11 Extinct Animals That Have Been Photographed Alive

Javan Tigers are a subspecies of tiger which were limited to the Indonesian island of Java. The last specimen to have been seen was sighted in 1972, although there is evidence from track counts thatthe animal had lingered into the 1980’s. The last track counts to yield evidence of the tigers was held in 1979, when just three tigers were identified.

The leading cause of their extinction was agricultural encroachment and habitat loss, which continues to be a serious concern in Java.

The Tecopa Pupfish has the unfortunate distinction of being the first species to be declared extinct under the Endangered Species Act of 1973. The official de-listing ofthe animal came in 1981.

The fish were first discovered in the Tecopa Hot Springs in California in 1942, and their decline followed shortly thereafter, as the Hot Springs were canalized and replaced with bathhouses. The final nail in the coffin came when hotels and trailer parks were built nearby to allow for more comfortable recreation for tourists.

The Syrian Wild Ass was likely extinct when the last known captive animal died at the Schönbrunn Zoo in Vienna, Austria, in 1928. It once had a wide range throughout Mesopotamia, where reports were common of large herds which used to roam wildly in the mountains and desert steppes of the Middle East.

Although already threatened beforehand, it is said that the Syrian Wild Ass completely collapsed during World War I, when their habitat was overrun with heavily armed Turkish and British troops. One account remarked that “it could not resist the power of the modern guns in the hands of the Anazeh and Shammar nomads, and its speed, great as it may have been, was not sufficient always to escape from the velocity ofthe modern motor car which more and more is replacing the Old Testament Camel-Caravan.”

The inevitable appears to have arrived for the Baiji River Dolphin, a peaceful, majestic dolphin which had inhabited China’s Yangtze River for at least the last 20 million years. The dolphin was declared functionally extinct after an expedition late in 2006 failed to record a single individual after an extensive search ofthe animal’s entire range.

Although unconfirmed sightings have come out since then, it’s unlikely that any living individuals, should they still exist, would be able find each other and breed. This tragic demise makes the Baiji Dolphin the first recorded extinction of a cetacean in modern times.

The population had been declining rapidly in recent decades since the rise of Chinese industrialization, which has utilized the Yangtze River as one of its primary arteries. The river is now one of the worst polluted major waterways in the world, being heavily relied upon for transportation and hydroelectricity. Roughly 12% of the world’s human population lives and works within the river’s catchment zone.