June 14, 2017 • 34 mins
The extinction of one New Zealand bird species is often attributed to a single cat. While feline predation played a significant role in the end of the Stephens Island wren, the story is actually more complex.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from house
stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Hey, Tracy,
have you ever heard of a cat named Tibbles who
was single handedly responsible or poledly You'll sometimes see it
(00:24):
written out for wiping out an entire species of bird
because of a lighthousekeeper. Yeah, it shows up on various
listicals from time to time. Along the line you'll see
like ex animals who change history. It's one of the
most famous extinction stories, and because it has this quaint,
those sad aspect to it is really taken on a
(00:44):
life of its own, and it's one that gets repeated
a lot. But the real story is actually a lot
more complex than simply saying one cat killed all the birds.
Uh So, today we're gonna take a look at the
original tale as it's usually told, and then we'll delve
into the reality of the demise of the bird species
is involved because the bird did legitimately go extinct, that
part is true, and it also becomes an interesting story
(01:05):
of conservation and the importance of protecting both flora and
fauna unique to specific and isolated locations, and there's even
a little bit of scientific community intrigue and offense in
the mix, so it's got everything for a good story. Also,
because this does involve extinction and then later ways to
try to combat similar problems, there's this that's pretty much
(01:27):
a whole episode where we talk about animals being killed.
So if that is something particularly sensitive to you, this
might not be your episode. I will say this, I
am usually particularly sensitive to it. It does not bother
me in this context. So I don't know if that's
your guide post or not, but there you go. Well,
and having had an outdoor cat from like until approximately
(01:52):
six a long time. But anyway, I grew up with
an outdoor cat because we lived out in the country
and that was what you did, and yeah, you become
accustomed to cats bringing you than Yeah, cats bringing in
small animals was something that happened all times. So yeah,
we had that growing up, and it is one of
the reasons my small herd never goes outside. Yeah. Yeah,
(02:15):
my my cats once I was an adult and caring
for my own cats were strictly indoor, although a couple
of them did escape on at least one occasion. Yeah. Yeah,
But Today we're going to talk about the Steven's Island
rim and this cat and what did it did not happen.
The particular wren in this story was a tiny bird.
(02:37):
It could fit in the palm of a human hand,
and it was found on Steven's Island, which is a
New Zealand. It's likely that these wrens, known as Xenicus
traversi at Lale in Latin and sometimes called lyle wrens,
were possibly part of the fauna of ancient Gondwana land
they were related to the Kiwi. Fossil evidence us that
(03:00):
these tiny birds are ones that are incredibly closely related
to them. Once lived throughout New Zealand, and it's believed
that the introduction of predatory species such as rats eliminated
them from all the other areas of the country but
Steven's Island, which was isolated by the eighteen nineties. The
birds were dark olive brown in color, with yellowish color
(03:20):
coloring at the throat and the breast. Skeletal evidence, as
well as witness accounts, indicate that the wren was flightless
that spent its time on the ground hunting for insects
to eat, and that makes it one of only three
known flightless songbirds in the world. The wren's nested in small,
out of the wayte spots, such as holes and recesses
(03:41):
under rocks, and it was also believed to have been nocturnal. Yeah.
I read one account that said that it weighed about
the same as a quarter, but I didn't find anything
that backed that up. But even so, it's a very tiny,
light little thing and sometimes you'll see it. Uh. When
people described it, they talked about it being almost more
like a mount than a bird in some ways, probably
(04:01):
because it's screwed along the ground. The island itself is
also known by its Maori name take Pourdoir, and it
is a small place. It is less than a square mile.
That's another one of those things that gets reported very differently.
Some we'll say it's only half square miles, some even
less than that. But we know that it is less
than a square mile, about one point five square kilometers estimate.
(04:24):
And it sits about two miles off of New Zealand's
South Island's northern shore, at the northern edge of the
Marlboro Sounds. And the weather on the island is mild
in temperatures, but there is frequent rain and often high winds.
It was renamed Steven's Island after Philip Stevens, the late
eighteenth century first Secretary to the Admiralty of the United Kingdom.
(04:45):
Prior to the eighteen seventies, it hadn't been explored by
any Anglo parties. It's unknown if any Maori people's visited
it prior to that, but it was a pristine place
in terms of its ecological condition when maritime officials from
New Zealand first visited it, and because the island sits
(05:05):
on a shipping route and there had been several shipwrecks
nearby in the middle of the century, it was outfitted
with an oil powered lighthouse in eighteen ninety four. That
lighthouse stood at the highest elevation point above sea level
of any lighthouse in New Zealand at the time. It
was also more powerful than any others in New Zealand
at that time, and it cost more than nine thousand
(05:27):
pounds to build. Before the lighthouse was installed, to illuminate
the Cooks Straights western approaches, Steven's Island was almost entirely untouched.
There were no non native species that had been introduced.
The flora was just natural and unshacked and undeveloped. Well
into the eighteen hundreds, the tiny island was pretty densely forested.
(05:50):
When workers first arrived in eighteen ninety two to start
construction on the lighthouse, birds were abundant. The journals of
one of the men, F. W. Ingram, are quoted in
a two thousand four paper about the extinction of the wren.
That paper was written by Ross Galbreath and Derrick Brown,
and according to Ingram's account, there were two kinds of
wren saddlebacks, native thrush and native crows on the island
(06:13):
when the work began. There After, the lighthouse and a
small farm were established, and estimated nine of the island's
native forest was destroyed due to grazing and fire. A
patchy low forest eventually established and remains, and the place
of the thick forest that had been destroyed and shrubs,
(06:34):
grasses and vine lens uh persisted also. So with this
new fancy lighthouse, the island needed a lighthouse keeper. So
we are getting now into the story as it's usually told.
So in David Lyle moved to Stephen's Island to fill
that position, and the island was not easy to get
(06:55):
to Travelers had to cross Cook straight by boat and
then board a basket that was attached of the station's crane,
and after that there was an uphill walk of about
a hundred and eighty meters or a hundred and ninety
six yards to the lighthouse itself. This was a pretty
extreme solitary type position that you would accept. Lyle, his
wife and a son also brought along a cat named
(07:17):
Tibbles when they moved to Steven's Island. The idea was
that Tibbles would keep the mice at bay and also
be a companion for this lonely outpost. They were not
the island's only residents, actually, but we'll come back to that.
Of course, a good MOUs er such as Tibbles would
also probably be interested in going after small nocturnal birds
(07:38):
as well, especially since Polly said earlier they've been described
as mouse like, but that was never the intention. They
didn't know the purpose bring a cat to kill birds? No,
And usually when you hear this story told, they really
only talk about David Lyle and Tibbles and his any
family has kind of left out. But so not long
after David and Timbles and his family arrived on the island,
(08:02):
the cats started bringing fresh kills to her human Lyle
was interested in nature, and he was an amateur ornithologist,
and he had never seen a bird quite like the
ones that Timbles was killing. So he examined them and
he skinned them as he did too, you know more fully,
uh take account of what their body was like and
what these birds were. When a ship brought supplies to
(08:23):
the island on its regular bi monthly schedule, Lyle sent
one of his rin skins back on it, intending for
it to reach a well known ornithologist, Sir Walter Buller.
It's believed that he did receive this skin sometime in
July four Later on, Beller would write, quote, there is
probably nothing so refreshing to the soul of a naturalist
(08:44):
as the discovery of a new species. You will readily
understand therefore, how pleased I was at receiving the skin
of a bird from Stephen Island, which was entirely distinct
from anything hitherto known. Eventually, Lyle collected ten say apples
that number is going to shift around when we get
to the reality. But for the purposes of this story,
(09:04):
ten samples from Tibbles offering and they were in good
condition because the cat seemed to be more interested in
killing the birds than she wasn't eating them. Uh. Feline
behaviorists might also suggest that she was bringing them to
Lyle as a means of offering him provisions showing she
could take care of him as well as herself. They
are also theories that cats do that to try to
teach us stupid humans how to find our own food.
(09:26):
But in any case, she was not eating them, so
they were in quite good condition. After he had been
examining these various specimens, Buller realized that the birds Lyle
had been collecting from tibbles were a previously unidentified species
of wren. So one of these Buller sent to London
to the British Ornithologists Union so it could be illustrated,
and he also was preparing his research and findings so
(09:49):
that he could publish his discovery of the Steven's Island
wren in the journal IBIS. It was believed that there
had likely been ten mating pairs of the wren on
Steven's Island before Tipple the cat got there. It's not
a large number of birds to be sure, so it
would not really take very long for an enterprising cat
with decent hunting skills to severely damage those numbers in
(10:15):
just a year after Lyle and his cat had arrived
on the island. The christ Church Press commented on tibbles
work quote, there is very good reason to believe that
the bird is no longer to be found on this island,
as it is not known to exist anywhere else. It
has apparently become quite extinct. This is probably a record
performance in the way of extermination, and according to legend,
(10:39):
Tibbles wiped out the Stevens Island ran almost as soon
as it was recognized as a newly discovered species. So
that's the story that you usually get told in a
quickie articles ship or in like a one sentence throw
a throwaway line in the context of something completely different.
It will be like and there will be even an
entire species of bird killed of the line keeper's cat. Yeah,
(11:02):
but there is a lot more to this story. And
before we dive into that bigger, more detailed version of
what happened to the Steven's Island wren, We're gonna pause
and have a word from one of our sponsors. While
the story of Tibbles and the Stephen's Island. Wren is
a cautionary tale about the dangers of invasive species, and
(11:22):
that is a very legitimate concern. The very simplified version
that is normally shared leaves out some more complex and
nuanced elements to the decline of one species due to
the import of another, as well as the involvement of
many more players in the narrative, as we are definitely
not now playing the threat of invasive species, but that
(11:46):
there's a bigger story going on here. During the construction
period for the lighthouse, an anonymous collector had visited the
island to gather specimens. Galbreth and Brown put forth the
theory in their paper that a collector, which is a
pseudonym used by that person in question when publishing in
the Wellington Evening Post, was in fact none other than
(12:09):
the local natural history dealer, which was a man named
Henry H. Travers, and before Lyle and Tibbles even set
foot on the island, Sir Walter Buller was aware of
the number of birds to be found there, most likely
due to the accounts that the collector had published in
the paper or through contact with Travers himself. Of note, however,
(12:32):
no wren was actually mentioned in the writings of the Collector.
I also just love that he wrote as the Collector,
because of course there's the whole Guardians of the Galaxy
comedy tie in that we could do. Um. But he
had not mentioned the rant at all in any of
these writings. Uh. And there were no mentions of a
wren in the comments of Buller at a January three
meeting of the Wellington Philosophical Society, where he discussed some
(12:55):
of the unique birds that could be found on Steven's Island.
Buller also suggests it at that meeting that two other
New Zealand islands, Resolution Island and Little Barrier Island, could
be used as preservation grounds for some of the bird
species that were experiencing population decline on the mainland, but
it appears that no similar consideration was given to Steven's Island.
(13:18):
Regarding david Lyle and Tibbles, we mentioned a few moments
ago that they were not the only ones who had
moved on to the island. In fact, there were three
lighthouse keepers and their families, as well as a teacher
to see to the children's education, seventeen people in all
at the start of eighteen ninety four, when the lighthouse
became operational while Lyle was sending his samples to Buller.
(13:39):
At some point Henry Travers also became aware of the
unique items being relayed by Lyle through an intermediary aboard
the supply ship. Travers and Buller were not unknown to
each other as a dealer in natural items. Travers had
done business with Buller on a number of occasions, and
Travers spelt as though rare and unique specimens could be
(14:02):
sold for more than Buller was able to pay, he
convinced Lyle to sell him some of the wrens skins. Yeah, so,
in addition to whatever activities are happening, we are now
seeing an uptick in human interest in these birds. Uh.
And this is where yet another man enters the picture,
the Honorable Walter Rothschild, who had dealt with both Travers
(14:25):
and Buller as specimen dealers prior to this new discovery
of the Steven's Island wren and as a wealthy Englishman,
Rothschild had both the means to pay handsomely for rare
specimens and the connections to publish information about them before
Buller could. There actually was some realization among the British
(14:46):
ornithologists involved in publishing the IBIS and the British Ornithologist
Club Proceedings periodical to which Rothschild, to which Rothschild's research
had been presented, that there were two men describing the
same five but both went to press yes, so for clarity.
At this point, Traverse has started selling to a very
(15:07):
rich person in London Rothschild. At the same time Buller
is also purchasing these samples and they are writing up
about this newly discovered species. And they both presented to
both the IBIS and the British Ornithologist Club's proceedings, just
their little periodical, their notes on their meetings, and that's
a small enough group that there were a lot of
crossover people going, hey, we don't we have a thing
(15:27):
from that guy Buller about this. Yeah, but we're going
forward with this too. So uh. They both published and
it was a little bit of a gentleman's drama. So
Rothschild named the rend traversia really in the Proceedings that
was published in December of eight. When Buller's paper came
(15:48):
out in April of the bird was called Xenicus in Solaris,
and this entire chain of events caused massive friction between
the two men, each declaring that the other had not
been a gentle woman. You may recall from the beginning
when we talked about the bird that it is called
xenicus and then sometimes traversia in parentheses. Really, so in
(16:09):
the end there was sort of a combining of the
two in the scientific community. This is like a much
smaller in every sense of the word version of the
bone wars. Yes. But even before Buller's paper, which was
printed by ibis that editorial from the christ Church Press
we mentioned earlier that declared the ren likely extinct had
(16:31):
already come out. So there was already an article saying
the bird was probably extinct before the scientific paper on it. Yeah,
so there was the first printed stuff in December. In
March that article came out in the christ Church Paper
saying there are no more of these birds. And then
in April Buller's paper was published saying I've discovered a
(16:52):
new kind of bird. Uh, it's a it's a very
complex and tightly packed timeline in terms of like discovery
and when this bird was thought to have ended. So
in March of Traverse wrote to Rothschild a letter that
suggested that he was hunting rends himself to send to London. Quote.
(17:12):
I have recently returned from a special trip to Steven's Island,
where I went to have a good hunt for more
specimens of Traversia really, but unfortunately without success. I hunted
the island over and round, and as I had three
men with me who formed my boat crew and some
of the residents of the island, you can imagine we
made a thorough search. I did not get any specimens
(17:33):
of the bird. I went specifically four, although Mr Lyle's
boy gave me a specimen that had been found just
alive by the owner of the cat that had caught
the others, and this his father had put into spirit.
So at that point humans are also hunting the bird.
That claim of extinction in early may have been premature.
(17:53):
For one. Traverse seems to have used the news of
the extinction to charge higher prices for the preserved bird
specimens that he offered to collectors after that. So he
might have been perpetuating this claim of extinction for his
own financial gain. Yeah. If you look at how his
prices rated that first one that he sent to Rothschild,
(18:15):
I think he charged five pounds four and then he
tried to charge thirty five pounds four and was eventually
talked down to twelve if I'm remembering correctly, so he
was definitely like, there are no more of this bird.
It is a lot more expensive now. But both Travers
and Buller each received additional specimens for several years after.
(18:37):
So even after he denounced personal collecting of endangered spec specimens,
Buller continued to seek out the Steven's Island wren for himself.
And when I say that, I mean in specimen form,
not live Steven's Island wrens. He also made purchases for
his son to have them, as well as at least
one other ornithologist, and Buller, for the record, maintained in
(18:58):
his notes that all sam bowls of the bird had
come from David Lyle, and thus that would be from
his cat. But that gets into some weird issues, as
there are specimens in museums that are labeled as late
as eighteen nine, well after Lyle had actually moved on
from the Steven's Island Lighthouse job. Additionally, there are completely
mismatched accounts of just how many preserved rends there are
(19:21):
floating around. If you compare the records and letters of
Travers and Buller things do not match up at all.
Travers was still selling Steven's Island rens into the early
nineteen hundreds, but it's unclear whether those were items that
he had been hanging onto for several years or if
they were new acquisitions. Additionally, even those records might not
(19:42):
truly reflect the lots that Travers was selling at the time,
so there's no way to verify even the existence of
Travers stock of the extinct bird, let alone its condition
relative to its age. Yeah, there's one story of a
museum that discovered that they had a lot that someone
had purchased, uh from Travers, but it was largely destroyed.
(20:04):
It had not been properly cared for, so they did
not account for whether or not there was a wren
in the mix. There. Uh, there's a lot of not
really fantastic record keeping, which leads to a lot of
the nebulous aspects of this story. So the thing is, though,
that collecting may have really had a significant hand in
the extinction of the Stevens Island wren, but we don't
(20:25):
actually know if Travers ever managed to catch any the
two times that he claimed he tried the one that
we read his writings about earlier, and there was one
other time. He reported that he failed on both of
those occasions. And there are additional factors to remember. Earlier,
when we mentioned that there were other people who moved
to the island in addition to David Lyle and Tibbles,
(20:47):
apparently someone else in that group of people also brought
at least one other cat, or possibly Tibbles was pregnant
when she arrived, because within a few years there was
a cat population on Steven's Island, not just one cat.
And it's also possible that the name Timbles was just
attached to the story later it wasn't even Lyle's cat
(21:10):
in the first place, but just a cat that happened
to be around. Yeah, it's it's like I said, it's
been simplified in a really fun way to tell, but
it doesn't necessarily reflect the reality. And we're going to
talk more about the cats on Steven's Island and what
happened to all those bird bodies after we first take
a little sponsor break. So right before we went to break,
(21:37):
Tracy was saying that there was a cat population at
some point on the island and it's unclear when exactly
it became more than one cat, or if it had
always been more than one cat. There are mentions of
other cats in notes and writings made by people about
those early days of the lighthouse community, but these are
all anecdotal and they were written after the facts, so
(21:57):
they're not especially reliable. As early is though, Lyle was
writing notes to Buller about the available birds on the island,
and he specifically references some of them being scarce due
to cats plural. He also describes those cats as having
become wild, so there was already the beginning of a
feral population, like a year after he had arrived. By seven,
(22:20):
the cat population was noted by a lighthousekeeper as being
a quote large number. The report that description was included
in also suggested that some means of destroying the cats
had to be found a few years later, in nineteen
o one, the native reptile population was also in danger,
and a bounty was established on the cats. At that
(22:43):
point they were kind of like, well, the birds are
already gone, so we'll figure this out. And it got
put off with them, and then they were like, there
was a very glorious reptile population on Steven's Island, and
they were like, Okay, we can't let this happen again.
Now we have to kill the cats, which sucks. The
enemy of the webcomic Camp we don't watch. I don't
know if you've ever read that, but it is a
(23:04):
camp about about children who have been sent by their
parents to this camp because they are not wanted for
whatever reason. And one of the early strips there is
what everyone thinks is going to be a food drop,
but it turns out to be a box full of
feral cats. And every uh, every installment of the strip
after that has a cat hidden somewhere. So in five,
(23:31):
this was four years after the cat bounty was established,
Sir Walter Bueller made a written suggestion that cats should
no longer ever be allowed on the island or on
any other isolated islands where native species could fall victim
to their prey drive. And he also included the suggestion
that if mice were a concern, for example, if people
were going to take care of the lighthouse and they
(23:52):
were worried about mice, that the state should provide, at
state expense, mouse traps rather than allow feline rodent management
in such places. Over the course of more than two decades,
hundreds of cats were shot on Steven's Island, and in
nineteen twenty five the island was declared to be free
of cats. So, even though it is not really entirely
(24:18):
fair to blame tibbles were ending the Steven's Island wren
the role of cats in shifting the balance of wildlife
populations is one which has been debated for some time,
and cats most assuredly were responsible for the majority of
the deaths of those birds, and they were threatening other
native wildlife on the island after those wrens were gone.
According to a study published in Nature, free ranging domestic
(24:43):
cats in the United States were estimated to kill one
point three to four billion birds that's billion with a B,
and six point three to twenty two point three billion,
also with a B mammals annually. For the purposes of
that study, domestic cats included both cats that have a
(25:04):
home but are allowed to roam and strays including ferrells,
with homeless cats responsible for most of those kills. That
same study also commented that quote free range and cats
on islands has caused or contributed to thirty three or
fourteen percent of the modern bird mammal and reptile extinctions
recorded by the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List.
(25:30):
Humans are still trying to figure out how to manage
cap populations in ways that are humane in order to
curtail the unbalanced mortality and other species that can result
from even well fed but still prey driven animals. While cats,
as we discussed on an older episode, have become part
of human culture both for their excellent pest hunting skills
as well as their companionship, they are also very very
(25:52):
good at multiplying at a really rapid rate, so efforts
to find and execute a solution still continue. As an assist,
it appears to have been Rothschild's account of the entire
situation that first pinned the loss of the entire species
on tibbles, and then that was repeated for simplicity for
(26:12):
more than a hundred years. Yeah, and Rothschild this whole time,
we should point out, was in London. It wasn't like
he was on the scene. He wrote this after the
fact and having never actually been to the place where
this was taking place. And as for what happened to
all of those deceased birds that were collected on the
tiny Island. There are fifteen rent specimens accounted for, and
(26:33):
those have made their way into museum collections around the world.
Of the samples Rothschild gathered, the Natural History Museum in
London has three, the Museum of Natural History in New
York has four, the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia
has one, and the Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge,
Massachusetts has one. The three that Buller had, one for
(26:56):
himself and two for his son, are in the Canterbury
Museum Christer, which has too, and the last is in
the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. There are also Steven's Island
ren specimens at the Colonial Museum now the Museum of
New Zealand. To Papa Tongarewa, I am probably mispronouncing that
(27:16):
I could not find a good pronunciation example which is
in Wellington's and the Otago Museum in Dunedin, and that
one actually lists two, but only one is is clearly
accounted for, so there's a little bit of fuzzy fuzziness
there as well. The Stevens Island Lighthouse still exists. It
was converted from oil to electric in the late nineteen
(27:37):
thirties and then was automated in the late nineteen eighties.
In nine, the last lighthouse keeper left the island. It's
not open to the public and the Maritime New Zealand's
Wellington Office conducts operation and monitoring of the lighthouse remotely. Uh. Yeah,
if you want to go to the island, you're probably
a scientist because there are still multiple rare species on
(27:59):
the island, particularly what has been described by scientists as
diverse reptile community. It is now a nature reserve. For example,
a reptile called the tatata is of particular import on
Steven's Island as it is the only surviving species of
its order. They are also the cutest things in my opinion.
You see pictures of that. They just have very cute,
(28:20):
little expressive faces. I saw some videos of one. Apparently
there was a reintroduction effort yeah with them, and I
as I was looking for examples, I was like, I
was looking for videos of New Zealander saying all these words. Uh.
And then I got down a rabbit hole of looking
(28:40):
at lizards videos. They're really cute. Uh. And it really
has become New Zealand is really making a massive effort
at conservation and the part of in part this whole
episode is is the driver of some of those those efforts,
Like people realized, oh, if we are not thoughtful about
how we will particularly these small islands that are harboring
(29:02):
things that cannot be found anywhere else and are small
in number, we will then make sure those never exist
on the earth again. And we don't want that. So
there there is a lot of care going into trying
to preserve native species. So that is the more complicated
than just tipples the cat eat all the birds version
of how the Stephen's Island ran went extinct, although cats
(29:25):
were responsible for a lot of it. I sounded a
lot more chipper when I said, yeah, then the story
actually lawrants. Uh yeah, so only in museums now in
their deceased form, unfortunately. Yes, um, do you also have
listener mail? I do. I have two pieces. The first
is from our listener, Stephanie. It is also related to
(29:49):
nature things. She says, Hello, ladies, I just wanted to
drop you a quick note and let you know about
a weird coincidence and another example of Maria Cebuia Marion's
Rising Star. I was just an end or I'm writing
this on the plane home to Canada actually, where there
is currently an exhibit of Maria's work at Holyrood House
in the Queen's Gallery. The exhibit is called Maria Marian's Butterflies,
(30:11):
and I was able to see a number of beautiful
works by both her and her daughters. And the episode
actually came out the day I went to the exhibit.
Unfortunately I did not see the episode until the plane
rite home. But I really appreciate the context you were
able to provide significantly more in depth than the galleries placards.
If anybody happens to be in Edinburgh, that exhibit runs
until I believe it is July, and it looks really
(30:34):
really beautiful, so please go if you get a chance.
And it's always fun and cool when things kind of
coincidentally happened that way. Uh. And my next piece of
listener mail is a gift that Tracy doesn't know about yet.
So I always like surprising her with us since I'm
here in the office where things come, where parcels come to,
and she is not. I get too often, you know,
spring him on her well, and we when you when
(30:54):
you said it was a surprise, I had this giant
mouthful of coffee. It was almost disastrous. It's not a
it's not a spit take surprise, but it's a nice treat. Uh.
It's from our cool listener, Michelle. Is this Tracy and Holly.
Thank you guys so much for putting on an amazing podcast.
I'm a Louisville native and I was so excited to
see a podcast on the Derby pop up. I'm also
so glad that you don't skip over the bad parts
(31:16):
or lesser known facts, as I had no clue about
the racism that happened in the sport of horse racing
despite its checkered history. I hope you'll both accept these
mint Juelip glasses from this year's Derby. So we got
mint Julip glasses and they're really cute and she's some
sort of male sorceress because they came in perfect condition
and they are glass and that does not always happen.
So thank you, Thank you, Michelle. Good job on the packing.
(31:39):
The Derby in Louisville is so much more than just
a horse race. Events rained from a massive fireworks show
to bed races, the Pegasus Parade and a marathon and
so much more. If you all get the chance I
hope you will take the opportunity to explore a beautiful
city and all we have to offer. Thanks for making
my commute so much easier. Thank you so much, Michelle,
that was so sweet to send us those. They're very cute.
(31:59):
They're really really lovely little glasses. So um, I love it.
We get so many amazing gifts. I feel bad. Like
I said, I always say, I feel bad that we
can't read every single thing on the air, because it
would be several days of just us droning on and
people would probably tune out. Yes, I would also like
to say we have become even worse about answering our email.
(32:21):
And previously, yeah we had a D minus for sure.
Yeah we we had a change in the way we
access our email at work that for both of us
has made it harder to stay on top of So
we still read all the emails. We are so sorry
(32:41):
that we don't answer more of them. Ye. Yes, I
feel bad. So I don't think you're shouting into the
void when you communicate with us. Uh, we we are
the people the only people reading our email. I always
laugh when people say, well, the team, make sure Tracy
and Holly see this like an email, like we are
the team. That's it. This is the two of us
(33:04):
well and someone totally seeing. I know everyone does this,
but the thing that kind that hurts my heart the
most is that we will get really moving emails that
we we intend to answer and need to stop and
reflect on before we can, and then we'll get eighty
more emails and like not get back to that one,
and then I then I get very sad about it.
(33:27):
To lighten the mood and quote Philip J. Fry, time
makes fools of us all um. So so that is
a scoop. It is never because we wish to be neglectful,
but just know that it's the two of us trying
to get through everything, and it's it's a pretty mammoth task.
We do our best. It's not always fantastic anyway. If
you would like to write to us though having heard
(33:48):
us say all of this, you can do so at
a history podcast at House of Works dot com. You
can also find us across the spectrum of social media
as Missed in History. That means on Instagram, on Twitter,
at Facebook, on Tumbler, and on Pinterest. If you would
like to come to our website that has Missed in
history dot com. We have every episode of the show
ever of all time, and then show notes for any
(34:11):
of the episodes that Tracy and I have worked on together.
They consolidated recently onto the same page as the show page,
so you don't have to click to places to get
your notes in your show. Uh. And you can visit
our parents site, which is how stuff Works, and there
you can type in anything you wish to learn about
in the search bar and you will get an abundance
of information. So please come and visit us at how
stuff works dot com and missed in history dot com.
(34:38):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how staff works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from house
stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Hey, Tracy,
have you ever heard of a cat named Tibbles who
was single handedly responsible or poledly You'll sometimes see it
(00:24):
written out for wiping out an entire species of bird
because of a lighthousekeeper. Yeah, it shows up on various
listicals from time to time. Along the line you'll see
like ex animals who change history. It's one of the
most famous extinction stories, and because it has this quaint,
those sad aspect to it is really taken on a
(00:44):
life of its own, and it's one that gets repeated
a lot. But the real story is actually a lot
more complex than simply saying one cat killed all the birds.
Uh So, today we're gonna take a look at the
original tale as it's usually told, and then we'll delve
into the reality of the demise of the bird species
is involved because the bird did legitimately go extinct, that
part is true, and it also becomes an interesting story
(01:05):
of conservation and the importance of protecting both flora and
fauna unique to specific and isolated locations, and there's even
a little bit of scientific community intrigue and offense in
the mix, so it's got everything for a good story. Also,
because this does involve extinction and then later ways to
try to combat similar problems, there's this that's pretty much
(01:27):
a whole episode where we talk about animals being killed.
So if that is something particularly sensitive to you, this
might not be your episode. I will say this, I
am usually particularly sensitive to it. It does not bother
me in this context. So I don't know if that's
your guide post or not, but there you go. Well,
and having had an outdoor cat from like until approximately
(01:52):
six a long time. But anyway, I grew up with
an outdoor cat because we lived out in the country
and that was what you did, and yeah, you become
accustomed to cats bringing you than Yeah, cats bringing in
small animals was something that happened all times. So yeah,
we had that growing up, and it is one of
the reasons my small herd never goes outside. Yeah. Yeah,
(02:15):
my my cats once I was an adult and caring
for my own cats were strictly indoor, although a couple
of them did escape on at least one occasion. Yeah. Yeah,
But Today we're going to talk about the Steven's Island
rim and this cat and what did it did not happen.
The particular wren in this story was a tiny bird.
(02:37):
It could fit in the palm of a human hand,
and it was found on Steven's Island, which is a
New Zealand. It's likely that these wrens, known as Xenicus
traversi at Lale in Latin and sometimes called lyle wrens,
were possibly part of the fauna of ancient Gondwana land
they were related to the Kiwi. Fossil evidence us that
(03:00):
these tiny birds are ones that are incredibly closely related
to them. Once lived throughout New Zealand, and it's believed
that the introduction of predatory species such as rats eliminated
them from all the other areas of the country but
Steven's Island, which was isolated by the eighteen nineties. The
birds were dark olive brown in color, with yellowish color
(03:20):
coloring at the throat and the breast. Skeletal evidence, as
well as witness accounts, indicate that the wren was flightless
that spent its time on the ground hunting for insects
to eat, and that makes it one of only three
known flightless songbirds in the world. The wren's nested in small,
out of the wayte spots, such as holes and recesses
(03:41):
under rocks, and it was also believed to have been nocturnal. Yeah.
I read one account that said that it weighed about
the same as a quarter, but I didn't find anything
that backed that up. But even so, it's a very tiny,
light little thing and sometimes you'll see it. Uh. When
people described it, they talked about it being almost more
like a mount than a bird in some ways, probably
(04:01):
because it's screwed along the ground. The island itself is
also known by its Maori name take Pourdoir, and it
is a small place. It is less than a square mile.
That's another one of those things that gets reported very differently.
Some we'll say it's only half square miles, some even
less than that. But we know that it is less
than a square mile, about one point five square kilometers estimate.
(04:24):
And it sits about two miles off of New Zealand's
South Island's northern shore, at the northern edge of the
Marlboro Sounds. And the weather on the island is mild
in temperatures, but there is frequent rain and often high winds.
It was renamed Steven's Island after Philip Stevens, the late
eighteenth century first Secretary to the Admiralty of the United Kingdom.
(04:45):
Prior to the eighteen seventies, it hadn't been explored by
any Anglo parties. It's unknown if any Maori people's visited
it prior to that, but it was a pristine place
in terms of its ecological condition when maritime officials from
New Zealand first visited it, and because the island sits
(05:05):
on a shipping route and there had been several shipwrecks
nearby in the middle of the century, it was outfitted
with an oil powered lighthouse in eighteen ninety four. That
lighthouse stood at the highest elevation point above sea level
of any lighthouse in New Zealand at the time. It
was also more powerful than any others in New Zealand
at that time, and it cost more than nine thousand
(05:27):
pounds to build. Before the lighthouse was installed, to illuminate
the Cooks Straights western approaches, Steven's Island was almost entirely untouched.
There were no non native species that had been introduced.
The flora was just natural and unshacked and undeveloped. Well
into the eighteen hundreds, the tiny island was pretty densely forested.
(05:50):
When workers first arrived in eighteen ninety two to start
construction on the lighthouse, birds were abundant. The journals of
one of the men, F. W. Ingram, are quoted in
a two thousand four paper about the extinction of the wren.
That paper was written by Ross Galbreath and Derrick Brown,
and according to Ingram's account, there were two kinds of
wren saddlebacks, native thrush and native crows on the island
(06:13):
when the work began. There After, the lighthouse and a
small farm were established, and estimated nine of the island's
native forest was destroyed due to grazing and fire. A
patchy low forest eventually established and remains, and the place
of the thick forest that had been destroyed and shrubs,
(06:34):
grasses and vine lens uh persisted also. So with this
new fancy lighthouse, the island needed a lighthouse keeper. So
we are getting now into the story as it's usually told.
So in David Lyle moved to Stephen's Island to fill
that position, and the island was not easy to get
(06:55):
to Travelers had to cross Cook straight by boat and
then board a basket that was attached of the station's crane,
and after that there was an uphill walk of about
a hundred and eighty meters or a hundred and ninety
six yards to the lighthouse itself. This was a pretty
extreme solitary type position that you would accept. Lyle, his
wife and a son also brought along a cat named
(07:17):
Tibbles when they moved to Steven's Island. The idea was
that Tibbles would keep the mice at bay and also
be a companion for this lonely outpost. They were not
the island's only residents, actually, but we'll come back to that.
Of course, a good MOUs er such as Tibbles would
also probably be interested in going after small nocturnal birds
(07:38):
as well, especially since Polly said earlier they've been described
as mouse like, but that was never the intention. They
didn't know the purpose bring a cat to kill birds? No,
And usually when you hear this story told, they really
only talk about David Lyle and Tibbles and his any
family has kind of left out. But so not long
after David and Timbles and his family arrived on the island,
(08:02):
the cats started bringing fresh kills to her human Lyle
was interested in nature, and he was an amateur ornithologist,
and he had never seen a bird quite like the
ones that Timbles was killing. So he examined them and
he skinned them as he did too, you know more fully,
uh take account of what their body was like and
what these birds were. When a ship brought supplies to
(08:23):
the island on its regular bi monthly schedule, Lyle sent
one of his rin skins back on it, intending for
it to reach a well known ornithologist, Sir Walter Buller.
It's believed that he did receive this skin sometime in
July four Later on, Beller would write, quote, there is
probably nothing so refreshing to the soul of a naturalist
(08:44):
as the discovery of a new species. You will readily
understand therefore, how pleased I was at receiving the skin
of a bird from Stephen Island, which was entirely distinct
from anything hitherto known. Eventually, Lyle collected ten say apples
that number is going to shift around when we get
to the reality. But for the purposes of this story,
(09:04):
ten samples from Tibbles offering and they were in good
condition because the cat seemed to be more interested in
killing the birds than she wasn't eating them. Uh. Feline
behaviorists might also suggest that she was bringing them to
Lyle as a means of offering him provisions showing she
could take care of him as well as herself. They
are also theories that cats do that to try to
teach us stupid humans how to find our own food.
(09:26):
But in any case, she was not eating them, so
they were in quite good condition. After he had been
examining these various specimens, Buller realized that the birds Lyle
had been collecting from tibbles were a previously unidentified species
of wren. So one of these Buller sent to London
to the British Ornithologists Union so it could be illustrated,
and he also was preparing his research and findings so
(09:49):
that he could publish his discovery of the Steven's Island
wren in the journal IBIS. It was believed that there
had likely been ten mating pairs of the wren on
Steven's Island before Tipple the cat got there. It's not
a large number of birds to be sure, so it
would not really take very long for an enterprising cat
with decent hunting skills to severely damage those numbers in
(10:15):
just a year after Lyle and his cat had arrived
on the island. The christ Church Press commented on tibbles
work quote, there is very good reason to believe that
the bird is no longer to be found on this island,
as it is not known to exist anywhere else. It
has apparently become quite extinct. This is probably a record
performance in the way of extermination, and according to legend,
(10:39):
Tibbles wiped out the Stevens Island ran almost as soon
as it was recognized as a newly discovered species. So
that's the story that you usually get told in a
quickie articles ship or in like a one sentence throw
a throwaway line in the context of something completely different.
It will be like and there will be even an
entire species of bird killed of the line keeper's cat. Yeah,
(11:02):
but there is a lot more to this story. And
before we dive into that bigger, more detailed version of
what happened to the Steven's Island wren, We're gonna pause
and have a word from one of our sponsors. While
the story of Tibbles and the Stephen's Island. Wren is
a cautionary tale about the dangers of invasive species, and
(11:22):
that is a very legitimate concern. The very simplified version
that is normally shared leaves out some more complex and
nuanced elements to the decline of one species due to
the import of another, as well as the involvement of
many more players in the narrative, as we are definitely
not now playing the threat of invasive species, but that
(11:46):
there's a bigger story going on here. During the construction
period for the lighthouse, an anonymous collector had visited the
island to gather specimens. Galbreth and Brown put forth the
theory in their paper that a collector, which is a
pseudonym used by that person in question when publishing in
the Wellington Evening Post, was in fact none other than
(12:09):
the local natural history dealer, which was a man named
Henry H. Travers, and before Lyle and Tibbles even set
foot on the island, Sir Walter Buller was aware of
the number of birds to be found there, most likely
due to the accounts that the collector had published in
the paper or through contact with Travers himself. Of note, however,
(12:32):
no wren was actually mentioned in the writings of the Collector.
I also just love that he wrote as the Collector,
because of course there's the whole Guardians of the Galaxy
comedy tie in that we could do. Um. But he
had not mentioned the rant at all in any of
these writings. Uh. And there were no mentions of a
wren in the comments of Buller at a January three
meeting of the Wellington Philosophical Society, where he discussed some
(12:55):
of the unique birds that could be found on Steven's Island.
Buller also suggests it at that meeting that two other
New Zealand islands, Resolution Island and Little Barrier Island, could
be used as preservation grounds for some of the bird
species that were experiencing population decline on the mainland, but
it appears that no similar consideration was given to Steven's Island.
(13:18):
Regarding david Lyle and Tibbles, we mentioned a few moments
ago that they were not the only ones who had
moved on to the island. In fact, there were three
lighthouse keepers and their families, as well as a teacher
to see to the children's education, seventeen people in all
at the start of eighteen ninety four, when the lighthouse
became operational while Lyle was sending his samples to Buller.
(13:39):
At some point Henry Travers also became aware of the
unique items being relayed by Lyle through an intermediary aboard
the supply ship. Travers and Buller were not unknown to
each other as a dealer in natural items. Travers had
done business with Buller on a number of occasions, and
Travers spelt as though rare and unique specimens could be
(14:02):
sold for more than Buller was able to pay, he
convinced Lyle to sell him some of the wrens skins. Yeah, so,
in addition to whatever activities are happening, we are now
seeing an uptick in human interest in these birds. Uh.
And this is where yet another man enters the picture,
the Honorable Walter Rothschild, who had dealt with both Travers
(14:25):
and Buller as specimen dealers prior to this new discovery
of the Steven's Island wren and as a wealthy Englishman,
Rothschild had both the means to pay handsomely for rare
specimens and the connections to publish information about them before
Buller could. There actually was some realization among the British
(14:46):
ornithologists involved in publishing the IBIS and the British Ornithologist
Club Proceedings periodical to which Rothschild, to which Rothschild's research
had been presented, that there were two men describing the
same five but both went to press yes, so for clarity.
At this point, Traverse has started selling to a very
(15:07):
rich person in London Rothschild. At the same time Buller
is also purchasing these samples and they are writing up
about this newly discovered species. And they both presented to
both the IBIS and the British Ornithologist Club's proceedings, just
their little periodical, their notes on their meetings, and that's
a small enough group that there were a lot of
crossover people going, hey, we don't we have a thing
(15:27):
from that guy Buller about this. Yeah, but we're going
forward with this too. So uh. They both published and
it was a little bit of a gentleman's drama. So
Rothschild named the rend traversia really in the Proceedings that
was published in December of eight. When Buller's paper came
(15:48):
out in April of the bird was called Xenicus in Solaris,
and this entire chain of events caused massive friction between
the two men, each declaring that the other had not
been a gentle woman. You may recall from the beginning
when we talked about the bird that it is called
xenicus and then sometimes traversia in parentheses. Really, so in
(16:09):
the end there was sort of a combining of the
two in the scientific community. This is like a much
smaller in every sense of the word version of the
bone wars. Yes. But even before Buller's paper, which was
printed by ibis that editorial from the christ Church Press
we mentioned earlier that declared the ren likely extinct had
(16:31):
already come out. So there was already an article saying
the bird was probably extinct before the scientific paper on it. Yeah,
so there was the first printed stuff in December. In
March that article came out in the christ Church Paper
saying there are no more of these birds. And then
in April Buller's paper was published saying I've discovered a
(16:52):
new kind of bird. Uh, it's a it's a very
complex and tightly packed timeline in terms of like discovery
and when this bird was thought to have ended. So
in March of Traverse wrote to Rothschild a letter that
suggested that he was hunting rends himself to send to London. Quote.
(17:12):
I have recently returned from a special trip to Steven's Island,
where I went to have a good hunt for more
specimens of Traversia really, but unfortunately without success. I hunted
the island over and round, and as I had three
men with me who formed my boat crew and some
of the residents of the island, you can imagine we
made a thorough search. I did not get any specimens
(17:33):
of the bird. I went specifically four, although Mr Lyle's
boy gave me a specimen that had been found just
alive by the owner of the cat that had caught
the others, and this his father had put into spirit.
So at that point humans are also hunting the bird.
That claim of extinction in early may have been premature.
(17:53):
For one. Traverse seems to have used the news of
the extinction to charge higher prices for the preserved bird
specimens that he offered to collectors after that. So he
might have been perpetuating this claim of extinction for his
own financial gain. Yeah. If you look at how his
prices rated that first one that he sent to Rothschild,
(18:15):
I think he charged five pounds four and then he
tried to charge thirty five pounds four and was eventually
talked down to twelve if I'm remembering correctly, so he
was definitely like, there are no more of this bird.
It is a lot more expensive now. But both Travers
and Buller each received additional specimens for several years after.
(18:37):
So even after he denounced personal collecting of endangered spec specimens,
Buller continued to seek out the Steven's Island wren for himself.
And when I say that, I mean in specimen form,
not live Steven's Island wrens. He also made purchases for
his son to have them, as well as at least
one other ornithologist, and Buller, for the record, maintained in
(18:58):
his notes that all sam bowls of the bird had
come from David Lyle, and thus that would be from
his cat. But that gets into some weird issues, as
there are specimens in museums that are labeled as late
as eighteen nine, well after Lyle had actually moved on
from the Steven's Island Lighthouse job. Additionally, there are completely
mismatched accounts of just how many preserved rends there are
(19:21):
floating around. If you compare the records and letters of
Travers and Buller things do not match up at all.
Travers was still selling Steven's Island rens into the early
nineteen hundreds, but it's unclear whether those were items that
he had been hanging onto for several years or if
they were new acquisitions. Additionally, even those records might not
(19:42):
truly reflect the lots that Travers was selling at the time,
so there's no way to verify even the existence of
Travers stock of the extinct bird, let alone its condition
relative to its age. Yeah, there's one story of a
museum that discovered that they had a lot that someone
had purchased, uh from Travers, but it was largely destroyed.
(20:04):
It had not been properly cared for, so they did
not account for whether or not there was a wren
in the mix. There. Uh, there's a lot of not
really fantastic record keeping, which leads to a lot of
the nebulous aspects of this story. So the thing is, though,
that collecting may have really had a significant hand in
the extinction of the Stevens Island wren, but we don't
(20:25):
actually know if Travers ever managed to catch any the
two times that he claimed he tried the one that
we read his writings about earlier, and there was one
other time. He reported that he failed on both of
those occasions. And there are additional factors to remember. Earlier,
when we mentioned that there were other people who moved
to the island in addition to David Lyle and Tibbles,
(20:47):
apparently someone else in that group of people also brought
at least one other cat, or possibly Tibbles was pregnant
when she arrived, because within a few years there was
a cat population on Steven's Island, not just one cat.
And it's also possible that the name Timbles was just
attached to the story later it wasn't even Lyle's cat
(21:10):
in the first place, but just a cat that happened
to be around. Yeah, it's it's like I said, it's
been simplified in a really fun way to tell, but
it doesn't necessarily reflect the reality. And we're going to
talk more about the cats on Steven's Island and what
happened to all those bird bodies after we first take
a little sponsor break. So right before we went to break,
(21:37):
Tracy was saying that there was a cat population at
some point on the island and it's unclear when exactly
it became more than one cat, or if it had
always been more than one cat. There are mentions of
other cats in notes and writings made by people about
those early days of the lighthouse community, but these are
all anecdotal and they were written after the facts, so
(21:57):
they're not especially reliable. As early is though, Lyle was
writing notes to Buller about the available birds on the island,
and he specifically references some of them being scarce due
to cats plural. He also describes those cats as having
become wild, so there was already the beginning of a
feral population, like a year after he had arrived. By seven,
(22:20):
the cat population was noted by a lighthousekeeper as being
a quote large number. The report that description was included
in also suggested that some means of destroying the cats
had to be found a few years later, in nineteen
o one, the native reptile population was also in danger,
and a bounty was established on the cats. At that
(22:43):
point they were kind of like, well, the birds are
already gone, so we'll figure this out. And it got
put off with them, and then they were like, there
was a very glorious reptile population on Steven's Island, and
they were like, Okay, we can't let this happen again.
Now we have to kill the cats, which sucks. The
enemy of the webcomic Camp we don't watch. I don't
know if you've ever read that, but it is a
(23:04):
camp about about children who have been sent by their
parents to this camp because they are not wanted for
whatever reason. And one of the early strips there is
what everyone thinks is going to be a food drop,
but it turns out to be a box full of
feral cats. And every uh, every installment of the strip
after that has a cat hidden somewhere. So in five,
(23:31):
this was four years after the cat bounty was established,
Sir Walter Bueller made a written suggestion that cats should
no longer ever be allowed on the island or on
any other isolated islands where native species could fall victim
to their prey drive. And he also included the suggestion
that if mice were a concern, for example, if people
were going to take care of the lighthouse and they
(23:52):
were worried about mice, that the state should provide, at
state expense, mouse traps rather than allow feline rodent management
in such places. Over the course of more than two decades,
hundreds of cats were shot on Steven's Island, and in
nineteen twenty five the island was declared to be free
of cats. So, even though it is not really entirely
(24:18):
fair to blame tibbles were ending the Steven's Island wren
the role of cats in shifting the balance of wildlife
populations is one which has been debated for some time,
and cats most assuredly were responsible for the majority of
the deaths of those birds, and they were threatening other
native wildlife on the island after those wrens were gone.
According to a study published in Nature, free ranging domestic
(24:43):
cats in the United States were estimated to kill one
point three to four billion birds that's billion with a B,
and six point three to twenty two point three billion,
also with a B mammals annually. For the purposes of
that study, domestic cats included both cats that have a
(25:04):
home but are allowed to roam and strays including ferrells,
with homeless cats responsible for most of those kills. That
same study also commented that quote free range and cats
on islands has caused or contributed to thirty three or
fourteen percent of the modern bird mammal and reptile extinctions
recorded by the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List.
(25:30):
Humans are still trying to figure out how to manage
cap populations in ways that are humane in order to
curtail the unbalanced mortality and other species that can result
from even well fed but still prey driven animals. While cats,
as we discussed on an older episode, have become part
of human culture both for their excellent pest hunting skills
as well as their companionship, they are also very very
(25:52):
good at multiplying at a really rapid rate, so efforts
to find and execute a solution still continue. As an assist,
it appears to have been Rothschild's account of the entire
situation that first pinned the loss of the entire species
on tibbles, and then that was repeated for simplicity for
(26:12):
more than a hundred years. Yeah, and Rothschild this whole time,
we should point out, was in London. It wasn't like
he was on the scene. He wrote this after the
fact and having never actually been to the place where
this was taking place. And as for what happened to
all of those deceased birds that were collected on the
tiny Island. There are fifteen rent specimens accounted for, and
(26:33):
those have made their way into museum collections around the world.
Of the samples Rothschild gathered, the Natural History Museum in
London has three, the Museum of Natural History in New
York has four, the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia
has one, and the Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge,
Massachusetts has one. The three that Buller had, one for
(26:56):
himself and two for his son, are in the Canterbury
Museum Christer, which has too, and the last is in
the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. There are also Steven's Island
ren specimens at the Colonial Museum now the Museum of
New Zealand. To Papa Tongarewa, I am probably mispronouncing that
(27:16):
I could not find a good pronunciation example which is
in Wellington's and the Otago Museum in Dunedin, and that
one actually lists two, but only one is is clearly
accounted for, so there's a little bit of fuzzy fuzziness
there as well. The Stevens Island Lighthouse still exists. It
was converted from oil to electric in the late nineteen
(27:37):
thirties and then was automated in the late nineteen eighties.
In nine, the last lighthouse keeper left the island. It's
not open to the public and the Maritime New Zealand's
Wellington Office conducts operation and monitoring of the lighthouse remotely. Uh. Yeah,
if you want to go to the island, you're probably
a scientist because there are still multiple rare species on
(27:59):
the island, particularly what has been described by scientists as
diverse reptile community. It is now a nature reserve. For example,
a reptile called the tatata is of particular import on
Steven's Island as it is the only surviving species of
its order. They are also the cutest things in my opinion.
You see pictures of that. They just have very cute,
(28:20):
little expressive faces. I saw some videos of one. Apparently
there was a reintroduction effort yeah with them, and I
as I was looking for examples, I was like, I
was looking for videos of New Zealander saying all these words. Uh.
And then I got down a rabbit hole of looking
(28:40):
at lizards videos. They're really cute. Uh. And it really
has become New Zealand is really making a massive effort
at conservation and the part of in part this whole
episode is is the driver of some of those those efforts,
Like people realized, oh, if we are not thoughtful about
how we will particularly these small islands that are harboring
(29:02):
things that cannot be found anywhere else and are small
in number, we will then make sure those never exist
on the earth again. And we don't want that. So
there there is a lot of care going into trying
to preserve native species. So that is the more complicated
than just tipples the cat eat all the birds version
of how the Stephen's Island ran went extinct, although cats
(29:25):
were responsible for a lot of it. I sounded a
lot more chipper when I said, yeah, then the story
actually lawrants. Uh yeah, so only in museums now in
their deceased form, unfortunately. Yes, um, do you also have
listener mail? I do. I have two pieces. The first
is from our listener, Stephanie. It is also related to
(29:49):
nature things. She says, Hello, ladies, I just wanted to
drop you a quick note and let you know about
a weird coincidence and another example of Maria Cebuia Marion's
Rising Star. I was just an end or I'm writing
this on the plane home to Canada actually, where there
is currently an exhibit of Maria's work at Holyrood House
in the Queen's Gallery. The exhibit is called Maria Marian's Butterflies,
(30:11):
and I was able to see a number of beautiful
works by both her and her daughters. And the episode
actually came out the day I went to the exhibit.
Unfortunately I did not see the episode until the plane
rite home. But I really appreciate the context you were
able to provide significantly more in depth than the galleries placards.
If anybody happens to be in Edinburgh, that exhibit runs
until I believe it is July, and it looks really
(30:34):
really beautiful, so please go if you get a chance.
And it's always fun and cool when things kind of
coincidentally happened that way. Uh. And my next piece of
listener mail is a gift that Tracy doesn't know about yet.
So I always like surprising her with us since I'm
here in the office where things come, where parcels come to,
and she is not. I get too often, you know,
spring him on her well, and we when you when
(30:54):
you said it was a surprise, I had this giant
mouthful of coffee. It was almost disastrous. It's not a
it's not a spit take surprise, but it's a nice treat. Uh.
It's from our cool listener, Michelle. Is this Tracy and Holly.
Thank you guys so much for putting on an amazing podcast.
I'm a Louisville native and I was so excited to
see a podcast on the Derby pop up. I'm also
so glad that you don't skip over the bad parts
(31:16):
or lesser known facts, as I had no clue about
the racism that happened in the sport of horse racing
despite its checkered history. I hope you'll both accept these
mint Juelip glasses from this year's Derby. So we got
mint Julip glasses and they're really cute and she's some
sort of male sorceress because they came in perfect condition
and they are glass and that does not always happen.
So thank you, Thank you, Michelle. Good job on the packing.
(31:39):
The Derby in Louisville is so much more than just
a horse race. Events rained from a massive fireworks show
to bed races, the Pegasus Parade and a marathon and
so much more. If you all get the chance I
hope you will take the opportunity to explore a beautiful
city and all we have to offer. Thanks for making
my commute so much easier. Thank you so much, Michelle,
that was so sweet to send us those. They're very cute.
(31:59):
They're really really lovely little glasses. So um, I love it.
We get so many amazing gifts. I feel bad. Like
I said, I always say, I feel bad that we
can't read every single thing on the air, because it
would be several days of just us droning on and
people would probably tune out. Yes, I would also like
to say we have become even worse about answering our email.
(32:21):
And previously, yeah we had a D minus for sure.
Yeah we we had a change in the way we
access our email at work that for both of us
has made it harder to stay on top of So
we still read all the emails. We are so sorry
(32:41):
that we don't answer more of them. Ye. Yes, I
feel bad. So I don't think you're shouting into the
void when you communicate with us. Uh, we we are
the people the only people reading our email. I always
laugh when people say, well, the team, make sure Tracy
and Holly see this like an email, like we are
the team. That's it. This is the two of us
(33:04):
well and someone totally seeing. I know everyone does this,
but the thing that kind that hurts my heart the
most is that we will get really moving emails that
we we intend to answer and need to stop and
reflect on before we can, and then we'll get eighty
more emails and like not get back to that one,
and then I then I get very sad about it.
(33:27):
To lighten the mood and quote Philip J. Fry, time
makes fools of us all um. So so that is
a scoop. It is never because we wish to be neglectful,
but just know that it's the two of us trying
to get through everything, and it's it's a pretty mammoth task.
We do our best. It's not always fantastic anyway. If
you would like to write to us though having heard
(33:48):
us say all of this, you can do so at
a history podcast at House of Works dot com. You
can also find us across the spectrum of social media
as Missed in History. That means on Instagram, on Twitter,
at Facebook, on Tumbler, and on Pinterest. If you would
like to come to our website that has Missed in
history dot com. We have every episode of the show
ever of all time, and then show notes for any
(34:11):
of the episodes that Tracy and I have worked on together.
They consolidated recently onto the same page as the show page,
so you don't have to click to places to get
your notes in your show. Uh. And you can visit
our parents site, which is how stuff Works, and there
you can type in anything you wish to learn about
in the search bar and you will get an abundance
of information. So please come and visit us at how
stuff works dot com and missed in history dot com.
(34:38):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how staff works dot com.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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