11 Animals That Have Been Wiped Off This Planet, Because [of] Humans!

 KC ARCHANA 

NOVEMBER 19, 2017

   

Since time immemorial, human beings have hunted down animals and messed with the environment for their own ease and comfort. We might consider ourselves the most evolved species on this planet, but we have used our 'superior skills' to satiate our selfish ends, all at the cost of wiping out entire species of animals  from the face of the Earth.

Here are 11 species that our future generations will never see because of our selfishness.

1.  Great Auk

The great auk ( Pinguinus impennis ) was a flightless coastal bird that  lived on rocky islands around the North Atlantic, including in Canada, Greenland, Iceland, the British Isles and Scandinavia.

Up until the late 18th century, they were hunted down in huge numbers. The rare birds soon became a prized specimen for collectors and they were driven to extinction by the mid-1850s.  The killing of the last mating pair happened on July 3, 1844, by Sigurour Isleifsson and two other men who had been hired by a merchant to hunt the birds.

2. Dodo

The dodos belonged to the pigeon and dove family and were native to the island of Mauritius. Back in 1598, Dutch travellers were the first to discover this unique species. Dodo's laid only one egg a year and with the onset of human invasion, their survival came under major threat.

The importing of dogs, cats, pigs, rats and crab-eating macaques is what really killed the species. The bird eventually faded into oblivion, so much so that “dead as a dodo” and “to go the way of the dodo” are two famous phrases inspired by the death of the species.

3. Elephant Bird

The Elephant Bird, (Aepyornis), was the largest bird that ever lived. At 10-foot-tall, this 1,000-pound behemoth once roamed the island of Madagascar.  Related to ostriches and emus, the elephant bird evolved at a time when birds ruled the earth and had existed for 60 million years.  But thanks to humans, the bird was hunted into extinction.

4.Thylacines (Tasmanian Tigers)

The Tasmanian Tiger was an incredibly unique species. It had the head of a dog, stripes of a cat and the pouch of a kangaroo. Their killing  started after farmers complained about their livestock going missing, and the only way out was to exterminate them on a large scale.

Continued