WEBVTT - SYMHC Classics: Endlings 0:00:02.560 --> 0:00:07.040 Happy Saturday. Last week's episode on Very Old Animals kept 0:00:07.080 --> 0:00:11.440 reminding me of our previous episode on endlings. That's a 0:00:11.480 --> 0:00:15.160 word that's been coined to describe the last known surviving 0:00:15.200 --> 0:00:18.479 members of a species. So we're bringing our episode out 0:00:18.560 --> 0:00:22.920 on some endlings as Today's Saturday Classic. This episode originally 0:00:22.960 --> 0:00:26.319 came out on February twenty first, twenty eighteen in Joy 0:00:29.680 --> 0:00:32.640 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production 0:00:32.760 --> 0:00:43.280 of iHeartRadio. Hello and Welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. 0:00:43.440 --> 0:00:48.600 Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. On February twenty first, nineteen eighteen, 0:00:48.960 --> 0:00:53.120 a bird named Incas died at the Cincinnati Zoo. Incas 0:00:53.240 --> 0:00:56.240 was a Carolina parakeet and his mate, Lady Jane, had 0:00:56.280 --> 0:00:59.800 died the year before. They were the last of their species. 0:01:00.800 --> 0:01:04.880 In the nineteen nineties, physician Robert Webster of Jasper, Georgia 0:01:05.200 --> 0:01:08.360 coined a name for the last living member of a species, 0:01:08.400 --> 0:01:11.360 which was endling, and so the word he realized the 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:13.680 need for while he was treating a patient who told 0:01:13.760 --> 0:01:15.920 him that she was the last living member of her 0:01:15.920 --> 0:01:20.679 family line. Endling isn't in Merriam Webster or the Oxford 0:01:20.680 --> 0:01:24.120 English Dictionary as of when we recording the show, but 0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:27.160 it's been picked up by museums and journals and magazines 0:01:27.240 --> 0:01:31.319 and their discussions of last animals, especially ones that people 0:01:31.360 --> 0:01:34.360 cared enough about to name and then write about them 0:01:34.360 --> 0:01:37.400 when they died. So a few other examples of these 0:01:37.520 --> 0:01:40.440 endlings are booming. Ben the heath hen who was last 0:01:40.480 --> 0:01:45.880 seen on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts on March eleventh, nineteen thirty two. Benjamin, 0:01:45.920 --> 0:01:49.640 the last Tasmanian tiger, died on September seventh, nineteen thirty 0:01:49.680 --> 0:01:52.880 six at the Hobart Zoo in Tasmania. And some of 0:01:52.880 --> 0:01:56.520 these are really recent. Tufie, who was the last known 0:01:56.640 --> 0:02:01.160 RABS fringe limbed tree frog, died on September twenty sixteen 0:02:01.160 --> 0:02:05.760 at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens Frog Pod Laboratory for Amphibian Conservation. 0:02:06.520 --> 0:02:09.320 So since we're coming up on the centennial of its 0:02:09.600 --> 0:02:12.160 extinction today, we're going to talk about the Carolina parakeet, 0:02:12.200 --> 0:02:16.240 along with two other endlings who were marked, the Passenger 0:02:16.240 --> 0:02:20.720 pigeon and Lonesome George, the Penta Island tortoise. Just in 0:02:20.720 --> 0:02:27.639 case not clear this episode would get the I think 0:02:27.639 --> 0:02:30.480 they've changed the way they do these ratings, but it 0:02:30.600 --> 0:02:33.079 used to be at doesthdog dye dot com. There would 0:02:33.120 --> 0:02:35.440 be a sad face of a dog. Yeah. If the 0:02:35.520 --> 0:02:38.600 dog died this this would have like all sad faces. 0:02:38.639 --> 0:02:43.919 This whole episode is about animals dying. Yeah. Uh. Once 0:02:44.000 --> 0:02:47.239 upon a time, Eastern North America had its own native 0:02:47.320 --> 0:02:53.320 parrot species Consis carolinensis, better known as the Carolina parakeet, 0:02:53.680 --> 0:02:59.800 or sometimes the Carolina parrot. A subspecies Counterropsis carolinensis ludovicianis, 0:03:00.280 --> 0:03:03.720 was sometimes known as the Louisiana parakeet, but in writings 0:03:03.720 --> 0:03:07.760 about them, they're generally grouped together, just as the Carolina parakeet. 0:03:08.600 --> 0:03:12.200 It is not clear who coined the term Carolina parakeet, 0:03:12.280 --> 0:03:15.120 but it was some time after the Carolina Colony was 0:03:15.240 --> 0:03:19.080 chartered in sixteen sixty three. The birds first mentions in 0:03:19.160 --> 0:03:23.400 writing date back to the fifteen eighties, obviously without the 0:03:23.440 --> 0:03:27.800 Carolina moniker as part of them. In sixteen twelve, William 0:03:27.840 --> 0:03:31.600 Stratchy described them this way in the History of Travel 0:03:31.680 --> 0:03:36.920 into Virginia, Britanna. Quote parakeitos. I have seen many in 0:03:36.960 --> 0:03:40.240 the winter and known diverse killed. Yet they be a 0:03:40.240 --> 0:03:43.760 foul most swift of wing, Their wings and breasts are 0:03:43.840 --> 0:03:48.160 of a greenish color with forked tails. Their heads some crimson, 0:03:48.280 --> 0:03:52.880 some yellow, some orange, tawny, very beautiful. You'll just have 0:03:52.960 --> 0:03:56.920 to imagine the seventeenth century spelling of that passage, because 0:03:56.920 --> 0:04:00.000 it's delightful. It is, and it's one of those green 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:02.600 examples that reminds me of the episode we did about 0:04:02.640 --> 0:04:05.720 how language shifts and the rules are made up, uh huh, 0:04:05.760 --> 0:04:08.760 because there's some fast and loose spelling that changes from 0:04:08.760 --> 0:04:11.760 mention to mention there, and I love it. My favorite 0:04:11.800 --> 0:04:15.160 is that they are very beau t y f ull 0:04:15.480 --> 0:04:20.920 It's like the way little kids say beautiful. Of course, 0:04:20.960 --> 0:04:23.800 North America's indigenous people already had their own names for 0:04:23.839 --> 0:04:27.040 these birds, and they're represented in indigenous art going back 0:04:27.080 --> 0:04:31.359 to prehistory, including in pipes and calcite and hematite ornaments. 0:04:31.960 --> 0:04:34.640 Their feathers and other parts were also used in native 0:04:34.680 --> 0:04:39.040 clothing and ornaments. Most sources describe the bird's range as 0:04:39.080 --> 0:04:42.120 covering almost all of the eastern United States, but research 0:04:42.200 --> 0:04:46.080 that was published in twenty seventeen suggests that the Carolina 0:04:46.120 --> 0:04:50.000 and Louisiana subspecies really had smaller ranges that didn't really 0:04:50.040 --> 0:04:54.040 overlap each other very much. According to this research, Carolina 0:04:54.080 --> 0:04:57.640 parakeets lived all through Florida and then in coastal regions 0:04:57.680 --> 0:05:02.640 from Texas up to Virginia. Louisiana parakeets lived in the 0:05:02.680 --> 0:05:05.839 central part of the country in a squarish blob with 0:05:06.000 --> 0:05:09.920 the southwest corner in central Texas and the northeast corner 0:05:09.960 --> 0:05:14.480 in central Ohio. These were bright green birds, roughly twelve 0:05:14.560 --> 0:05:18.599 inches or thirty centimeters long. Juveniles were green all over, 0:05:18.680 --> 0:05:21.479 and as they matured their heads turned yellow, with little 0:05:21.480 --> 0:05:25.800 reddish orange masks along their eyes, running down beside their beaks, 0:05:25.839 --> 0:05:29.279 and across the tops of their heads. In the words 0:05:29.320 --> 0:05:32.640 of James Hall, writing in eighteen thirty eight, they were 0:05:32.720 --> 0:05:37.000 quote a bird of beautiful plumage, but very bad character. 0:05:39.040 --> 0:05:42.440 But their character probably got a lot worse after the 0:05:42.640 --> 0:05:47.280 arrival of European colonists in North America. I really yearned 0:05:47.279 --> 0:05:49.760 to know what gave the bad care. Were they just sassy? 0:05:49.880 --> 0:05:53.640 Were they really about food? That's the next thing that 0:05:53.640 --> 0:05:56.200 we're talking about. I like it. It's like a far 0:05:56.240 --> 0:05:58.360 side cartoon, right with like the birds from the wrong 0:05:58.400 --> 0:06:00.279 side of the tracks kind of thing. In my head. 0:06:00.320 --> 0:06:04.359 That's how this plays out Carolina parakeets ate fruit plants, 0:06:04.440 --> 0:06:07.360 some insects, and a lot of seeds, and they were 0:06:07.400 --> 0:06:11.719 particularly fond of cocklebar seeds. So cocklebars are native to 0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:14.960 North America, but they're invasive in other parts of the world, 0:06:15.200 --> 0:06:18.280 and even in North America, these plants are annoying since 0:06:18.279 --> 0:06:22.479 they're covered in prickly, clinging seed pods. Cockle Bars didn't 0:06:22.480 --> 0:06:26.080 really run rampant in pre colonial forests, but once colonists 0:06:26.120 --> 0:06:29.640 started clearing those forests for farmlands, they thrived in the 0:06:29.680 --> 0:06:33.800 disturbed soil. The plants themselves could choke out crops and 0:06:33.839 --> 0:06:36.840 make them difficult to harvest, and the burrs could ruin 0:06:36.920 --> 0:06:41.520 sheep's wool and cause problems for other livestock. Cocklebar seeds 0:06:41.560 --> 0:06:45.600 contain a glucoside that's toxic to mammals, but Carolina parakeets 0:06:45.720 --> 0:06:48.200 love to grab one with a claw, eat the seeds 0:06:48.200 --> 0:06:49.680 out of the middle of it, and then drop the 0:06:49.720 --> 0:06:53.760 prickly part on the ground. Carolina parakeets love of these 0:06:53.800 --> 0:06:57.440 seeds made them useful for cocklebar control and for control 0:06:57.480 --> 0:07:00.800 of the similarly annoying sand spur, which they also liked 0:07:00.839 --> 0:07:05.320 to eat. But European Colonists also were planting orchards of 0:07:05.440 --> 0:07:09.240 fruit trees, and the parakeets treated these crops exactly the 0:07:09.240 --> 0:07:12.240 same way that they treated cocklebers. They grabbed the fruit 0:07:12.280 --> 0:07:14.200 with a foot, pecked the seeds out of it, and 0:07:14.240 --> 0:07:17.000 then threw the ruined fruit down on the ground. That 0:07:17.160 --> 0:07:22.680 is their bad character, litterbugs. They're wasteful. I somehow feel 0:07:22.800 --> 0:07:26.040 guilty also joking about it. Extinct species. I'm gonna put 0:07:26.040 --> 0:07:30.160 this away now. Carolina parakeets went after cultivated fields of 0:07:30.200 --> 0:07:33.760 corn and other grains as well, spoiling more food than 0:07:33.760 --> 0:07:38.000 they ate. John James Audubon described them as covering fields 0:07:38.000 --> 0:07:40.720 of stacked grains so completely that they looked like a 0:07:40.760 --> 0:07:45.160 bright carpet on top of all this crop destruction. Carolina 0:07:45.200 --> 0:07:49.040 parakeets were highly social, gregarious birds that traveled in huge, 0:07:49.080 --> 0:07:52.120 noisy flocks and left lots of droppings behind, so a 0:07:52.120 --> 0:07:55.760 lot of colonists thought they were an enormous nuisance. Farmers 0:07:55.840 --> 0:07:58.800 hunted them aggressively to keep them away from crops, and 0:07:58.920 --> 0:08:01.960 people also hunted them for food and for their feathers. 0:08:02.320 --> 0:08:07.120 That very vibrant, beautiful plumage made them really popular among milliners. 0:08:07.880 --> 0:08:11.480 The bird's own behavior also made them easy targets. They 0:08:11.520 --> 0:08:14.240 congregated in large flocks, and they would fly off at 0:08:14.240 --> 0:08:17.000 the sound of gunfire, but then all the birds would 0:08:17.000 --> 0:08:19.920 return to the same spot, especially if they heard one 0:08:20.000 --> 0:08:23.680 of their own injured. There By the early nineteenth century, 0:08:24.000 --> 0:08:28.120 the Carolina parakeet's numbers were in obvious decline. John J. 0:08:28.280 --> 0:08:31.840 Audubon published his Birds of America in installments from eighteen 0:08:31.880 --> 0:08:34.520 twenty seven to eighteen thirty eight, and in that book 0:08:34.600 --> 0:08:37.280 he described the decline as recent. He said that they 0:08:37.320 --> 0:08:41.000 had been plentiful twenty five years before. In this drop 0:08:41.000 --> 0:08:44.360 in population can't really be pinned on just one cause. 0:08:45.160 --> 0:08:48.240 In addition to the relentless hunting, the birds lost huge 0:08:48.240 --> 0:08:52.439 amounts of habitats through deforestation, especially after the Cotton gin 0:08:52.559 --> 0:08:56.040 made cotton a profitable crop in the South. It's also 0:08:56.120 --> 0:08:58.800 possible that the birds were forced out of nesting sites 0:08:58.800 --> 0:09:02.440 after the introduction of bees to North America. There was 0:09:02.480 --> 0:09:04.880 never a formal study of these birds in the wild, 0:09:04.960 --> 0:09:06.959 so there is a bit of debate about whether they 0:09:07.000 --> 0:09:09.960 nested in hollow trees like honey bees do, or if 0:09:09.960 --> 0:09:12.880 they built nests out of sticks, or if they possibly 0:09:12.880 --> 0:09:16.200 did some of both. In the last few decades of 0:09:16.240 --> 0:09:19.720 their existence, Carolina parakeets were viewed as much less of 0:09:19.760 --> 0:09:22.600 a nuisance. Their numbers had dropped to the point that 0:09:22.640 --> 0:09:26.640 their control of cocklebers outweighed their potential damage to crops. 0:09:27.240 --> 0:09:30.320 Farmers were more inclined to just let them be, which 0:09:30.360 --> 0:09:33.640 may have ultimately led to their extinction. We really don't 0:09:33.679 --> 0:09:36.880 know what tipped the scale from a reduced population to 0:09:36.960 --> 0:09:40.080 one that was actively dying out, but one theory is 0:09:40.120 --> 0:09:44.640 that Carolina parakeets contracted a viral disease from domesticated poultry, 0:09:45.240 --> 0:09:47.360 and that only would have been possible after they were 0:09:47.400 --> 0:09:51.760 allowed to hang around farms instead of being shot on site. 0:09:52.520 --> 0:09:55.760 In nineteen oh four, the last known wild Carolina parakeet 0:09:55.800 --> 0:10:00.080 was killed in Okachobee County, Florida. Carolina parakeets were easy 0:10:00.120 --> 0:10:02.840 to keep his pets, although they could not be trained 0:10:02.840 --> 0:10:06.199 to talk. Breeding pairs and small groups also lived in 0:10:06.320 --> 0:10:08.839 zoos on both sides of the Atlantic until the early 0:10:08.880 --> 0:10:12.120 twentieth century, and they had been bred in captivity since 0:10:12.160 --> 0:10:16.160 eighteen seventy seven. There wasn't any sort of organized breeding 0:10:16.200 --> 0:10:19.320 program to try to repopulate the species or create a 0:10:19.320 --> 0:10:24.000 genetically diverse breeding pool at the Cincinnati Zoo. Incas and 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:27.280 Lady Jane produced several eggs, but they tended to throw 0:10:27.280 --> 0:10:30.080 them out of the nest and they weren't retrieved or incubated. 0:10:31.000 --> 0:10:34.600 After Incas's death on February twenty first, nineteen eighteen, it 0:10:34.640 --> 0:10:37.719 took a while to confirm that the species really was extinct. 0:10:38.120 --> 0:10:41.360 The official determination came in nineteen thirty nine, following a 0:10:41.440 --> 0:10:46.040 National Audubon Society search of South Carolina after a purported 0:10:46.080 --> 0:10:50.120 siding there. None of these reported sidings were ever substantiated, 0:10:50.160 --> 0:10:52.000 and a few of them turned out to be feral 0:10:52.080 --> 0:10:56.040 parrots or parakeets that had previously been somebody's pets and 0:10:56.280 --> 0:10:59.280 had wound up out in the wild. I grew up 0:10:59.320 --> 0:11:03.240 in North Carolin, and I always as a child having 0:11:03.280 --> 0:11:05.600 heard about the Carolina parakeet, the fact that I was 0:11:05.600 --> 0:11:08.400 from North Carolina and that they were from North Carolina, 0:11:08.520 --> 0:11:10.800 and when the name Carolina parakeet meant that they were 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:14.520 my personal species of parakeet that was now extinct, and 0:11:14.600 --> 0:11:19.960 I was very put out about that. And when Incas died, 0:11:20.160 --> 0:11:23.480 it was purportedly in the same cage where Martha, the 0:11:23.600 --> 0:11:27.200 last passenger pigeon, had also died, and we're going to 0:11:27.200 --> 0:11:30.360 talk about Martha and passenger pigeons in general after we 0:11:30.400 --> 0:11:42.640 first paused for a little sponsor break. Passenger pigeons or 0:11:42.720 --> 0:11:47.320 Ectoscopies migratoris used to be the most common bird in 0:11:47.360 --> 0:11:51.240 what's now the United States. Their winter range stretched from 0:11:51.280 --> 0:11:54.319 eastern Canada down to Florida. It went all across the 0:11:54.320 --> 0:11:58.120 Mississippi River, covering more than half of the continent. Their 0:11:58.200 --> 0:12:01.640 breeding range was a smaller hocket, primarily around the Great 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:05.920 Lakes and what's now New York. Male passenger pigeons were 0:12:05.960 --> 0:12:09.400 blue gray with a rosy pink throat and chest. They 0:12:09.400 --> 0:12:11.880 were about sixteen and a half inches that's about forty 0:12:11.920 --> 0:12:15.760 two centimeters in length, and females were slightly smaller and 0:12:15.840 --> 0:12:18.960 not as distinctively colored. They were closer to brown gray 0:12:19.040 --> 0:12:22.200 than blue gray, and they had more subdued coloring on 0:12:22.240 --> 0:12:26.000 their throat and chest. They looked enough like mourning doves 0:12:26.360 --> 0:12:29.280 that this often led to cases of mistaken identity, although 0:12:29.320 --> 0:12:32.760 passenger pigeons were usually a couple of inches larger than 0:12:32.760 --> 0:12:37.680 mourning doves. They ate nuts, acorns, seeds, and berries, along 0:12:37.679 --> 0:12:40.400 with some worms and insects. In the spring, and summer. 0:12:41.480 --> 0:12:45.559 So when we say the most common bird, it's estimated 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:48.920 that before European arrival in North America, there were between 0:12:49.000 --> 0:12:52.600 three and five billion of them, that is, billion with 0:12:52.720 --> 0:12:55.959 a bee, making up between twenty five and forty percent 0:12:56.040 --> 0:12:58.560 of all the birds. In the places where they lived. 0:12:58.960 --> 0:13:01.600 They formed a noise ormous colonies, with up to one 0:13:01.679 --> 0:13:05.840 hundred nests in an individual tree. Sometimes so many birds 0:13:05.880 --> 0:13:08.320 would nest in a tree that branches would snap off 0:13:08.360 --> 0:13:11.040 of it or the tree itself would fall. In the 0:13:11.080 --> 0:13:16.760 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, missionary Gabriel Sagarteadat described their numbers 0:13:16.800 --> 0:13:21.320 as infinite multitudes, and Cotton Mather wrote about mile wide 0:13:21.360 --> 0:13:25.559 flocks that took hours to pass overhead. Here's how John J. 0:13:25.720 --> 0:13:29.360 Audubon described a flock he saw in eighteen thirteen quote, 0:13:29.679 --> 0:13:33.360 the air was literally filled with pigeons. The light of 0:13:33.480 --> 0:13:37.200 noonday was obscured as by an eclipse. The dung fell 0:13:37.240 --> 0:13:40.720 in spots, not unlike melting flakes of snow, and the 0:13:40.800 --> 0:13:43.880 continued buzz of the wings had a tendency to lull 0:13:43.920 --> 0:13:49.160 my senses to repose. An eighteen fifty five account from Columbus, 0:13:49.200 --> 0:13:52.760 Ohio described the local response to the passing of an 0:13:52.880 --> 0:13:57.200 enormous pigeon flock quote, children screamed and ran for a home, 0:13:57.760 --> 0:14:00.400 Women gathered their long skirts and hurried for the shelter 0:14:00.520 --> 0:14:04.959 of stores. Horses bolted, a few people mumbled frightened words 0:14:04.960 --> 0:14:08.079 about the approach of the millennium, and several dropped onto 0:14:08.120 --> 0:14:11.720 their knees and prayed. According to this account, this flock's 0:14:11.840 --> 0:14:14.560 passage took two hours. There have been a number of 0:14:14.600 --> 0:14:18.679 remarks about, like, we don't have any kind of pictures 0:14:18.840 --> 0:14:22.560 or I mean obviously not video quite at that point 0:14:23.520 --> 0:14:28.400 showing how dramatic these flocks of birds were. But like 0:14:28.440 --> 0:14:31.120 the over and over, they're described as literally blotting out 0:14:31.120 --> 0:14:33.800 the sun and just waiting for hours and hours as 0:14:33.840 --> 0:14:37.600 this massive flock of birds that blotted out the sun 0:14:38.560 --> 0:14:42.760 flew over and left droppings everywhere. Yeah, I think the 0:14:42.800 --> 0:14:46.200 fact that people responded as though the apocalypse was nine 0:14:46.520 --> 0:14:49.760 is a pretty good indicator of how significant this bird 0:14:49.760 --> 0:14:54.480 flight was. Uh. This eighteen fifty five account is somewhat 0:14:54.520 --> 0:14:58.240 surprising because the passenger pigeon had a pretty similar trajectory 0:14:58.720 --> 0:15:02.360 to the Carolina parakeet, and by eighteen fifty five their 0:15:02.440 --> 0:15:07.600 numbers were noticeably declining. This decline came primarily from over hunting. 0:15:08.480 --> 0:15:12.400 Passenger pigeons formed such enormous flocks that they vastly outnumbered 0:15:12.440 --> 0:15:16.560 animal predators, so normal predation and even some hunting by 0:15:16.680 --> 0:15:20.440 humans wasn't enough to really reduce their numbers. But the 0:15:20.480 --> 0:15:25.280 passenger pigeon could not overcome industrialization and are rapidly increasing 0:15:25.400 --> 0:15:29.560 human population in the nineteenth century. To technologies were a 0:15:29.640 --> 0:15:32.520 huge part of the end of the species, the telegraph 0:15:32.600 --> 0:15:35.480 and the railroad. The telegraph made it easy to send 0:15:35.520 --> 0:15:38.640 word of where passenger pigeons were roosting, and the railroad 0:15:38.680 --> 0:15:42.280 made it possible to ship huge barrels of pigeons around 0:15:42.320 --> 0:15:44.600 the country to use as a cheap source of meat. 0:15:45.600 --> 0:15:49.600 There were no conservation laws restricting how people hunted passenger 0:15:49.640 --> 0:15:53.080 pigeons or how many could be killed, so people hunted 0:15:53.120 --> 0:15:56.800 them at their nesting sites, and they killed massively unsustainable 0:15:56.840 --> 0:16:00.960 numbers in one go. One eighteen seventy eight hunt in 0:16:01.040 --> 0:16:05.760 Michigan took fifty thousand birds a day from their nesting site. 0:16:05.880 --> 0:16:08.240 As we said earlier, people had been noticing that the 0:16:08.280 --> 0:16:11.920 pigeon population was dropping as early as the eighteen fifties. 0:16:12.760 --> 0:16:16.560 People were still hunting these pigeons in massive numbers decades 0:16:16.680 --> 0:16:21.440 after they noticed their decline. States began passing laws to 0:16:21.480 --> 0:16:25.720 try to protect the passenger pigeon, including outlawing hunting near 0:16:25.760 --> 0:16:28.840 their nesting areas and in one case, closing the pigeon 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:33.880 hunting season entirely. In nineteen hundred, President William McKinley signed 0:16:33.920 --> 0:16:37.440 the Lacey Act, which was the nation's first federal conservation 0:16:37.520 --> 0:16:40.520 law meant to protect fish and wildlife. One of the 0:16:40.560 --> 0:16:44.040 motivations for passing the Lacy Act was the plummeting stock 0:16:44.080 --> 0:16:46.960 of passenger pigeons, and it made it illegal to poach 0:16:47.040 --> 0:16:49.800 pigeons from one state with the intent of selling them 0:16:49.800 --> 0:16:54.240 in another. This was far too late for the passenger pigeon, 0:16:54.280 --> 0:16:57.480 though by this point some states where the birds had 0:16:57.520 --> 0:17:02.160 been widespread hadn't spotted one in years. The last confirmed 0:17:02.200 --> 0:17:05.359 sighting of a wild passenger pigeon was on March twenty fourth, 0:17:05.560 --> 0:17:10.119 nineteen hundred, in Pike County, Ohio, almost two months to 0:17:10.200 --> 0:17:14.560 the day before the passage of the Lacy Act. Ornithologists 0:17:14.640 --> 0:17:18.880 mounted organized searches, including offering up a reward of fifteen 0:17:19.000 --> 0:17:22.200 hundred dollars to anyone who could find a passenger pigeon 0:17:22.200 --> 0:17:26.080 between nineteen oh nine and nineteen twelve, but none were found. 0:17:26.440 --> 0:17:29.320 By the nineteen teens, the birds were extinct in the wild, 0:17:29.440 --> 0:17:33.159 and the only captive populations were in three zoos, the 0:17:33.200 --> 0:17:37.480 Brookfield Zoo in Chicago, the Milwaukee Zoo, and the Cincinnati Zoo. 0:17:38.320 --> 0:17:41.280 Attempts to set up a breeding program failed because the 0:17:41.280 --> 0:17:44.600 bird's highly social nature meant that they just didn't breed 0:17:44.640 --> 0:17:49.120 well in captivity. Martha, the last of the passenger pigeons, 0:17:49.200 --> 0:17:52.280 was born in the Brookfield Zoo and then donated to Cincinnati. 0:17:52.400 --> 0:17:56.320 She was named after Martha Washington and her later years, 0:17:56.359 --> 0:17:59.000 her keepers had to keep lowering her perch as she 0:17:59.040 --> 0:18:01.399 became less able to fly, so they basically had to 0:18:01.400 --> 0:18:03.440 get it low enough that she could just climb up there. 0:18:04.160 --> 0:18:07.480 The last male passenger pigeon died at the zoo on 0:18:07.600 --> 0:18:11.280 July tenth, nineteen ten, and then Martha died on September one, 0:18:11.560 --> 0:18:15.560 nineteen fourteen, at the age of about twenty nine. After 0:18:15.600 --> 0:18:18.520 her death, Martha was packed in a three hundred pound 0:18:18.520 --> 0:18:21.800 block of ice and shipped to the Smithsonian by train. 0:18:22.760 --> 0:18:26.800 Taxidermist Nelson Wood mounted her remains and her internal organs 0:18:26.840 --> 0:18:31.000 are part of the Smithsonian's wet collections. Martha is still 0:18:31.080 --> 0:18:33.719 part of the Smithsonian collection as well, although she is 0:18:33.760 --> 0:18:36.600 not usually on display because she is so delicate and 0:18:36.760 --> 0:18:40.639 very valuable. There's also a passenger pigeon memorial at the 0:18:40.640 --> 0:18:46.720 Cincinnati Zoo. Our last endling was also preserved through taxidermy. 0:18:47.200 --> 0:18:50.320 Couldn't confirm whether Incas was or not, and we will 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:53.359 get to that last story after one more quick sponsor break. 0:19:01.600 --> 0:19:05.240 The Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador are famous 0:19:05.280 --> 0:19:07.879 for their diversity of plant and animal life, with a 0:19:07.880 --> 0:19:11.120 lot of species that are unique to each individual island. 0:19:11.480 --> 0:19:15.000 Charles Darwin conducted research there during the second voyage aboard 0:19:15.000 --> 0:19:18.320 the HMS Beagle, which contributed to his theory of evolution 0:19:18.520 --> 0:19:22.720 by means of natural selection. Giant tortoises are one of 0:19:22.720 --> 0:19:26.600 the most famous animals found in the Galapagos. Galapago in 0:19:26.680 --> 0:19:30.640 Spanish means turtle, and there are fifteen different species which 0:19:30.680 --> 0:19:36.600 fall into two primary categories, domed and saddlebacked. Pinta Island 0:19:36.640 --> 0:19:39.919 tortoises were saddlebacked tortoises with the shape of their shell 0:19:40.320 --> 0:19:43.399 allowing them to stretch their heads up to reach for food. 0:19:44.240 --> 0:19:47.040 This was also a form of communication among the tortoises. 0:19:47.080 --> 0:19:49.600 They would stretch their heads up as far as possible 0:19:49.920 --> 0:19:54.640 when settling disputes. These tortoises were, as their name suggests, 0:19:54.760 --> 0:19:58.160 found on Pinta Island. Penta Island as a shield volcano, 0:19:58.280 --> 0:20:01.359 and it's the northernmost island of the Galapagos, so for 0:20:01.520 --> 0:20:04.840 whalers who passed through the area, Penta Island was usually 0:20:04.920 --> 0:20:08.480 the first and last island they passed on their journey. 0:20:08.800 --> 0:20:12.479 From the seventeen hundreds to the nineteen hundreds, whalers hunted 0:20:12.560 --> 0:20:15.800 a lot of tortoises from Pinta Island to use as food, 0:20:16.600 --> 0:20:19.439 and as was the case with the Carolina parakeet, the 0:20:19.520 --> 0:20:23.760 tortoises own traits made them susceptible to this. Tortoises can 0:20:23.800 --> 0:20:27.879 live for an extended period without food or water. Whalers 0:20:28.000 --> 0:20:30.960 realized that this meant that they could capture live tortoises 0:20:31.000 --> 0:20:33.720 on the island and keep them alive on board their 0:20:33.720 --> 0:20:36.159 ships without a lot of effort, allowing them to have 0:20:36.240 --> 0:20:40.080 fresh tortoise meat in transit. It's hard to pinpoint how 0:20:40.080 --> 0:20:43.040 many tortoises were taken from Pinta Island, alone, but it's 0:20:43.240 --> 0:20:46.720 estimated that more than one hundred thousand tortoises were killed 0:20:46.720 --> 0:20:51.760 in the Galapagos in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By 0:20:51.760 --> 0:20:55.000 the early twentieth century, researchers believed that the Penta Island 0:20:55.080 --> 0:20:59.200 tortoise was already extinct. At that time, the island's ecosystem 0:20:59.320 --> 0:21:02.800 was in pretty good condition apart from the absence of tortoises. 0:21:03.440 --> 0:21:07.320 But in nineteen fifty nine, some fishermen released three goats 0:21:07.400 --> 0:21:10.199 onto the island, hoping to use them as a food supply. 0:21:10.320 --> 0:21:13.800 When they passed through the area, as will surprise no 0:21:13.920 --> 0:21:17.600 one who has ever been around goats, they ran rampant 0:21:17.640 --> 0:21:19.840 over the island. They ate their way through a lot 0:21:19.880 --> 0:21:22.760 of the vegetation, and they produced lots and lots more goats. 0:21:23.440 --> 0:21:27.000 At that point, researchers concluded that if there had somehow 0:21:27.160 --> 0:21:30.399 been any tortoises left on Pensa Island, the feral goats 0:21:30.400 --> 0:21:35.000 would have destroyed their habitat completely. And yet, in nineteen 0:21:35.080 --> 0:21:38.560 seventy one, a Hungarian scientist who was on the island 0:21:38.680 --> 0:21:43.560 studying snails spotted a tortoise. The scientist's name and apologies 0:21:43.760 --> 0:21:49.359 if this is a butchering job was Yojev Vagvolji, and 0:21:49.400 --> 0:21:51.399 when he got back to Port, he reported what he 0:21:51.480 --> 0:21:55.120 had seen, and a year later Galapagos National Park rangers 0:21:55.160 --> 0:21:58.040 went to the island to look for themselves, and there 0:21:58.119 --> 0:22:01.080 they found one tortoise, and they took him to the 0:22:01.080 --> 0:22:04.720 Tortoise Center on Santa Cruz to keep him safe. The 0:22:04.760 --> 0:22:08.600 American media later started calling him Lonesome George, after TV 0:22:08.680 --> 0:22:12.480 comedian George Goebel, who had given himself that same nickname 0:22:13.560 --> 0:22:17.119 for decades. They tried to find a breeding partner for 0:22:17.240 --> 0:22:21.520 Lonesome George. They tried pairing him with other tortoise species, 0:22:21.640 --> 0:22:26.720 including two female wolf Volcano giant tortoises from Isabella Island. Later, 0:22:27.000 --> 0:22:30.760 DNA research revealed that Pensa Island tortoises might be more 0:22:30.800 --> 0:22:35.560 compatible with the Espanola tortoise. Two female Espanola tortoises from 0:22:35.600 --> 0:22:38.720 a breeding program were housed in George's corral, but none 0:22:38.720 --> 0:22:42.840 of the eggs that they produced were fertile. Lonesome George 0:22:42.920 --> 0:22:45.800 died on June twenty fourth, twenty twelve, and he was 0:22:45.840 --> 0:22:49.400 probably at least one hundred and that sounds like quite old, 0:22:49.440 --> 0:22:51.560 but he was actually on the younger side for a 0:22:51.600 --> 0:22:55.199 Pina Island tortoise. Those tortoises could live to be up 0:22:55.240 --> 0:22:58.159 to two hundred, but the average age was more like 0:22:58.240 --> 0:23:01.320 around one hundred and fifty and other than some weight 0:23:01.400 --> 0:23:04.400 gain which is common among tortoises in captivity. He had 0:23:04.440 --> 0:23:07.760 been in good health and his death was really unexpected. 0:23:08.440 --> 0:23:12.399 His unexpected death meant that his keepers were unprepared for 0:23:12.520 --> 0:23:16.520 preserving his body. The islands are remote and the temperature 0:23:16.560 --> 0:23:19.639 was around one hundred degrees fahrenheit or thirty eight celsius. 0:23:19.880 --> 0:23:23.040 They eventually secured enough plastic wrap to cover his entire 0:23:23.080 --> 0:23:27.000 body and a freezer to store him in lonesome George's 0:23:27.000 --> 0:23:30.520 remains were transported to the United States, where New Jersey 0:23:30.560 --> 0:23:34.879 taxidermists George Dante preserved them in a year long, thirty 0:23:34.920 --> 0:23:38.480 thousand dollars process that took five hundred hours of labor 0:23:38.520 --> 0:23:42.119 to complete. George spent some time on display at the 0:23:42.160 --> 0:23:46.200 American Museum of Natural History before being returned to Ecuador. 0:23:47.119 --> 0:23:49.159 There was a little bit of a dispute between the 0:23:49.200 --> 0:23:53.200 researchers and the Galopagos and the government of Ecuador about 0:23:53.280 --> 0:23:56.080 where he should be kept. Once he was returned. The 0:23:56.119 --> 0:23:58.600 government's argument was that a lot more people would be 0:23:58.680 --> 0:24:01.760 able to see him on display in the capital of Quito, 0:24:02.119 --> 0:24:04.959 and they also argued that there wasn't a facility in 0:24:05.000 --> 0:24:08.879 the Galopogos Islands that could guarantee precise enough temperature and 0:24:08.960 --> 0:24:14.760 humidity control. I mean, after an animal specimen is preserved 0:24:14.760 --> 0:24:20.360 through taxidermy like, that doesn't mean it stops decaying for 0:24:20.440 --> 0:24:24.400 the rest of time. Right, It's still tissue that's going 0:24:24.440 --> 0:24:27.520 to have to be preserved. So there is a bronze 0:24:27.640 --> 0:24:31.119 statue of George at Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz and the 0:24:31.160 --> 0:24:35.720 Galapagos instead. In nineteen ninety seven, the Charles Darwin Foundation 0:24:36.000 --> 0:24:40.280 and the Galapagos National Park Service launched Project Isabella, which 0:24:40.320 --> 0:24:44.200 was a massive conservation project meant to restore several islands 0:24:44.200 --> 0:24:46.800 that had been damaged through the introduction of non native 0:24:46.800 --> 0:24:51.920 plants and animals, and this included exterminating hundreds of thousands 0:24:51.920 --> 0:24:55.520 of feral goats. The work at Penta Islands started in 0:24:55.600 --> 0:24:58.159 nineteen ninety nine, and in two thousand and three the 0:24:58.200 --> 0:25:02.280 island was declared goat free. Fortunately, it appears that none 0:25:02.359 --> 0:25:06.520 of the island's plant species became extinct during the goat infestation, 0:25:07.240 --> 0:25:11.200 and May of twenty ten, thirty nine sterilized adult tortoises 0:25:11.200 --> 0:25:15.200 were released on the island to continue the restoration process. 0:25:15.320 --> 0:25:19.200