect called a tree lobster um. Lord Howe Island is is off the coast of Australia, kind of midway between Brisbane and Sydney, and these things, uh, were very common on Lord Howe Island out there in the Pacific. And this is a really interesting story. There was a shipwreck off the actually kind of on the island, and everybody knows that chips, especially back in the olden days. I think it was six or nineteen eighteen. This is

nineteen twenties, but they're off by a few years. We're just full of rats. And these rats descended upon the island and really really overtook this island in a big way. They were like tree lobsters deed lish. Yeah, so they actually ate all the tree lobsters on the island, and them all the rats did. The rats um had no natural predators on the islands, so their population boomed, and they also ate to extinction all sorts of bird species, lizard species, a bunch of other ones, but in particular

this tree lobster, which you don't find elsewhere. And they thought like this thing was just endemic only to Lord Howe Island. So shortly after the twenties they were like the Lord Howe Island stick insect is now extinct. But then they were very surprised um in nineteen sixty when they found a few corpses. There were corpses, but they weren't like obviously forty year old descating corpses. They were fairly, fairly recent corpses. So they're like, wait a minute, these

things are still around. And I guess somebody thought to go look on another nearby island. It's like Pyramid Island, I believe, something like that. And they found a new population of these things, just a handful, but a few of them perched in a tea tree on the highest point of this island nearby, that's right, And so they started breeding them in captivity and training them to be

able to raise their middle finger. Because they have undertaken the Lord how Island rodent eradication project, where they are spreading forty two tons poison cereal pellets and twenty eight thousand bait stations across the island to rid this island

of those rats. And this was a couple of years ago, in twenty nineteen, and the most recent article I read said that sometime this year they were going to reintroduce like all the rats should be gone, and if there are any few rats left, these tree lobsters can go back and give them the finger. Very nice. They're spreading poison quisp on the islands. Irresistible, man, I'd have a hard time but that. You'd feel like, I know it's poisonous, but I just can't help myself. I know. If it

was Captain Crunch peanut butter, forget about it. I'm a dead man. Um. So, uh, there's another one. Uh, hats off to the Lord how islands tick insect. We're gonna take our leave and wish it luck and head on over to Peru, where the Peruvian yellow tailed wooly monkey was thought to have been extinct. It was first described in eighteen twelve just from a pelt um yeah I think so, yeah, a little yellowish um. But then only just a few times in the century that followed had

they actually been seen and described by travelers. Um, I guess scientists in Peru. And then the last one was seen until in six and by that point this science was like, I think these things are are gonezo that's right, But not so, because in they found one in Brazil and this is being kept as a pet. And it turns out these things were being kept as pets kind

of in different places all over the world. And this is one really interesting case where the illegal pet trade kind of brought, uh, in a roundabout way, something back from extinction. Yeah, they think there's maybe fewer than a thousand of them in the wild, which is still not terribly bad considering something was considered extinct for a little while, but apparently it was. And this is kind of like um,

one of the definitions of a Lazarus species. It was news to science that this thing was not extinct, but to the local population in Peru who lived, you know, in these in the area the same area as these monkeys, they were well aware that these things were around. They just hadn't heard the science didn't know we're else. I'm sure they would have told somebody, that's right. What about this is my second favorite, Chuck, what about you? I can't believe we're gonna do five and shorty, But here

we go with a robust red horse. It's a pale pink has pale pink fins, is sort of stout and it's you know, it's not very remarkable looking. If you look at a robust red horse You think that thing is misnamed because it's just sort of plain looking. It's an ug fish as what they should call it. Yeah, it's not the best look. It's got a great Latin name, Maxostoma robust um. It's a good band name. Or maybe an album title, yeah yeah, yeah, prog rock for sure,

or maybe like a like a Mastodon album, yeah, exactly. Um. This was first described by uh Edward Drinker Cope naturalists from Europe in eighteen seventy, based on just this one fish that he found in a river in North Carolina. Uh. And unfortunately that fish was destroyed because that was the last one that anyone saw for a hundred and twenty two years. Yeah, so everybody's like, well it's extinct. We're not even sure it ever exactly lived. We gotta take

this Cope fellas word for it. And he's popped up before. I can't put my finger on it. But we've talked about them before. But then in nineteen eighty and then I believe also in people started reporting this. It's somebody who's like, know what I think that that is Cope's robust red horse fish. Uh. They started finding them in the Savannah and Pete rivers in Georgia and uh, South Carolina, I think, and um so they they actually made a

deliberate effort. They launched an effort twenty years ago to find some mating pairs of the robust red horse in the Savannah River and um basically start breeding them in captivity, and I read I think in two thousand fifteen, Chuck, they released some and they recently identified the first wild juveniles that had been born to this restored population of robust red horses. A big comeback, huge comeback from the dead.

Basically same here. So uh, that's it for short Stuff, everybody, if you want to look up some more lazarous Um species, then they're out there and it's thrilling. Every single one has a great story behind it, so go amuse yourself with that. In the meantime, Short Stuff says goodbye. H Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H