Which species that are now extinct (or extinct in the wild) have you seen in your lifetime, either in the wild, or in zoos? [Feel free to post any pics of them too.]
I have seen atleast 5 species of Partula Snail,that are now extinct in the wild.All of the in zoo's in the UK.
Yes, several Partulas here too. What's the wild status of Cape Verde Kites (Milvus milvus fasciicauda) these days? I've horrible feeling they may only survive as hybrids now - I saw them when they were at Newent. Northern White Rhino is the classic 'near-extinct' zoo animal, of course - seen them at San Diego in '98 and Dvur in '03. Such a sad situation with them now. Pere David's Deer, Scimitar-horned Oryx and Socorro Dove are all still classified Extinct in the Wild - ones that many of us will have seen (the two ungulates are common in Europe).
I keep forgetting about the Cape Verde Kites,they used to be one of the high lights of visiting Newent,and of course I have also seen Pere David's Deer,Scimitar-horned Oryx and Socorro Dove.
Northern white rhinos are fortunately the only "walking dead" species that I have seen. On a much brighter note I have seen California condors out in the wild, so there is one species seen that has gone un-extinct in the wild. I have also seen a plant species called the San Fernando Valley Spineflower that was thought to be extinct for 90 years until it "came back from the dead" in 1999 (Calflora: Chorizanthe parryi var. fernandina).
I have kept and bred Ameca splendens, the butterfly goodeid, which is not a rare fish in aquaria; a close relative Skiffia francescae is also extinct in the wild (according to the current Red List) but not as commonly kept. Likewise the Potosi pupfish, Cyprinodon alvarezi, which is on display at Bristol and possibly at both ZSL sites, but I don't think it is available to private aquarists. All three species originate from restricted localities in Mexico. Alan
It seems as if the Cape Verde Kite (Milvus [milvus] fasciicauda) never existed as a valid taxon, In 2005 phylogenetic analyses based on mitochondrial genes for a sampling of kites - including Cape Verde Kite museum specimens collected between 1897 and 1924, and five kites trapped on the Cape Verde Islands in 2002 - found that the historical Cape Verde Kites, including the type specimen, were non-monophyletic and scattered within a larger 'red kite' clade. The 2002 kites from the Cape Verde Islands were all phylogenetically diagnosed as black kites (these were the Newent birds). The findings suggested that the Cape Verde Kite is not a distinctive evolutionary unit.
Back to the topic of the thread - I have seen Rabbs' Fringe-limbed Treefrog (Ecnomiohyla rabborum), which is believed to be extinct in the wild...and one specimen left in captivity (at Atlanta Botanical Garden). So it seems inevitable that I'll soon have seen an extinct species
Anyone else remember the Imperial Pheasant? I used to look at them with quasi-religious awe at London in the 1980s before they died out. Current thinking is that they're just hybrids, of course. Who knows what we wander past that won't be extant in 30-40 years' time?
I too used to look on the Imperial Pheasants with awe at London Zoo in the 1970s. I've even got slides of them somewhere [as I have of the Ceylon Junglefowl I had at the time, but that's another story]. There is a somewhat romantic history around the Imperial, which goes like this: Jean Delacour catches the only wild pair ever found [ie type & holotype of the species] in Vietnam between the two world wars. Coming home by sea, the hen Imperial gets out, flies overboard, lands up in a warehouse and is recaptured. The pair breed at Delacour's Cleres collection, and a very inbred line survives until the late 1960s/early 1970s, when they have to be outcrosssed to [I think] Silver Pheasants to get some kind of genetic viability back. DNA testing then reveals that this 'species' is really a hybrid of Berlioz' Silver and Edwards' Pheasant, and everybody loses interest. In the past few years, a UK breeder has re-made the Imperial, producing a hybrid that breeds true [I've seen them]. No conservation significance, but interesting, sufficently different from both parent species and apparently identical with the 'originals'. Discuss. By the way, I bred Butterfly Goodeids in the 1980s when there were very few about. Has anyone here seen a Pink-headed Duck? You would have to be quite old, but the last known examples died in the UK in the Second World War.
No,but I have seen a watercolour painting of the last birds in the UK,on the wall in the late Raymond Sawyers house.
I'll never know, but my mother probably made her first visit to London Zoo as a child of seven (or maybe younger) with my grandmother, aunt and uncle. They used to go to the Canal Banks to eat their picnic, in which case I suppose that a detour to the North Bank might have taken them past London's last Thylacine....
Wow. That's a tantalising thought. How many species do we walk past casually in zoos at the moment, that may go extinct in our lifetime?
