July 25, 2026 • 45 mins
In this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert chats with Tom Lathan, author of “Lost Wonders: 10 Tales of Extinction from the 21st Century.” (originally published 6/19/2025)
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb. Today is Saturday, so it's vault time.
This episode originally published six nineteen, twenty twenty five. It
is an interview that I conducted with the author Tom
Lathan about the book Lost Wonders Ten Tales of Extinction
from the twenty first Century. Really engaging read, and I've
(00:29):
thought a really engaging conversation here, so I hope you
enjoy it. Let's jump right.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
In Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb, and in today's episode, I'm going
to be chatting with Tom Lathan, author of the new
book Lost Wonders, Ten Tales of Extinction from the twenty
first Century. It's out June tenth. Without further ado, let's
jump right into the interview. Hi Tom, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Hi there, Rov, Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
The new book is Lost Wonders, Ten Tales of Extinction
from the twenty first Century, publishing June tenth here in
the States, came out earlier, what in November in the UK? Right,
that's right, Yes, it tackles the sixth mass extinction event
that we're all living in by chronicling ten different recently
extinct species. You know, we've all read or heard about
(01:33):
the ongoing Holo scene extinction. But do you find that
people have a difficult time truly grasping what's happening or
the scale of what's happening.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Yeah, and I think it is. It is a difficult
thing to grasp, you know, even for people who are
following this and who care about this. It is kind
of crazy, I think, you know, mainly because of the
timescale that it's happening on the reason why I really
wanted to write this book, which is actually eleven species,
it's ten stories a species. Two of those species, their
(02:03):
story is so so similar, so intertwined. The two birds
are mistaken for one another. Even so, it made sense
to tell those in one story, as it were in
one chapter. But really, the thing that unites the entire
book is that these are species that have gone extinct
in the twenty first century. The reason why I wanted
(02:25):
to write about those species in particular, it's because I
really wanted to get into the idea that extinction is
unfolding all around us. And that when we typically think
of extinction, it can be this far flung thing from
the past. You know, virtually everyone's first encounter with the
word will be in the context of dinosaurs. You know,
I was a dinosaur kid. I was obsessed with Jurassic Park.
(02:46):
That was, yeah, we look like we're probably the similar age,
So you probably had your Jurassic Park phase. But absolutely
either that or the Dodo, And these are things from
the distant past. And I think that we all make
an unconscious association there with the word extinction and the past,
but it's obviously it's unfolding all around us. And I
(03:10):
actually came to the book, came to the idea of
writing the book when I learned that one of these species,
the Christmas isne In Pippastrell, had actually gone extinct on
my twenty third birthday. And when I learned that fact,
and I realized that I could remember, you know, what
I'd been doing that day, I could remember who I'd
been with, you know, I well, most probably can't really
(03:31):
remember the evening, but I remember a lot of the day,
and I could look back through emails and texts, social
media and really kind of get a picture of what
my world was like on the day that as species
went extinct, it was just a kind of mind blowing
realization and it kind of got me thinking about what
else had gone extinct, you know, within my lifetime, within
the lifetimes of most people who read the book. So
(03:54):
that's what really kind of drove me.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Yeah, so you're kind of making something that's kind of
invisible to many visible and real in a way.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Yeah, you know, I think it's understandable that, you know,
we don't necessarily as a species, we don't really necessarily
think about extinction that much, I would say, and it
can be quite a dour subject, and there's very often
you know, we're we're we are anthropercentric. We're obsessed with
our own stories and our own our own species. So
(04:25):
you know, an obscure back going extinct or a tiny
snail going extinct somewhere in the world isn't necessarily going
to kind of grab everyone's attention. But I think it's
really important that we know what's going on, and you know,
it probably won't surprise anyone to hear that in all
of these stories, we're we're the cause either in the
(04:46):
here and now or we set off the chain of
events that have led to these extinctions.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Now, I don't want to give potential readers the wrong idea, though,
because each chapter of your of your book is I
guess in a very real sense of tragedy. But there
Vide's chapter is also about like the wonders and improbabilities
surrounding these various species. So I definitely want to get
into some questions about those wonders and improbabilities as we
(05:13):
look at maybe a few examples. But how did you
how did you end up finalizing a list for the book?
Where did you? I mean, obviously you had you had
the one in mind that corresponded with your twenty third birthday,
But how about the rest of them? How this come together?
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Yeah? So, really, when I started the project, or actually
before I go into that, I think I echo what
you said. I think you're right, you know, extinction. I
think sometimes it's one of those issues that people might
not want to think about because, you know, it just God,
it is just terrible, isn't it? Something going extinct, especially
something that's millions of years old. It's kind of mind boggling.
(05:50):
But one thing, and actually, when I when I went
into writing the book, it was it was a doubt
I had, like, God, is this is anyone going to
want to read this? This is just going to be
so depressing. But as I actually got into the research,
and a big part of that research was actually talking
to the people who were there on the ground. In
some cases they may they discovered these species. In other
(06:12):
cases they'd taken care of the last individual of a
species and kind of dealt with the aftermath of extinction.
I actually really found a lot of grounds for hope
in that because it's really inspiring the lengths that people
go to in conservation. It's a field that is absolutely
jam packed with unsung heroes, people that go above and
(06:35):
beyond the call of duty every single day, who have
their who have their job, and there are just little
things that they do just completely off their own initiative,
just because they know they can make a difference. And
there are even stories of species being saved by people
who who aren't scientists, who are hobbyists. There's an example
in the book of a species of pupfish, which is
(06:57):
a tiny little fish from the American West and also
also in Mexico. There are species spread across the arid areas,
and one particular one of the people that I spoke
to was actually a bus driver from New Jersey who
is a hobbyist. He just loves fish, you know, since
(07:18):
he was a kid, and he's actually become involved in
the efforts to save endangered species. When I spoke to him,
he had a critically endangered species just behind him in
his fish tank, and it's you know, obviously there's no
financial incentive for him. And I just think that the
more that you learn about these stories. Yes, the subjects
(07:40):
of this book have gone extinct, but the people who
tried to save them have had other successes. They've used
the knowledge that they gained from trying to save these species,
which very often is uncharted territory. Some of these extinctions
happened because the scientists simply didn't know how do we
help this species. But from these experiences, they've learned what
they need to do to save other species and they've
(08:02):
had success. And I just find that really inspiring. But
sorry to go on to your question. Could you remind
me again of what you are?
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Oh, i'd a asked just how you ended up coming
up with a list.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Yes, so, I as a journalist, I've been writing about
nature for a few years and it came out of
quite an organic conversation with my partner who's also a writer,
and I was just I just had this thought. I
just wondered, you know, what's I wonder, what's gone extinct,
you know, in the last you know, in my lifetime essentially.
(08:32):
So I contacted the ice I u c N, which
is the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which
is the global body that essentially oversees the conservation status
of everything. So they're the they're the people essentially who
give the final word and whether something is endangered, critically endangered, extinct,
extinct in the world and so on. And I just
(08:54):
I just asked them, you know, for a list of
recent extinctions, and they sent me back this enormous, sprawling
spreadsheet full of hundreds I think it was up with
the five hundred extinctions. But thankfully that spreadsheet included a
by date of extinction column, so I filtered by that
(09:14):
and these eleven species are what kind of came out
of that, and I really kind of really that's when
it really kind of struck me. In fact, that's the
moment where I saw the extinction date of the pipistre
being my birthday and made that connection and had that realization.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Well, I want to I'm want to ask about one
that I have to acknowledge that on the surface, this
one might not seem that exciting. And when I was
reading your book, that was my initial response. I was
kind of like, well this, I don't know how enthralled
I'm going to be by this one. But it ended
up being I think my one of my favorite chapters,
and this is the chapter dealing with the Saint Helena Olive.
(09:50):
Can you tell us a little bit about the island
of Saint Helena and the Saint Helena Olive. I was
not I was vaguely familiar with the island from its
prominence in his but I was not familiar with this
organism at all.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Yeah, that is also one of my favorites. Before I
go into that. I think it's interesting. I was thinking
about this this morning. Actually, I think we're all kind
of conditioned to see wildlife in a certain way.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
You know.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
If I don't know if you guys have I presume
you guys have David Attenborough documentaries. Oh yeah, yeah, okay, yeah,
National Hero, so that you know, I was raised on
his documentaries and I think as wonderful as they are,
they do condition you see the natural world in a
certain way. The focus is very much on charismatic species
or species that have some kind of quirk or fascinating behavior,
(10:41):
and I think that we tend to kind of unconsciously
and buy a sort of value system by which we
judge species on that basis. But actually, what I found
one of the really exciting things about writing a book
like this is that you know the decision of what
goes in this book. It wasn't like I just picked
eleven species that fascinated me. It was decided for me.
(11:04):
And what that meant was I had to really kind
of approach species that, like you, I wouldn't necessarily think, Oh,
is this tree going to be interesting? Is this snail
gonna kind of interest me personally? And I had to
find other ways of looking at them and find the
fascination and wonder in these species and that tree. The
Saint Helena olive is a particularly fascinating species because it
(11:25):
lived only on a single island in the middle of
the South Atlantic Ocean, and this island, Saint Helena, is
extraordinarily remote. It's nearly two thousand kilometers west of Africa,
slap bang in the middle of the South Atlantic, and
(11:45):
it's so remote that when the International Space Station is
circling overhead, the astronauts on board are actually the closest
neighbors to the residents on Saint Helena.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
And remote islands are a very exciting place for biologists
because due to their isolation, species that end up making
it to those islands end up evolving in fascinating ways,
and you end up with these extraordinary ecosystems. And Saint
Nuna is one of those examples. You know, there are
(12:18):
a few species that are capable of making that leap,
you know, crossing thousands of miles of ocean to reach
this tiny island, volcanic island. And what you end up
with in a place like that are things like trees
that have evolved from daisies. You end up with giant earwigs,
You end up with fluorescent wood lice, a real bizarre
(12:39):
kind of hodgepodge. There was a biologist that I spoke
to about the ecosystem who said he described it as
imagine if you just gave evolution another chance, You just
reset evolution on an island and allowed it to kind
of take a different course. This is the kind of
thing you would end up with, just this kind of
alien ecosystem. So the Saint Helena olive is a species
(13:02):
of hardwood tree, and this family of tree species, they
all originate in Southern Africa, and they've made these extraordinary
journeys and radiated out Southern Africa and ended up in
islands in the Indian Ocean, and one of the places
they ended up was on Saint Helena. And it was
a mystery that really confounded scientists because to get to
(13:26):
somewhere like Saint Helena, if you're a tree, your seeds
need to have a way to navigate thousands of miles
of ocean, and there are potential ways they could do that.
They might some seed pods can float, so they would
float there. The Saint Helena olive seed pods didn't float.
In fact, they were sterilized by saltwater and other ways
(13:47):
seeds might be carried by the wind. They wouldn't do that.
They were quite large capsules. And the other way that
seeds can disperse is by growing a fruit and being
eaten by birds, same thing that olive couldn't do any
of those things. So the biologists some of whom I
spoke to you for the book. They eventually deduced that
(14:09):
the way this species had to have ended up on
this remote island was by a bizarre chain of coincidences,
wherein an albatross or a similar seafaring bird must have
landed somewhere in southern Africa and picked up a seed
in its feathers or maybe in some mud coating its foot,
(14:29):
and then that albatross would have ranged out over the
ocean and eventually ended up at Saint Helena, and just
by chance, this seed had dropped dropped from the feathers
of this albatross, found its way into the soil and
the story of that species on the island began, which
is extraordinary. It's twelve million years old, and it's so
(14:52):
genetically unique that a genus had to be created for
the species. So the genesis the classification that sits above species.
And when you look away from the charismatic species and
species that are more often kind of celebrated and featured
in nature documentaries, you have to kind of look at
(15:12):
species in a different way, and I think you find
incredible stories when you start to look at the natural
world in a different way and you can find that
they're everywhere.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Yeah, there's I just love this idea that it's almost
like this plant was not supposed to be there. It's
just such an incredible string of events that we can
kind of speculate on that landed it there. And I
love the quote that you share about how rare events
happen over geological time. So yeah, it's unlikely, but given
(15:42):
enough time, things like this do occur in this is
the result.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Yeah, it's like, what are the chances. I mean, you know,
it's already just a seed being swept up in the
feathers of an albatross is already you know, it seems
quite an unlikely scenario, but then for it to have
dropped out just at the right place, it's kind of insane.
And that quote that you just mentioned, that was Mike Faye,
who was a geneticist from Q Gardens in the UK,
(16:07):
and Q Gardens did a lot of work to try
and conserve this species. He is, he was, he was
actually he led the attempt to propagate the species in
the end. But yeah, that was an incredible insight from him.
You know, he said, he said to me that you know,
there were twelve million years for this to happen, and
it only had to happen once.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
But of course another organism eventually came to the island,
and that would be us, right, This one was sheltered
for quite a while, right.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Yeah, I mean that's one of the it's a double
edged sword.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
You know.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Isolation creates a fascinating breeding ground for evolution, for interesting
species to evolve and adapt, But by the same token,
when you have a species like humans. In the book,
I talk about how Saint Helena was almost like a castle.
(17:01):
It was fortified against the outside world. You know, there
were so few organisms who could actually make that trip
that the sea kind of acted almost as a moat.
And the arrival of humans in fifteen oh six was
essentially like lowering the drawbridge. Enabled things like goats, cats,
all kinds of invasive species of plant. Rats are obviously
(17:23):
a huge problem pretty much everywhere they're introduced, and that's
what happened on Saint Helena. And it was an island
that in history after it was discovered, it was compared
by many to Eden. It was this verdant spot in
the middle of the ocean that was really kind of
life sustaining for sailors who at that point in time
(17:46):
had to journey all the way around Africa, around the
bottom of Africa in order to actsos Asia in India.
So it was a really big problem, you know, fighting
off things like scurvy, restocking with water, and Saint Helena
was just this kind of oasis in the middle of
the ocean. But you know, a few years later it
(18:06):
was decimated.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
In what led did this decimation, so, I mean.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
One thing was the introduction of invasive species. Another thing
was habitat destruction. So once the island was settled by
the English East India Company, homes had to be built.
Enslaved people were brought to the island in order to
create some kind of economic purpose for the island. That's
(18:31):
how it was viewed as the English East India Company
at the time described places like Saint Helena as factories.
That was their ambition for this place. So everything there
was a resource in order to pursue that aim, and
so massive deforestation things like goats were a particular problem,
(18:51):
eating native vegetation and once you lose that vegetation, you
then get soil erosion. And there are these crazy reports
of the soiler Osian being so bad that the sea
turned black around the island, and once you get into
that state, there's very few things that then can then
kind of grow back and get a foothold in the
soil which has essentially been completely transformed. And in Saint Helena,
(19:15):
all of these threats kind of conspired and the landscape
was transformed and native species shrank further and further back
to the center of the island, which is where the
last Saint Helena olive was found in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
And you read about that. Now we just have an
empty part, right, it's labeled as St. Helena.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Yes, So in Q Garden's Temperate House, which is this fantastic,
incredible decadent Victorian glasshouse in London and Q there is
you know, species from all over the world there, and
then in one corner there's just this empty terra cotta pot,
which is an extraordinary kind of symbol of what could
(19:58):
have been.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Now, you mentioned goats and the destructive powers of goats
when they're introduced to places like this, they factor into
at least one of the other extinction stories that you share,
and that is the Pinta Island tortoise of the Galapagos islands.
This is another far flung island dwelling species, right.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Yeah, yeah, so a lot of these species were island
dwelling species. For the reasons we discussed the pint Island tortoise.
It's yeah. The goats that came to Pintr Island were
introduced by fishermen, and there were three of them deposited
in the nineteen fifties, and that population swelled two thousands
(20:52):
in fact. You know, I actually don't off the top
of my head, I can't remember the exact number, but
they basically, you know, the goats were farmer or efficient
if you imagine a tortoise versus a goat in terms
of grazing and things like that, the torses really were
no match. You know, the Galapagos, because of its isolation,
is a place that, you know, there were never things
(21:14):
like goats there. There were never those kind of specially
adapted herbivores. And it's a problem not just for tortoises,
but also the vegetation that tortoises feed on, because if
you don't have herbivores, plants don't learn to adapt to
repel herbivores. So things like thorns, certain kinds of chemical
compounds that all kinds of adaptations that might make native
(21:36):
vegetation resilient to goats. It just it doesn't have that
vegetation doesn't have time to adapt when you suddenly release
something like a goat on the island.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Now, with the Galapagos tortoises in general, I feel like
these are some amazing creatures that we can They are
often featured in documentaries, the sort of Attenborough documentaries that
we've been discussing, and the sort of documentaries that very
much were inspired by that kind of content, which is great,
but we can almost kind of grow numb to them.
(22:07):
I don't know if you've found this to be the
case as well. Like we see the Glapa tortoises, maybe
if we're luckly we get to see one in the zoo,
or if not, a Galapagos tortoise and maybe an al
dabra tortoise that is in some way similar. But when
you really observe them like they are just so fabulously
weird and wonderful, right they are?
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Yeah, I think that's key. I mean, I think appreciating
nature is it's always about looking a little closer. Because
I think you're right with something like a giant tortoise.
You know, we've we've seen that. We've all seen that
many times. We we kind of I think we think
we always think we understand the things we've seen many times,
(22:48):
so you know, our brain knows how to categorize that,
so we can kind of just move on. But you know,
like any species, they are really fascinating that. In the
case of the giant torsises of the glass, I mean,
what fascinated me the most was how they got there,
which similar to the same thing not olive. It is another
incredible dispersal story. So something like a tortoise, something that
(23:13):
large and cumbersome and slow traversing an ocean is just
as unbelievable as a tiny seed. What they discovered is
that the tortoises or their ancestors must have been washed
out to sea from South America, which is where their
most recent ancestor lived, and the tortoises would have had
(23:36):
to have survived for god knows how long just on
the ocean with no food. And when this theory was
first kind of discussed in the early twentieth century, it
was actually put to the test, and so you know,
researchers would would take capture giant tortoises, take them into
(23:56):
the ocean, and just drop them into the sea. And
what they would see is that the tortoises were quite
good at swimming, They could float quite easily, they could
keep their heads above water. And gradually, through genetic analysis,
scientists were able to map how the dispersal had taken place,
first from South America to one Galapagos island and then
(24:19):
later to another. So there's just this when you kind
of accelerate time and think of it like a time lapse,
that's just this, this series of odyssees going from island
to island from the continent, and these tortoises arriving on
new islands, establishing new species, growing slightly differently into the
into the different species of Galapagos strikeing tortois. It's incredible,
(24:40):
but it's it's it's kind of a less obvious thing.
I think it's easy to just be distracted by the
size of these creatures and for that to be what
we associate with them. But then when you learn about
their journeys, it's it's really it's fascinating on a different level.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Now, the story of the Pinta Island Glapagos tortoises also
interest in that it is also a story of rediscovery.
Could you tell us a little bit about this Some
fox may have probably heard parts of this tale before.
Tell us about Lonesome George.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Yeah, so in nineteen seventy two. Well, Lonesome George. A
lot of people will be familiar with that name, because
you know, he was he was a celebrity animal. You know,
he was world famous. He had hundreds of thousands of people,
you know, coming to the Galapagos visiting him in his enclosure.
(25:32):
His species, the Pinter Island torsters, which is the species
I write about in Lost Wonders, was believed to be
extinct from the beginning of the twentieth centuries. I think
it was nineteen oh six the California Academy of Sciences
went to Pinter Island and collected what was ended up
being the last known female of the species. And so
(25:55):
for seventy odd years, you know, that was thought to
be the end of that species, until one day a
Hungarian American malacologist and his wife were on holiday. They
were on Pinter Island looking at snails, and suddenly they
looked up and saw this giant tortoise, and they didn't
know what they'd seen at the time, but later when
they spoke two other people who were working in the archipelago,
(26:19):
it soon became clear that this was the Pinter Island tortoise.
You know, this is a species that everyone had thought
disappeared and that ended up that precipitated a search, and
eventually they found and captured George and took him to
a captive breeding center, hoping that they would be able
to save this species by finding a female. And he
(26:42):
ended up staying there for four decades and eventually died
in twenty twelve. After many many searches, there were no
females found. Attempts to have him mate with females of
closely related species to no avail. But the fascinating thing
(27:03):
about this story, I mean, there's so many twists and turns,
but the biologists I spoke to one of the biologists
I spoke to for this about this species, James Gibbs,
he told me this fascinating story that he and some
of his colleagues at the Galapagos Conservancy. They a few
years ago they went on a trip to a remote
(27:24):
island and they discovered that there were hundreds of Galapagos
trying tortoises of different species living on the side of
this volcano on this incredibly remote island, And eventually they
kind of worked out why this had happened, and their
theory is that whalers who used to use the Galapagos
(27:44):
Islands as basically a meat lader, so whalers out in
the Pacific they would come to the Galapagos captures horses
because you know, there were a good food source you
could keep alive on a boat for weeks, and there
were a big part for the decimation of those species.
But it's thought that they used to gather at this
spot on the side of this remote island, and at
(28:04):
some point they must have thrown over overboard some tortoises,
or they may have escaped, but you ended up with
this isolated population of these different species, and somewhere in
there must have been Pinter Island tortoises, or at least one,
because James Gibbs and his colleagues found a few years
ago a hybrid tortoise whose mother or father must have
(28:26):
been a Pinter Island tortoise, which is a fascinating prospect.
They haven't found a parent but it suggests that that
there is or recently was, you know, a living Pinter
Island tortoise. So this is after George's death, after the
species had yet again been declared extinct, and it's still
a possibility. So that's a really interesting, interesting story, and
(28:46):
you know, there is some small hope there. That same
expedition did find another tortoise that was actually an individual
from a species that was also believed extinct, so they
reversed another giant tortoise extinction there.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Now, how rare are rediscoveries of previously believed extinct species.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
I can't give you any figures off the top of
my head, but it happens more often than you think.
You know, there there are known kind of it depends
on the species. I mean, some species are fairly easy
to monitor. Other species, you know, maybe due to their size,
due to where they live, are you know, close to impossible.
(29:29):
It really does depend. But I think sometimes, you know,
one of the reasons why there's a little bit of
a disconnect between what biologists will say about the species
they study in terms of their their their conservation status
and what the i U c N will say. So
sometimes scientists will come out and say this species, we
(29:52):
believe it's extinct, We've we've done this extensive search for it,
and we can't find it. No one's seen it for
a decade. But the u c and will kind of
hold fire because there is always that possibility that someone
will find a remote population or that this species is
especially discreete. So there's very often a kind of like that,
a lagging effect where species aren't actually declared extinct until
(30:16):
we can kind of know with certitude. But it does happen. Yeah,
species are rediscovered.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Now.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
I'm not going to ask you about every organism that
you govern in the book, obviously, but that I do
want to ask you about one more location and associated organisms,
and that would be the two organisms that you profile
from Christmas Island. This is a place that I think
some of our listeners definitely remember from either episodes they
might have listened to or shows they might have watched
(30:43):
about the Christmas Island crabs. But your selections here, of
course not crabs, remind us a bit about Christmas Island
and what makes its ecosystem so special.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
Yeah, so Christmas Island is another one of those isolated
islands on which in species just really thrive but it
isn't geographically strictly geographically isolated so much as the ocean
that surrounds it is incredibly deep, So in some places
it's five kilometers deep. You can you can fit Mount
(31:14):
Kilimanjaro in there. It's also surrounded by strong ocean currents.
And the place where it sits in the world is
quite fascinating. It's it sits on what's called the Wallace line,
which is the border between two biogeographical realms, and a
biogeographical realm is basically it's the border between two places
(31:38):
where radically different species and organisms will live. So the
Wallace line separates to its west you've got Southeast Asia,
You've got things like monkeys, all sorts of species that
live there. And to its east you've got Australia and
you've got you know, the incredible mussupials and things like that.
And it's separated by this this invisible divide, invisible to
(32:01):
us anyway. And so Christmas Island is a hodgepodge of
those two biogeographical realms. And the two species that I
wrote about in Lost Wonders from Christmas Island they're an
example of that because one of them is from the
east of the line, and one of them is from
the west. But Christmas Island itself. Another reason why it's
such a fascinating place is that it wasn't settled for
(32:23):
a long time. You know, it's quite unique. It was sighted,
it was sited on maps, it was cited by navigators,
but no one really thought there was much point in
taking ownership of Christmas Island. It was a rock covered
in rainforest in the Indian Ocean. It was surrounded by
(32:43):
impenetrable cliffs, very few places to land, so no one
really bothered until the end of the nineteenth century when
phosphorus was discovered, sorry, phosphatic rock was discovered on the
ocean floor, and it was determined that Christmas Island would
be a source of phosphatic rock used to make fertilizer,
(33:04):
which was obviously a huge economic incentive to settle there
and colonize it, which is what happened. And as usual,
that brought with it a raft of invasive species habitat destruction,
which really kind of it had the effect you would expect.
The two species that I write about, one of which
(33:24):
is the one of which is the prune sized bat,
the Christmas sign and pipistrell that went extinct on my birthday.
That was, by all accounts of very cute little organism.
It had a tiny quiff, it was the size of
a prune, so it could fit comfortably in your hand.
And the forest skink was a metallic brown skink that
(33:46):
was extremely common. Both these species were extremely common, you know.
Researchers described, you know, seeing as many as eighty of
the forest skink basking in the sun on a single log,
so it really was everywhere. And the pipistrell similarly, I
think the first the first population count estimated between five
(34:07):
and ten thousand on quite a small island, and it
was so common that you would islanders would find them
fluttering around inside their homes, you know, hunting insects. There
were accounts of them tumbling into people's people's dinner, you know,
eating soup and suddenly a back crush lands in your
suit bowl. So they really were everywhere. And then in
the late eighties suddenly people noticed that they were starting
(34:31):
to disappear. And essentially what happened is these species disappeared
in the east to west pattern, so from the east
of the islands of the west they gradually faded out,
and at the same time it was realized that a
particularly dangerous and invasive species of snake, the wolf snake,
had been introduced, which is believed to be the primary
(34:53):
cause of both extinctions by the majority of scientists. There
were other things like giant centerpedes, cats, wraps, yellow crazy ants,
which are another you know, they're their own fascinating phenomenon,
but really it's the introduction of the wolf snake. And
you see this correlations, fascinating correlation with the retreat of
(35:14):
these two species and the advance of this invasive species.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
The wolf snake. This was an accidental introduction to the
island or was this one of these cases where an
organism was introduced to attempt to solve a particular problem
or anything.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
No, this was an accident and there was a bit
of a problem on Christmas Island. The biosecurity was not
quite there from what I've heard. But this is a
snake or a few. I don't know how many it
would have been, but it could have been one, or
it could have been several. That basically snuckerboard a cargo
ship and this happens a lot. You know, now that
(35:48):
we've kind of connected the isolated parts of the world.
We've we've sort of created a transport network for invasive species,
and that's why biosecurity is so important. But sometimes it's
not followed or or it's lacking, and on Christmas Island
it yeah, there were there were species that were introduced
in this manner, and the wolf snakes one of them,
but it was it's a specialized skin hunter, but it's
(36:12):
it's partial to bats and things like that, but it's
decimated this species with frightening ferocity. There are three species
(36:32):
in this book that lived in Australian territories. So there
were these two from Christmas Island, and there was another
species called the bramble cane melmus, which was a species
of rodent that lived on a sand k in the
Torres Strait, which is which is just north of Australia,
but it's an Australian territory. And all three of these
(36:53):
species really suffered from governmental neglect. There were opportunities to
save them that weren't taken. You know, the people that
I spoke to who worked with all three of these species,
they in the case of the Christmas Island species, they've
warned the authorities. This species is going extinct. The skink
is a really horrifying example of that because David James,
(37:16):
who was a wonderful ecologist who worked on the island
and was essentially in charge of monitoring basically everything that
lived there. You know, he raised the alarm about this
species in two thousand and five and was ignored. You know,
he recommended it be categorized as threatened in Australia's equivalent
(37:36):
of the Endangered Species List, but he wasn't listened to,
and it was only classified as threatened four months before
the extinction of the species in twenty fourteen. The reason
why I think it's important to mention that is what's
happening right now in America with the attempts to water
(37:58):
down the Endangered Species Act, the the unleashing potentially of
the God Squad, I think is the name the small
body of people who were given the unique power to
override environmental protections even if it causes an extinction. I think.
You know, in the in the best of circumstances, you know,
(38:18):
politicians are neglect full of environmental issues. But the situation
in America now is just apocalyptic. Sorry to get sorry
to get depressing, But actually there was something, if you
don't mind, there was I got in touch with someone,
one of the scientists I spoke to for this book
because I knew I was coming on here and I
(38:40):
wanted to ask him, you know, if he had any
thoughts and feelings about the current state of things, you know,
and I think it's quite important. So I don't know
if you'd mind if I read it out. I was
quite sure.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Oh, by all means.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
So here's what he said. This is Chris Martin, who
is an evolutionary biologist who specializes in pupfish. He works
at UC Berkeley, and this is what he had to
say about this. This government is attempting to strip habitat
protections provided by the Endangered Species Act, among many other
(39:13):
threats and cuts to the federal agencies that protect and
can serve our biodiversity, national parks, and natural spaces. The
Endangered Species Act was signed by Nixon with strong bipartisan support,
and has inspired the world with its successes in bringing
back so many species from the brink of extinction, including
(39:33):
the bald eagle, condor and even the Devil's whole pupfish,
which was recently rescued from a catastrophic decline this winter,
only through a decade long efforts of the US Fish
and Wildlife Service to establish a refuge population. We must
fight to protect everyone in our country and all the
unique species that have made the United States their home
(39:54):
for millennia. He also mentioned to me, obviously there's a
all a context where scientific institutions and universities are being
stripped of funding and there are layoffs, and it sounds horrendous.
As an outsider, it sounds, you know, absolutely, it's a
(40:14):
doomsday scenario. But I think it's really important that we
kind of learn and we understand what happens when when
people stop caring, you know, when governments turn a blind eye,
or when you know, in the case of the current administration,
when they seem to be actively advocating by diversity loss
and things like that. I think Chris is right. I
(40:38):
think now is the time to fight in whichever way
anyone can. I'm probably preaching to the choir here. I
don't know what your listener base is like, but hearing
all of this from Chris, it really kind of made
me sort of realize that the bipasssan history of the
Endangered Species Act and how you know i'd heard that from,
you know. Researching this book, I've spoken to people who,
(41:01):
you know, occupied all kinds of positions across the political spectrum,
but they did believe in the importance of conserving species
and your podcast being a science podcast. I think, I think,
regardless of anyone's political affiliations, one thing I think we
can all realize is that the administration at the moment
is profoundly unscientific, and regardless of how you feel about
(41:25):
any other kind of policies, you know, it's just insanity.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
Absolutely. I mean, this is you know, not the first
guest this year to bring some version of this issue up.
And yeah, in the past there has been bipartisan support
to a large degree to help maintain biodiversity. I don't
think it's something that needs to be a politicized topic,
(41:52):
and yet here we are. So that's right, you're sharing
these starts.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
But I do want to add as well, just to
add a little note of hope, because I know, you know,
this must be such a demoralizing situation for many Americans
to be in. One of the people I spoke to
you for this book was a fantastic ornithologist, a bird
ecologist from Brazil, and he talked to me about what
it was like working under the Bolsonario regime, so, you know,
(42:17):
they had a right wing government. I think it was
around the same time as the Trump first Trump term,
which was actively pursuing the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.
And he told me, you know, essentially what happened in
that time was organizations and conservationists learn to turn away
from the federal government where they could, you know, things
(42:37):
became a lot more localized. You know, local administrations and
local organizations would kind of ban together and try and
solve the problems together, knowing they couldn't they couldn't rely
on their government. And you know, I know that conservation
is as I said earlier, it's full of unstung heroes.
It's full of everyday heroism. So I really do think
(42:58):
that people across the country would be doing their best
to kind of to save what they can, and I
think they need our support. So I'd encourage anyone who
who cares about this or feels depressed or demoralized by
it to try and get involved however you can. So
there are very often ways that you can volunteer and
you can help even small ways. It's more important than
(43:20):
ever now.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Yeah. Yeah, Well, we recently talked with Mark Ndinka, who
runs the Amphibian Foundation here in Atlanta, and that was
one of the things he brought up is in the
past they've had to they have leaned on the federal
agencies for helping some of their research, and a lot
of that has been going away. And this is just
(43:41):
one example, you know, a local example for us of
an organization where people people can now turn and try
to help support their work if they can't depend on
funding or assistance from governmental agencies.
Speaker 3 (43:55):
Yeah, it's important to preserve hope. And I think the
situation is is incredibly demoralizing, but there are people who
are working. There are people to do the right who
are trying to do the right thing, and I think,
you know where if we can support them where we can,
I think that's a really good thing.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
Well, Tom, thanks for coming on the show to chat
with me. The book again is Lost Wonders ten Tales
of Extinction from the twenty first century.
Speaker 3 (44:20):
Yeah, thanks so much for having me Rob. It's it's
been a real pleasure and thank you all for listening.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Thanks once more to Tom for taking time out of
his day to chat with me. Just a reminder that
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and
culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and
on Fridays. We set aside most serious concerns to just
talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. Thanks
as always to the excellent JJ Possway for producing the show,
and if you would like to reach out with any questions,
comments or suggestions, you can email us at contact at
(44:51):
stuff to blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
Stuff to Blow your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows,
Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb. Today is Saturday, so it's vault time.
This episode originally published six nineteen, twenty twenty five. It
is an interview that I conducted with the author Tom
Lathan about the book Lost Wonders Ten Tales of Extinction
from the twenty first Century. Really engaging read, and I've
(00:29):
thought a really engaging conversation here, so I hope you
enjoy it. Let's jump right.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
In Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb, and in today's episode, I'm going
to be chatting with Tom Lathan, author of the new
book Lost Wonders, Ten Tales of Extinction from the twenty
first Century. It's out June tenth. Without further ado, let's
jump right into the interview. Hi Tom, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Hi there, Rov, Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
The new book is Lost Wonders, Ten Tales of Extinction
from the twenty first Century, publishing June tenth here in
the States, came out earlier, what in November in the UK? Right,
that's right, Yes, it tackles the sixth mass extinction event
that we're all living in by chronicling ten different recently
extinct species. You know, we've all read or heard about
(01:33):
the ongoing Holo scene extinction. But do you find that
people have a difficult time truly grasping what's happening or
the scale of what's happening.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Yeah, and I think it is. It is a difficult
thing to grasp, you know, even for people who are
following this and who care about this. It is kind
of crazy, I think, you know, mainly because of the
timescale that it's happening on the reason why I really
wanted to write this book, which is actually eleven species,
it's ten stories a species. Two of those species, their
(02:03):
story is so so similar, so intertwined. The two birds
are mistaken for one another. Even so, it made sense
to tell those in one story, as it were in
one chapter. But really, the thing that unites the entire
book is that these are species that have gone extinct
in the twenty first century. The reason why I wanted
(02:25):
to write about those species in particular, it's because I
really wanted to get into the idea that extinction is
unfolding all around us. And that when we typically think
of extinction, it can be this far flung thing from
the past. You know, virtually everyone's first encounter with the
word will be in the context of dinosaurs. You know,
I was a dinosaur kid. I was obsessed with Jurassic Park.
(02:46):
That was, yeah, we look like we're probably the similar age,
So you probably had your Jurassic Park phase. But absolutely
either that or the Dodo, And these are things from
the distant past. And I think that we all make
an unconscious association there with the word extinction and the past,
but it's obviously it's unfolding all around us. And I
(03:10):
actually came to the book, came to the idea of
writing the book when I learned that one of these species,
the Christmas isne In Pippastrell, had actually gone extinct on
my twenty third birthday. And when I learned that fact,
and I realized that I could remember, you know, what
I'd been doing that day, I could remember who I'd
been with, you know, I well, most probably can't really
(03:31):
remember the evening, but I remember a lot of the day,
and I could look back through emails and texts, social
media and really kind of get a picture of what
my world was like on the day that as species
went extinct, it was just a kind of mind blowing
realization and it kind of got me thinking about what
else had gone extinct, you know, within my lifetime, within
the lifetimes of most people who read the book. So
(03:54):
that's what really kind of drove me.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Yeah, so you're kind of making something that's kind of
invisible to many visible and real in a way.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Yeah, you know, I think it's understandable that, you know,
we don't necessarily as a species, we don't really necessarily
think about extinction that much, I would say, and it
can be quite a dour subject, and there's very often
you know, we're we're we are anthropercentric. We're obsessed with
our own stories and our own our own species. So
(04:25):
you know, an obscure back going extinct or a tiny
snail going extinct somewhere in the world isn't necessarily going
to kind of grab everyone's attention. But I think it's
really important that we know what's going on, and you know,
it probably won't surprise anyone to hear that in all
of these stories, we're we're the cause either in the
(04:46):
here and now or we set off the chain of
events that have led to these extinctions.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Now, I don't want to give potential readers the wrong idea, though,
because each chapter of your of your book is I
guess in a very real sense of tragedy. But there
Vide's chapter is also about like the wonders and improbabilities
surrounding these various species. So I definitely want to get
into some questions about those wonders and improbabilities as we
(05:13):
look at maybe a few examples. But how did you
how did you end up finalizing a list for the book?
Where did you? I mean, obviously you had you had
the one in mind that corresponded with your twenty third birthday,
But how about the rest of them? How this come together?
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Yeah? So, really, when I started the project, or actually
before I go into that, I think I echo what
you said. I think you're right, you know, extinction. I
think sometimes it's one of those issues that people might
not want to think about because, you know, it just God,
it is just terrible, isn't it? Something going extinct, especially
something that's millions of years old. It's kind of mind boggling.
(05:50):
But one thing, and actually, when I when I went
into writing the book, it was it was a doubt
I had, like, God, is this is anyone going to
want to read this? This is just going to be
so depressing. But as I actually got into the research,
and a big part of that research was actually talking
to the people who were there on the ground. In
some cases they may they discovered these species. In other
(06:12):
cases they'd taken care of the last individual of a
species and kind of dealt with the aftermath of extinction.
I actually really found a lot of grounds for hope
in that because it's really inspiring the lengths that people
go to in conservation. It's a field that is absolutely
jam packed with unsung heroes, people that go above and
(06:35):
beyond the call of duty every single day, who have
their who have their job, and there are just little
things that they do just completely off their own initiative,
just because they know they can make a difference. And
there are even stories of species being saved by people
who who aren't scientists, who are hobbyists. There's an example
in the book of a species of pupfish, which is
(06:57):
a tiny little fish from the American West and also
also in Mexico. There are species spread across the arid areas,
and one particular one of the people that I spoke
to was actually a bus driver from New Jersey who
is a hobbyist. He just loves fish, you know, since
(07:18):
he was a kid, and he's actually become involved in
the efforts to save endangered species. When I spoke to him,
he had a critically endangered species just behind him in
his fish tank, and it's you know, obviously there's no
financial incentive for him. And I just think that the
more that you learn about these stories. Yes, the subjects
(07:40):
of this book have gone extinct, but the people who
tried to save them have had other successes. They've used
the knowledge that they gained from trying to save these species,
which very often is uncharted territory. Some of these extinctions
happened because the scientists simply didn't know how do we
help this species. But from these experiences, they've learned what
they need to do to save other species and they've
(08:02):
had success. And I just find that really inspiring. But
sorry to go on to your question. Could you remind
me again of what you are?
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Oh, i'd a asked just how you ended up coming
up with a list.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Yes, so, I as a journalist, I've been writing about
nature for a few years and it came out of
quite an organic conversation with my partner who's also a writer,
and I was just I just had this thought. I
just wondered, you know, what's I wonder, what's gone extinct,
you know, in the last you know, in my lifetime essentially.
(08:32):
So I contacted the ice I u c N, which
is the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which
is the global body that essentially oversees the conservation status
of everything. So they're the they're the people essentially who
give the final word and whether something is endangered, critically endangered, extinct,
extinct in the world and so on. And I just
(08:54):
I just asked them, you know, for a list of
recent extinctions, and they sent me back this enormous, sprawling
spreadsheet full of hundreds I think it was up with
the five hundred extinctions. But thankfully that spreadsheet included a
by date of extinction column, so I filtered by that
(09:14):
and these eleven species are what kind of came out
of that, and I really kind of really that's when
it really kind of struck me. In fact, that's the
moment where I saw the extinction date of the pipistre
being my birthday and made that connection and had that realization.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Well, I want to I'm want to ask about one
that I have to acknowledge that on the surface, this
one might not seem that exciting. And when I was
reading your book, that was my initial response. I was
kind of like, well this, I don't know how enthralled
I'm going to be by this one. But it ended
up being I think my one of my favorite chapters,
and this is the chapter dealing with the Saint Helena Olive.
(09:50):
Can you tell us a little bit about the island
of Saint Helena and the Saint Helena Olive. I was
not I was vaguely familiar with the island from its
prominence in his but I was not familiar with this
organism at all.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
Yeah, that is also one of my favorites. Before I
go into that. I think it's interesting. I was thinking
about this this morning. Actually, I think we're all kind
of conditioned to see wildlife in a certain way.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
You know.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
If I don't know if you guys have I presume
you guys have David Attenborough documentaries. Oh yeah, yeah, okay, yeah,
National Hero, so that you know, I was raised on
his documentaries and I think as wonderful as they are,
they do condition you see the natural world in a
certain way. The focus is very much on charismatic species
or species that have some kind of quirk or fascinating behavior,
(10:41):
and I think that we tend to kind of unconsciously
and buy a sort of value system by which we
judge species on that basis. But actually, what I found
one of the really exciting things about writing a book
like this is that you know the decision of what
goes in this book. It wasn't like I just picked
eleven species that fascinated me. It was decided for me.
(11:04):
And what that meant was I had to really kind
of approach species that, like you, I wouldn't necessarily think, Oh,
is this tree going to be interesting? Is this snail
gonna kind of interest me personally? And I had to
find other ways of looking at them and find the
fascination and wonder in these species and that tree. The
Saint Helena olive is a particularly fascinating species because it
(11:25):
lived only on a single island in the middle of
the South Atlantic Ocean, and this island, Saint Helena, is
extraordinarily remote. It's nearly two thousand kilometers west of Africa,
slap bang in the middle of the South Atlantic, and
(11:45):
it's so remote that when the International Space Station is
circling overhead, the astronauts on board are actually the closest
neighbors to the residents on Saint Helena.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
And remote islands are a very exciting place for biologists
because due to their isolation, species that end up making
it to those islands end up evolving in fascinating ways,
and you end up with these extraordinary ecosystems. And Saint
Nuna is one of those examples. You know, there are
(12:18):
a few species that are capable of making that leap,
you know, crossing thousands of miles of ocean to reach
this tiny island, volcanic island. And what you end up
with in a place like that are things like trees
that have evolved from daisies. You end up with giant earwigs,
You end up with fluorescent wood lice, a real bizarre
(12:39):
kind of hodgepodge. There was a biologist that I spoke
to about the ecosystem who said he described it as
imagine if you just gave evolution another chance, You just
reset evolution on an island and allowed it to kind
of take a different course. This is the kind of
thing you would end up with, just this kind of
alien ecosystem. So the Saint Helena olive is a species
(13:02):
of hardwood tree, and this family of tree species, they
all originate in Southern Africa, and they've made these extraordinary
journeys and radiated out Southern Africa and ended up in
islands in the Indian Ocean, and one of the places
they ended up was on Saint Helena. And it was
a mystery that really confounded scientists because to get to
(13:26):
somewhere like Saint Helena, if you're a tree, your seeds
need to have a way to navigate thousands of miles
of ocean, and there are potential ways they could do that.
They might some seed pods can float, so they would
float there. The Saint Helena olive seed pods didn't float.
In fact, they were sterilized by saltwater and other ways
(13:47):
seeds might be carried by the wind. They wouldn't do that.
They were quite large capsules. And the other way that
seeds can disperse is by growing a fruit and being
eaten by birds, same thing that olive couldn't do any
of those things. So the biologists some of whom I
spoke to you for the book. They eventually deduced that
(14:09):
the way this species had to have ended up on
this remote island was by a bizarre chain of coincidences,
wherein an albatross or a similar seafaring bird must have
landed somewhere in southern Africa and picked up a seed
in its feathers or maybe in some mud coating its foot,
(14:29):
and then that albatross would have ranged out over the
ocean and eventually ended up at Saint Helena, and just
by chance, this seed had dropped dropped from the feathers
of this albatross, found its way into the soil and
the story of that species on the island began, which
is extraordinary. It's twelve million years old, and it's so
(14:52):
genetically unique that a genus had to be created for
the species. So the genesis the classification that sits above species.
And when you look away from the charismatic species and
species that are more often kind of celebrated and featured
in nature documentaries, you have to kind of look at
(15:12):
species in a different way, and I think you find
incredible stories when you start to look at the natural
world in a different way and you can find that
they're everywhere.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Yeah, there's I just love this idea that it's almost
like this plant was not supposed to be there. It's
just such an incredible string of events that we can
kind of speculate on that landed it there. And I
love the quote that you share about how rare events
happen over geological time. So yeah, it's unlikely, but given
(15:42):
enough time, things like this do occur in this is
the result.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Yeah, it's like, what are the chances. I mean, you know,
it's already just a seed being swept up in the
feathers of an albatross is already you know, it seems
quite an unlikely scenario, but then for it to have
dropped out just at the right place, it's kind of insane.
And that quote that you just mentioned, that was Mike Faye,
who was a geneticist from Q Gardens in the UK,
(16:07):
and Q Gardens did a lot of work to try
and conserve this species. He is, he was, he was
actually he led the attempt to propagate the species in
the end. But yeah, that was an incredible insight from him.
You know, he said, he said to me that you know,
there were twelve million years for this to happen, and
it only had to happen once.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
But of course another organism eventually came to the island,
and that would be us, right, This one was sheltered
for quite a while, right.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Yeah, I mean that's one of the it's a double
edged sword.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
You know.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Isolation creates a fascinating breeding ground for evolution, for interesting
species to evolve and adapt, But by the same token,
when you have a species like humans. In the book,
I talk about how Saint Helena was almost like a castle.
(17:01):
It was fortified against the outside world. You know, there
were so few organisms who could actually make that trip
that the sea kind of acted almost as a moat.
And the arrival of humans in fifteen oh six was
essentially like lowering the drawbridge. Enabled things like goats, cats,
all kinds of invasive species of plant. Rats are obviously
(17:23):
a huge problem pretty much everywhere they're introduced, and that's
what happened on Saint Helena. And it was an island
that in history after it was discovered, it was compared
by many to Eden. It was this verdant spot in
the middle of the ocean that was really kind of
life sustaining for sailors who at that point in time
(17:46):
had to journey all the way around Africa, around the
bottom of Africa in order to actsos Asia in India.
So it was a really big problem, you know, fighting
off things like scurvy, restocking with water, and Saint Helena
was just this kind of oasis in the middle of
the ocean. But you know, a few years later it
(18:06):
was decimated.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
In what led did this decimation, so, I mean.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
One thing was the introduction of invasive species. Another thing
was habitat destruction. So once the island was settled by
the English East India Company, homes had to be built.
Enslaved people were brought to the island in order to
create some kind of economic purpose for the island. That's
(18:31):
how it was viewed as the English East India Company
at the time described places like Saint Helena as factories.
That was their ambition for this place. So everything there
was a resource in order to pursue that aim, and
so massive deforestation things like goats were a particular problem,
(18:51):
eating native vegetation and once you lose that vegetation, you
then get soil erosion. And there are these crazy reports
of the soiler Osian being so bad that the sea
turned black around the island, and once you get into
that state, there's very few things that then can then
kind of grow back and get a foothold in the
soil which has essentially been completely transformed. And in Saint Helena,
(19:15):
all of these threats kind of conspired and the landscape
was transformed and native species shrank further and further back
to the center of the island, which is where the
last Saint Helena olive was found in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
And you read about that. Now we just have an
empty part, right, it's labeled as St. Helena.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Yes, So in Q Garden's Temperate House, which is this fantastic,
incredible decadent Victorian glasshouse in London and Q there is
you know, species from all over the world there, and
then in one corner there's just this empty terra cotta pot,
which is an extraordinary kind of symbol of what could
(19:58):
have been.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Now, you mentioned goats and the destructive powers of goats
when they're introduced to places like this, they factor into
at least one of the other extinction stories that you share,
and that is the Pinta Island tortoise of the Galapagos islands.
This is another far flung island dwelling species, right.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Yeah, yeah, so a lot of these species were island
dwelling species. For the reasons we discussed the pint Island tortoise.
It's yeah. The goats that came to Pintr Island were
introduced by fishermen, and there were three of them deposited
in the nineteen fifties, and that population swelled two thousands
(20:52):
in fact. You know, I actually don't off the top
of my head, I can't remember the exact number, but
they basically, you know, the goats were farmer or efficient
if you imagine a tortoise versus a goat in terms
of grazing and things like that, the torses really were
no match. You know, the Galapagos, because of its isolation,
is a place that, you know, there were never things
(21:14):
like goats there. There were never those kind of specially
adapted herbivores. And it's a problem not just for tortoises,
but also the vegetation that tortoises feed on, because if
you don't have herbivores, plants don't learn to adapt to
repel herbivores. So things like thorns, certain kinds of chemical
compounds that all kinds of adaptations that might make native
(21:36):
vegetation resilient to goats. It just it doesn't have that
vegetation doesn't have time to adapt when you suddenly release
something like a goat on the island.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Now, with the Galapagos tortoises in general, I feel like
these are some amazing creatures that we can They are
often featured in documentaries, the sort of Attenborough documentaries that
we've been discussing, and the sort of documentaries that very
much were inspired by that kind of content, which is great,
but we can almost kind of grow numb to them.
(22:07):
I don't know if you've found this to be the
case as well. Like we see the Glapa tortoises, maybe
if we're luckly we get to see one in the zoo,
or if not, a Galapagos tortoise and maybe an al
dabra tortoise that is in some way similar. But when
you really observe them like they are just so fabulously
weird and wonderful, right they are?
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Yeah, I think that's key. I mean, I think appreciating
nature is it's always about looking a little closer. Because
I think you're right with something like a giant tortoise.
You know, we've we've seen that. We've all seen that
many times. We we kind of I think we think
we always think we understand the things we've seen many times,
(22:48):
so you know, our brain knows how to categorize that,
so we can kind of just move on. But you know,
like any species, they are really fascinating that. In the
case of the giant torsises of the glass, I mean,
what fascinated me the most was how they got there,
which similar to the same thing not olive. It is another
incredible dispersal story. So something like a tortoise, something that
(23:13):
large and cumbersome and slow traversing an ocean is just
as unbelievable as a tiny seed. What they discovered is
that the tortoises or their ancestors must have been washed
out to sea from South America, which is where their
most recent ancestor lived, and the tortoises would have had
(23:36):
to have survived for god knows how long just on
the ocean with no food. And when this theory was
first kind of discussed in the early twentieth century, it
was actually put to the test, and so you know,
researchers would would take capture giant tortoises, take them into
(23:56):
the ocean, and just drop them into the sea. And
what they would see is that the tortoises were quite
good at swimming, They could float quite easily, they could
keep their heads above water. And gradually, through genetic analysis,
scientists were able to map how the dispersal had taken place,
first from South America to one Galapagos island and then
(24:19):
later to another. So there's just this when you kind
of accelerate time and think of it like a time lapse,
that's just this, this series of odyssees going from island
to island from the continent, and these tortoises arriving on
new islands, establishing new species, growing slightly differently into the
into the different species of Galapagos strikeing tortois. It's incredible,
(24:40):
but it's it's it's kind of a less obvious thing.
I think it's easy to just be distracted by the
size of these creatures and for that to be what
we associate with them. But then when you learn about
their journeys, it's it's really it's fascinating on a different level.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Now, the story of the Pinta Island Glapagos tortoises also
interest in that it is also a story of rediscovery.
Could you tell us a little bit about this Some
fox may have probably heard parts of this tale before.
Tell us about Lonesome George.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Yeah, so in nineteen seventy two. Well, Lonesome George. A
lot of people will be familiar with that name, because
you know, he was he was a celebrity animal. You know,
he was world famous. He had hundreds of thousands of people,
you know, coming to the Galapagos visiting him in his enclosure.
(25:32):
His species, the Pinter Island torsters, which is the species
I write about in Lost Wonders, was believed to be
extinct from the beginning of the twentieth centuries. I think
it was nineteen oh six the California Academy of Sciences
went to Pinter Island and collected what was ended up
being the last known female of the species. And so
(25:55):
for seventy odd years, you know, that was thought to
be the end of that species, until one day a
Hungarian American malacologist and his wife were on holiday. They
were on Pinter Island looking at snails, and suddenly they
looked up and saw this giant tortoise, and they didn't
know what they'd seen at the time, but later when
they spoke two other people who were working in the archipelago,
(26:19):
it soon became clear that this was the Pinter Island tortoise.
You know, this is a species that everyone had thought
disappeared and that ended up that precipitated a search, and
eventually they found and captured George and took him to
a captive breeding center, hoping that they would be able
to save this species by finding a female. And he
(26:42):
ended up staying there for four decades and eventually died
in twenty twelve. After many many searches, there were no
females found. Attempts to have him mate with females of
closely related species to no avail. But the fascinating thing
(27:03):
about this story, I mean, there's so many twists and turns,
but the biologists I spoke to one of the biologists
I spoke to for this about this species, James Gibbs,
he told me this fascinating story that he and some
of his colleagues at the Galapagos Conservancy. They a few
years ago they went on a trip to a remote
(27:24):
island and they discovered that there were hundreds of Galapagos
trying tortoises of different species living on the side of
this volcano on this incredibly remote island, And eventually they
kind of worked out why this had happened, and their
theory is that whalers who used to use the Galapagos
(27:44):
Islands as basically a meat lader, so whalers out in
the Pacific they would come to the Galapagos captures horses
because you know, there were a good food source you
could keep alive on a boat for weeks, and there
were a big part for the decimation of those species.
But it's thought that they used to gather at this
spot on the side of this remote island, and at
(28:04):
some point they must have thrown over overboard some tortoises,
or they may have escaped, but you ended up with
this isolated population of these different species, and somewhere in
there must have been Pinter Island tortoises, or at least one,
because James Gibbs and his colleagues found a few years
ago a hybrid tortoise whose mother or father must have
(28:26):
been a Pinter Island tortoise, which is a fascinating prospect.
They haven't found a parent but it suggests that that
there is or recently was, you know, a living Pinter
Island tortoise. So this is after George's death, after the
species had yet again been declared extinct, and it's still
a possibility. So that's a really interesting, interesting story, and
(28:46):
you know, there is some small hope there. That same
expedition did find another tortoise that was actually an individual
from a species that was also believed extinct, so they
reversed another giant tortoise extinction there.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Now, how rare are rediscoveries of previously believed extinct species.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
I can't give you any figures off the top of
my head, but it happens more often than you think.
You know, there there are known kind of it depends
on the species. I mean, some species are fairly easy
to monitor. Other species, you know, maybe due to their size,
due to where they live, are you know, close to impossible.
(29:29):
It really does depend. But I think sometimes, you know,
one of the reasons why there's a little bit of
a disconnect between what biologists will say about the species
they study in terms of their their their conservation status
and what the i U c N will say. So
sometimes scientists will come out and say this species, we
(29:52):
believe it's extinct, We've we've done this extensive search for it,
and we can't find it. No one's seen it for
a decade. But the u c and will kind of
hold fire because there is always that possibility that someone
will find a remote population or that this species is
especially discreete. So there's very often a kind of like that,
a lagging effect where species aren't actually declared extinct until
(30:16):
we can kind of know with certitude. But it does happen. Yeah,
species are rediscovered.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Now.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
I'm not going to ask you about every organism that
you govern in the book, obviously, but that I do
want to ask you about one more location and associated organisms,
and that would be the two organisms that you profile
from Christmas Island. This is a place that I think
some of our listeners definitely remember from either episodes they
might have listened to or shows they might have watched
(30:43):
about the Christmas Island crabs. But your selections here, of
course not crabs, remind us a bit about Christmas Island
and what makes its ecosystem so special.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
Yeah, so Christmas Island is another one of those isolated
islands on which in species just really thrive but it
isn't geographically strictly geographically isolated so much as the ocean
that surrounds it is incredibly deep, So in some places
it's five kilometers deep. You can you can fit Mount
(31:14):
Kilimanjaro in there. It's also surrounded by strong ocean currents.
And the place where it sits in the world is
quite fascinating. It's it sits on what's called the Wallace line,
which is the border between two biogeographical realms, and a
biogeographical realm is basically it's the border between two places
(31:38):
where radically different species and organisms will live. So the
Wallace line separates to its west you've got Southeast Asia,
You've got things like monkeys, all sorts of species that
live there. And to its east you've got Australia and
you've got you know, the incredible mussupials and things like that.
And it's separated by this this invisible divide, invisible to
(32:01):
us anyway. And so Christmas Island is a hodgepodge of
those two biogeographical realms. And the two species that I
wrote about in Lost Wonders from Christmas Island they're an
example of that because one of them is from the
east of the line, and one of them is from
the west. But Christmas Island itself. Another reason why it's
such a fascinating place is that it wasn't settled for
(32:23):
a long time. You know, it's quite unique. It was sighted,
it was sited on maps, it was cited by navigators,
but no one really thought there was much point in
taking ownership of Christmas Island. It was a rock covered
in rainforest in the Indian Ocean. It was surrounded by
(32:43):
impenetrable cliffs, very few places to land, so no one
really bothered until the end of the nineteenth century when
phosphorus was discovered, sorry, phosphatic rock was discovered on the
ocean floor, and it was determined that Christmas Island would
be a source of phosphatic rock used to make fertilizer,
(33:04):
which was obviously a huge economic incentive to settle there
and colonize it, which is what happened. And as usual,
that brought with it a raft of invasive species habitat destruction,
which really kind of it had the effect you would expect.
The two species that I write about, one of which
(33:24):
is the one of which is the prune sized bat,
the Christmas sign and pipistrell that went extinct on my birthday.
That was, by all accounts of very cute little organism.
It had a tiny quiff, it was the size of
a prune, so it could fit comfortably in your hand.
And the forest skink was a metallic brown skink that
(33:46):
was extremely common. Both these species were extremely common, you know.
Researchers described, you know, seeing as many as eighty of
the forest skink basking in the sun on a single log,
so it really was everywhere. And the pipistrell similarly, I
think the first the first population count estimated between five
(34:07):
and ten thousand on quite a small island, and it
was so common that you would islanders would find them
fluttering around inside their homes, you know, hunting insects. There
were accounts of them tumbling into people's people's dinner, you know,
eating soup and suddenly a back crush lands in your
suit bowl. So they really were everywhere. And then in
the late eighties suddenly people noticed that they were starting
(34:31):
to disappear. And essentially what happened is these species disappeared
in the east to west pattern, so from the east
of the islands of the west they gradually faded out,
and at the same time it was realized that a
particularly dangerous and invasive species of snake, the wolf snake,
had been introduced, which is believed to be the primary
(34:53):
cause of both extinctions by the majority of scientists. There
were other things like giant centerpedes, cats, wraps, yellow crazy ants,
which are another you know, they're their own fascinating phenomenon,
but really it's the introduction of the wolf snake. And
you see this correlations, fascinating correlation with the retreat of
(35:14):
these two species and the advance of this invasive species.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
The wolf snake. This was an accidental introduction to the
island or was this one of these cases where an
organism was introduced to attempt to solve a particular problem
or anything.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
No, this was an accident and there was a bit
of a problem on Christmas Island. The biosecurity was not
quite there from what I've heard. But this is a
snake or a few. I don't know how many it
would have been, but it could have been one, or
it could have been several. That basically snuckerboard a cargo
ship and this happens a lot. You know, now that
(35:48):
we've kind of connected the isolated parts of the world.
We've we've sort of created a transport network for invasive species,
and that's why biosecurity is so important. But sometimes it's
not followed or or it's lacking, and on Christmas Island
it yeah, there were there were species that were introduced
in this manner, and the wolf snakes one of them,
but it was it's a specialized skin hunter, but it's
(36:12):
it's partial to bats and things like that, but it's
decimated this species with frightening ferocity. There are three species
(36:32):
in this book that lived in Australian territories. So there
were these two from Christmas Island, and there was another
species called the bramble cane melmus, which was a species
of rodent that lived on a sand k in the
Torres Strait, which is which is just north of Australia,
but it's an Australian territory. And all three of these
(36:53):
species really suffered from governmental neglect. There were opportunities to
save them that weren't taken. You know, the people that
I spoke to who worked with all three of these species,
they in the case of the Christmas Island species, they've
warned the authorities. This species is going extinct. The skink
is a really horrifying example of that because David James,
(37:16):
who was a wonderful ecologist who worked on the island
and was essentially in charge of monitoring basically everything that
lived there. You know, he raised the alarm about this
species in two thousand and five and was ignored. You know,
he recommended it be categorized as threatened in Australia's equivalent
(37:36):
of the Endangered Species List, but he wasn't listened to,
and it was only classified as threatened four months before
the extinction of the species in twenty fourteen. The reason
why I think it's important to mention that is what's
happening right now in America with the attempts to water
(37:58):
down the Endangered Species Act, the the unleashing potentially of
the God Squad, I think is the name the small
body of people who were given the unique power to
override environmental protections even if it causes an extinction. I think.
You know, in the in the best of circumstances, you know,
(38:18):
politicians are neglect full of environmental issues. But the situation
in America now is just apocalyptic. Sorry to get sorry
to get depressing, But actually there was something, if you
don't mind, there was I got in touch with someone,
one of the scientists I spoke to for this book
because I knew I was coming on here and I
(38:40):
wanted to ask him, you know, if he had any
thoughts and feelings about the current state of things, you know,
and I think it's quite important. So I don't know
if you'd mind if I read it out. I was
quite sure.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Oh, by all means.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
So here's what he said. This is Chris Martin, who
is an evolutionary biologist who specializes in pupfish. He works
at UC Berkeley, and this is what he had to
say about this. This government is attempting to strip habitat
protections provided by the Endangered Species Act, among many other
(39:13):
threats and cuts to the federal agencies that protect and
can serve our biodiversity, national parks, and natural spaces. The
Endangered Species Act was signed by Nixon with strong bipartisan support,
and has inspired the world with its successes in bringing
back so many species from the brink of extinction, including
(39:33):
the bald eagle, condor and even the Devil's whole pupfish,
which was recently rescued from a catastrophic decline this winter,
only through a decade long efforts of the US Fish
and Wildlife Service to establish a refuge population. We must
fight to protect everyone in our country and all the
unique species that have made the United States their home
(39:54):
for millennia. He also mentioned to me, obviously there's a
all a context where scientific institutions and universities are being
stripped of funding and there are layoffs, and it sounds horrendous.
As an outsider, it sounds, you know, absolutely, it's a
(40:14):
doomsday scenario. But I think it's really important that we
kind of learn and we understand what happens when when
people stop caring, you know, when governments turn a blind eye,
or when you know, in the case of the current administration,
when they seem to be actively advocating by diversity loss
and things like that. I think Chris is right. I
(40:38):
think now is the time to fight in whichever way
anyone can. I'm probably preaching to the choir here. I
don't know what your listener base is like, but hearing
all of this from Chris, it really kind of made
me sort of realize that the bipasssan history of the
Endangered Species Act and how you know i'd heard that from,
you know. Researching this book, I've spoken to people who,
(41:01):
you know, occupied all kinds of positions across the political spectrum,
but they did believe in the importance of conserving species
and your podcast being a science podcast. I think, I think,
regardless of anyone's political affiliations, one thing I think we
can all realize is that the administration at the moment
is profoundly unscientific, and regardless of how you feel about
(41:25):
any other kind of policies, you know, it's just insanity.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
Absolutely. I mean, this is you know, not the first
guest this year to bring some version of this issue up.
And yeah, in the past there has been bipartisan support
to a large degree to help maintain biodiversity. I don't
think it's something that needs to be a politicized topic,
(41:52):
and yet here we are. So that's right, you're sharing
these starts.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
But I do want to add as well, just to
add a little note of hope, because I know, you know,
this must be such a demoralizing situation for many Americans
to be in. One of the people I spoke to
you for this book was a fantastic ornithologist, a bird
ecologist from Brazil, and he talked to me about what
it was like working under the Bolsonario regime, so, you know,
(42:17):
they had a right wing government. I think it was
around the same time as the Trump first Trump term,
which was actively pursuing the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.
And he told me, you know, essentially what happened in
that time was organizations and conservationists learn to turn away
from the federal government where they could, you know, things
(42:37):
became a lot more localized. You know, local administrations and
local organizations would kind of ban together and try and
solve the problems together, knowing they couldn't they couldn't rely
on their government. And you know, I know that conservation
is as I said earlier, it's full of unstung heroes.
It's full of everyday heroism. So I really do think
(42:58):
that people across the country would be doing their best
to kind of to save what they can, and I
think they need our support. So I'd encourage anyone who
who cares about this or feels depressed or demoralized by
it to try and get involved however you can. So
there are very often ways that you can volunteer and
you can help even small ways. It's more important than
(43:20):
ever now.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Yeah. Yeah, Well, we recently talked with Mark Ndinka, who
runs the Amphibian Foundation here in Atlanta, and that was
one of the things he brought up is in the
past they've had to they have leaned on the federal
agencies for helping some of their research, and a lot
of that has been going away. And this is just
(43:41):
one example, you know, a local example for us of
an organization where people people can now turn and try
to help support their work if they can't depend on
funding or assistance from governmental agencies.
Speaker 3 (43:55):
Yeah, it's important to preserve hope. And I think the
situation is is incredibly demoralizing, but there are people who
are working. There are people to do the right who
are trying to do the right thing, and I think,
you know where if we can support them where we can,
I think that's a really good thing.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
Well, Tom, thanks for coming on the show to chat
with me. The book again is Lost Wonders ten Tales
of Extinction from the twenty first century.
Speaker 3 (44:20):
Yeah, thanks so much for having me Rob. It's it's
been a real pleasure and thank you all for listening.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Thanks once more to Tom for taking time out of
his day to chat with me. Just a reminder that
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and
culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and
on Fridays. We set aside most serious concerns to just
talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. Thanks
as always to the excellent JJ Possway for producing the show,
and if you would like to reach out with any questions,
comments or suggestions, you can email us at contact at
(44:51):
stuff to blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
Stuff to Blow your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows,
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