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Short Stuff: 5 Lazarus Species · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and this is short stuff and this is
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: a good one because we are squeezing it in five
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Lazarus species animals starting now, right. If you're wondering what
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: a Lazarus species is, we've talked about it before with
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: the first entry that we'll talk about in a second,
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  Speaker 1: but uh, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead in the Bible,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: if you believe that stuff. And a Lazarus species is
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: a organism that has been brought back from extinction or
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: that we thought rather it was extinct, not one that's
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  Speaker 1: like threatened, and we do a good job with it,
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  Speaker 1: but people are like, well, there's no more of those.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: And then years later so I's like, oh my gosh,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: there's another one of those, right, And we actually did
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: a whole episode on one of these already, the Cela
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: canth That's right, That's what I was referring to. Number one. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it has like an amazing story behind it, which will
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: briefly go over again because, um, it has four lobes,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: meaning it had like kind of these proto limbs, um.
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  Speaker 1: And when they found it first in the fossil record
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  Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century. It was, you know, a four
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  Speaker 1: hundred million year old fossil, and they're like, this is
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: the missing link between you know, animals in the sea
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  Speaker 1: and animals on the ground. And we love the Cela
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  Speaker 1: cant for this reason, but it's long dead. I think
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  Speaker 1: the most recent fossil they'd found was from sixty six
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  Speaker 1: million years ago, So we just thought it was another
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  Speaker 1: very very interesting prehistoric fish, right, and it was very
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: sad to not be able to study those in modern times.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: And then boom, not too modern. But in ninett they
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  Speaker 1: caught one or they discovered one off the coast of
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  Speaker 1: South Africa, and that was a big, big deal. And
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  Speaker 1: then since then they've gotten quite a few more of
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  Speaker 1: these live specimens on record. If I remember correctly, it
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: was a woman's scientist to who was the one who
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  Speaker 1: recognized it for what it was and was like, the
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: this is a big deal. Yeah, aren't they like not
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: bottom dwellers, but they're pretty deep guys, right, yes, And
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: I remember they see I'm enough that now that we're like, okay,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: these are definitely not extinct. They're still around. I think
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  Speaker 1: they Yeah, they just don't inhabit areas we frequent very much,
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  Speaker 1: and they're like, this is clearly not trying to grow
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  Speaker 1: arms and legs, but nice effort, right, So we got
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: one under our belt, Chuck, What about the takahi. The
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  Speaker 1: takahi is native to New Zealand, one of our favorite places.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Hello are Kiwi friends, And this is a flightless bird
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: that's a member of the rail family. It's very pretty,
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  Speaker 1: about the size of a goose. They're kind of blue green,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: they're they're really really nice looking, and even from the
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: beginning they were really rare. I think they were discovered
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: by European explorers in eighty seven and they were never abundant. No, apparently, UM.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: After the second specimen was found, only four were found
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century. When the guy who found the
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: second one described it, um, he said that there's there
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: these are gone like this whatever I just found maybe
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  Speaker 1: the last of it. He said, it's unlikely any further
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  Speaker 1: living specimens will be found. Um and that was that.
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  Speaker 1: That closed the book on it. But um, fifty years later,
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  Speaker 1: there's another guy named Jeffrey Orbell who was like, I,
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  Speaker 1: for some reason, I cannot accept that the taka he
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  Speaker 1: taka he is just gone forever and set out searching
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  Speaker 1: for him. Yeah. I mean it's amazing and I'm glad
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  Speaker 1: people like Jeffrey Orbell are out there because, uh, Jeffrey
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  Speaker 1: Orbell found one of these things on the South Island
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  Speaker 1: in nine of New Zealand. And you know, this kind
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  Speaker 1: of brings up something we did mention at the beginning,
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  Speaker 1: like how can science be wrong about something being extinct?
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  Speaker 1: And you know, it's it's fairly easy to happen. You know,
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  Speaker 1: the world is a big place, the Earth is a
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  Speaker 1: big place, and they do their best. But you know,
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  Speaker 1: at a certain point, when something isn't around for a
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  Speaker 1: certain amount of time, they get together and they feel
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  Speaker 1: comfortable saying this thing is extinct, and you know, if
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  Speaker 1: it comes back to life, is a lazarous species and
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  Speaker 1: that's great. It's not like science hangs their head in shame,
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  Speaker 1: like the can't is back. But um, it is sometimes
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  Speaker 1: tough to see, especially if it's a rare thing to
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  Speaker 1: begin with, that they're truly extinct. Yeah. The International Union
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  Speaker 1: for Conservation of Nature is the ones responsible for declaring
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  Speaker 1: something endangered or extinct in the wild, and their definition
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  Speaker 1: of extinct is that when there's no reasonable doubt that
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  Speaker 1: the last individual has died when exhaustive surveys and known
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  Speaker 1: and or expected habitat at appropriate times diurnal, seasonal annual
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  Speaker 1: throughout its historic range have failed to record an individual.
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  Speaker 1: So it's not just like nobody's reported one of these
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  Speaker 1: things for a while. It's like they go out and
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  Speaker 1: really try to find it, and if they can't find it,
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  Speaker 1: they're like, I guess it's extinct. Then they hang their
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  Speaker 1: heads in shame. That's right. I saw a great meme
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  Speaker 1: the other day. That's very appropriate for these times here
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  Speaker 1: in the United States. Uh. Something about science is not truth.
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  Speaker 1: Science is the search for truth. Uh. And basically, when
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: things it was much more scinct than this, but um,
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  Speaker 1: when things change, science continues to search for that truth.
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  Speaker 1: It's not flipping and flopping on the truth. Right. Let's
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: just leave it at that and take a commercial break. Okay, Chuck,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: So we're back with I think my favorite it's my favorite,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: too good. We're talking about the lord how island stick insect. Yeah,
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: not a great name. There's a better name for it,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: don't you think. Yeah. Leave it to Australia to uh
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  Speaker 1: have an insect called a tree lobster um. Lord Howe
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  Speaker 1: Island is is off the coast of Australia, kind of
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  Speaker 1: midway between Brisbane and Sydney, and these things, uh, were
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  Speaker 1: very common on Lord Howe Island out there in the Pacific.
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  Speaker 1: And this is a really interesting story. There was a
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  Speaker 1: shipwreck off the actually kind of on the island, and
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: everybody knows that chips, especially back in the olden days.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: I think it was six or nineteen eighteen. This is
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: nineteen twenties, but they're off by a few years. We're
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: just full of rats. And these rats descended upon the
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: island and really really overtook this island in a big way.
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  Speaker 1: They were like tree lobsters deed lish. Yeah, so they
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  Speaker 1: actually ate all the tree lobsters on the island, and
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  Speaker 1: them all the rats did. The rats um had no
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  Speaker 1: natural predators on the islands, so their population boomed, and
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  Speaker 1: they also ate to extinction all sorts of bird species,
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  Speaker 1: lizard species, a bunch of other ones, but in particular
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  Speaker 1: this tree lobster, which you don't find elsewhere. And they
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  Speaker 1: thought like this thing was just endemic only to Lord
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  Speaker 1: Howe Island. So shortly after the twenties they were like
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: the Lord Howe Island stick insect is now extinct. But
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: then they were very surprised um in nineteen sixty when
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  Speaker 1: they found a few corpses. There were corpses, but they
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  Speaker 1: weren't like obviously forty year old descating corpses. They were fairly,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: fairly recent corpses. So they're like, wait a minute, these
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: things are still around. And I guess somebody thought to
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: go look on another nearby island. It's like Pyramid Island,
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  Speaker 1: I believe, something like that. And they found a new
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  Speaker 1: population of these things, just a handful, but a few
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  Speaker 1: of them perched in a tea tree on the highest
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  Speaker 1: point of this island nearby, that's right, And so they
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  Speaker 1: started breeding them in captivity and training them to be
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: able to raise their middle finger. Because they have undertaken
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: the Lord how Island rodent eradication project, where they are
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  Speaker 1: spreading forty two tons poison cereal pellets and twenty eight
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  Speaker 1: thousand bait stations across the island to rid this island
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  Speaker 1: of those rats. And this was a couple of years ago,
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  Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen, and the most recent article I read
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  Speaker 1: said that sometime this year they were going to reintroduce
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  Speaker 1: like all the rats should be gone, and if there
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  Speaker 1: are any few rats left, these tree lobsters can go
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: back and give them the finger. Very nice. They're spreading
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  Speaker 1: poison quisp on the islands. Irresistible, man, I'd have a
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  Speaker 1: hard time but that. You'd feel like, I know it's poisonous,
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  Speaker 1: but I just can't help myself. I know. If it
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: was Captain Crunch peanut butter, forget about it. I'm a
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  Speaker 1: dead man. Um. So, uh, there's another one. Uh, hats
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  Speaker 1: off to the Lord how islands tick insect. We're gonna
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  Speaker 1: take our leave and wish it luck and head on
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: over to Peru, where the Peruvian yellow tailed wooly monkey
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  Speaker 1: was thought to have been extinct. It was first described
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  Speaker 1: in eighteen twelve just from a pelt um yeah I
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  Speaker 1: think so, yeah, a little yellowish um. But then only
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  Speaker 1: just a few times in the century that followed had
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  Speaker 1: they actually been seen and described by travelers. Um, I
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: guess scientists in Peru. And then the last one was
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  Speaker 1: seen until in six and by that point this science
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  Speaker 1: was like, I think these things are are gonezo that's right,
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  Speaker 1: But not so, because in they found one in Brazil
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  Speaker 1: and this is being kept as a pet. And it
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  Speaker 1: turns out these things were being kept as pets kind
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  Speaker 1: of in different places all over the world. And this
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  Speaker 1: is one really interesting case where the illegal pet trade
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  Speaker 1: kind of brought, uh, in a roundabout way, something back
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  Speaker 1: from extinction. Yeah, they think there's maybe fewer than a
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  Speaker 1: thousand of them in the wild, which is still not
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  Speaker 1: terribly bad considering something was considered extinct for a little while,
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  Speaker 1: but apparently it was. And this is kind of like um,
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  Speaker 1: one of the definitions of a Lazarus species. It was
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  Speaker 1: news to science that this thing was not extinct, but
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  Speaker 1: to the local population in Peru who lived, you know,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: in these in the area the same area as these monkeys,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: they were well aware that these things were around. They
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: just hadn't heard the science didn't know we're else. I'm
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: sure they would have told somebody, that's right. What about
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: this is my second favorite, Chuck, what about you? I
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: can't believe we're gonna do five and shorty, But here
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: we go with a robust red horse. It's a pale
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: pink has pale pink fins, is sort of stout and
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: it's you know, it's not very remarkable looking. If you
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: look at a robust red horse You think that thing
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: is misnamed because it's just sort of plain looking. It's
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: an ug fish as what they should call it. Yeah,
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: it's not the best look. It's got a great Latin name,
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Maxostoma robust um. It's a good band name. Or maybe
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: an album title, yeah yeah, yeah, prog rock for sure,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: or maybe like a like a Mastodon album, yeah, exactly. Um.
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  Speaker 1: This was first described by uh Edward Drinker Cope naturalists
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: from Europe in eighteen seventy, based on just this one
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  Speaker 1: fish that he found in a river in North Carolina. Uh.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: And unfortunately that fish was destroyed because that was the
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: last one that anyone saw for a hundred and twenty
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: two years. Yeah, so everybody's like, well it's extinct. We're
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: not even sure it ever exactly lived. We gotta take
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: this Cope fellas word for it. And he's popped up before.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: I can't put my finger on it. But we've talked
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: about them before. But then in nineteen eighty and then
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: I believe also in people started reporting this. It's somebody
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: who's like, know what I think that that is Cope's
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: robust red horse fish. Uh. They started finding them in
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  Speaker 1: the Savannah and Pete rivers in Georgia and uh, South Carolina,
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: I think, and um so they they actually made a
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: deliberate effort. They launched an effort twenty years ago to
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: find some mating pairs of the robust red horse in
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: the Savannah River and um basically start breeding them in captivity,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: and I read I think in two thousand fifteen, Chuck,
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: they released some and they recently identified the first wild
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: juveniles that had been born to this restored population of
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: robust red horses. A big comeback, huge comeback from the dead.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Basically same here. So uh, that's it for short Stuff, everybody,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: if you want to look up some more lazarous Um species,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: then they're out there and it's thrilling. Every single one
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: has a great story behind it, so go amuse yourself
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: with that. In the meantime, Short Stuff says goodbye. H
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio.
• 13:11
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• 13:16
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