August 18, 2021 • 13 mins
Lazarus species were thought to be gone, but had something else in mind. Today we talk about 5 of them.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh and
there's Chuck and this is short stuff and this is
a good one because we are squeezing it in five
Lazarus species animals starting now, right. If you're wondering what
a Lazarus species is, we've talked about it before with
the first entry that we'll talk about in a second,
(00:26):
but uh, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead in the Bible,
if you believe that stuff. And a Lazarus species is
a organism that has been brought back from extinction or
that we thought rather it was extinct, not one that's
like threatened, and we do a good job with it,
but people are like, well, there's no more of those.
(00:46):
And then years later so I's like, oh my gosh,
there's another one of those, right, And we actually did
a whole episode on one of these already, the Cela
canth That's right, That's what I was referring to. Number one. Yeah,
it has like an amazing story behind it, which will
briefly go over again because, um, it has four lobes,
meaning it had like kind of these proto limbs, um.
(01:08):
And when they found it first in the fossil record
in the nineteenth century. It was, you know, a four
hundred million year old fossil, and they're like, this is
the missing link between you know, animals in the sea
and animals on the ground. And we love the Cela
cant for this reason, but it's long dead. I think
the most recent fossil they'd found was from sixty six
(01:28):
million years ago, So we just thought it was another
very very interesting prehistoric fish, right, and it was very
sad to not be able to study those in modern times.
And then boom, not too modern. But in ninett they
caught one or they discovered one off the coast of
South Africa, and that was a big, big deal. And
(01:49):
then since then they've gotten quite a few more of
these live specimens on record. If I remember correctly, it
was a woman's scientist to who was the one who
recognized it for what it was and was like, the
this is a big deal. Yeah, aren't they like not
bottom dwellers, but they're pretty deep guys, right, yes, And
I remember they see I'm enough that now that we're like, okay,
(02:10):
these are definitely not extinct. They're still around. I think
they Yeah, they just don't inhabit areas we frequent very much,
and they're like, this is clearly not trying to grow
arms and legs, but nice effort, right, So we got
one under our belt, Chuck, What about the takahi. The
takahi is native to New Zealand, one of our favorite places.
(02:31):
Hello are Kiwi friends, And this is a flightless bird
that's a member of the rail family. It's very pretty,
about the size of a goose. They're kind of blue green,
they're they're really really nice looking, and even from the
beginning they were really rare. I think they were discovered
by European explorers in eighty seven and they were never abundant. No, apparently, UM.
(02:53):
After the second specimen was found, only four were found
in the nineteenth century. When the guy who found the
second one described it, um, he said that there's there
these are gone like this whatever I just found maybe
the last of it. He said, it's unlikely any further
living specimens will be found. Um and that was that.
That closed the book on it. But um, fifty years later,
(03:16):
there's another guy named Jeffrey Orbell who was like, I,
for some reason, I cannot accept that the taka he
taka he is just gone forever and set out searching
for him. Yeah. I mean it's amazing and I'm glad
people like Jeffrey Orbell are out there because, uh, Jeffrey
Orbell found one of these things on the South Island
(03:41):
in nine of New Zealand. And you know, this kind
of brings up something we did mention at the beginning,
like how can science be wrong about something being extinct?
And you know, it's it's fairly easy to happen. You know,
the world is a big place, the Earth is a
big place, and they do their best. But you know,
(04:01):
at a certain point, when something isn't around for a
certain amount of time, they get together and they feel
comfortable saying this thing is extinct, and you know, if
it comes back to life, is a lazarous species and
that's great. It's not like science hangs their head in shame,
like the can't is back. But um, it is sometimes
tough to see, especially if it's a rare thing to
(04:23):
begin with, that they're truly extinct. Yeah. The International Union
for Conservation of Nature is the ones responsible for declaring
something endangered or extinct in the wild, and their definition
of extinct is that when there's no reasonable doubt that
the last individual has died when exhaustive surveys and known
and or expected habitat at appropriate times diurnal, seasonal annual
(04:47):
throughout its historic range have failed to record an individual.
So it's not just like nobody's reported one of these
things for a while. It's like they go out and
really try to find it, and if they can't find it,
they're like, I guess it's extinct. Then they hang their
heads in shame. That's right. I saw a great meme
the other day. That's very appropriate for these times here
in the United States. Uh. Something about science is not truth.
(05:11):
Science is the search for truth. Uh. And basically, when
things it was much more scinct than this, but um,
when things change, science continues to search for that truth.
It's not flipping and flopping on the truth. Right. Let's
just leave it at that and take a commercial break. Okay, Chuck,
(05:52):
So we're back with I think my favorite it's my favorite,
too good. We're talking about the lord how island stick insect. Yeah,
not a great name. There's a better name for it,
don't you think. Yeah. Leave it to Australia to uh
have an insect called a tree lobster um. Lord Howe
(06:13):
Island is is off the coast of Australia, kind of
midway between Brisbane and Sydney, and these things, uh, were
very common on Lord Howe Island out there in the Pacific.
And this is a really interesting story. There was a
shipwreck off the actually kind of on the island, and
everybody knows that chips, especially back in the olden days.
(06:34):
I think it was six or nineteen eighteen. This is
nineteen twenties, but they're off by a few years. We're
just full of rats. And these rats descended upon the
island and really really overtook this island in a big way.
They were like tree lobsters deed lish. Yeah, so they
actually ate all the tree lobsters on the island, and
(06:55):
them all the rats did. The rats um had no
natural predators on the islands, so their population boomed, and
they also ate to extinction all sorts of bird species,
lizard species, a bunch of other ones, but in particular
this tree lobster, which you don't find elsewhere. And they
thought like this thing was just endemic only to Lord
Howe Island. So shortly after the twenties they were like
(07:17):
the Lord Howe Island stick insect is now extinct. But
then they were very surprised um in nineteen sixty when
they found a few corpses. There were corpses, but they
weren't like obviously forty year old descating corpses. They were fairly,
fairly recent corpses. So they're like, wait a minute, these
things are still around. And I guess somebody thought to
(07:37):
go look on another nearby island. It's like Pyramid Island,
I believe, something like that. And they found a new
population of these things, just a handful, but a few
of them perched in a tea tree on the highest
point of this island nearby, that's right, And so they
started breeding them in captivity and training them to be
(07:58):
able to raise their middle finger. Because they have undertaken
the Lord how Island rodent eradication project, where they are
spreading forty two tons poison cereal pellets and twenty eight
thousand bait stations across the island to rid this island
of those rats. And this was a couple of years ago,
(08:18):
in twenty nineteen, and the most recent article I read
said that sometime this year they were going to reintroduce
like all the rats should be gone, and if there
are any few rats left, these tree lobsters can go
back and give them the finger. Very nice. They're spreading
poison quisp on the islands. Irresistible, man, I'd have a
(08:41):
hard time but that. You'd feel like, I know it's poisonous,
but I just can't help myself. I know. If it
was Captain Crunch peanut butter, forget about it. I'm a
dead man. Um. So, uh, there's another one. Uh, hats
off to the Lord how islands tick insect. We're gonna
take our leave and wish it luck and head on
over to Peru, where the Peruvian yellow tailed wooly monkey
(09:05):
was thought to have been extinct. It was first described
in eighteen twelve just from a pelt um yeah I
think so, yeah, a little yellowish um. But then only
just a few times in the century that followed had
they actually been seen and described by travelers. Um, I
(09:26):
guess scientists in Peru. And then the last one was
seen until in six and by that point this science
was like, I think these things are are gonezo that's right,
But not so, because in they found one in Brazil
and this is being kept as a pet. And it
turns out these things were being kept as pets kind
(09:48):
of in different places all over the world. And this
is one really interesting case where the illegal pet trade
kind of brought, uh, in a roundabout way, something back
from extinction. Yeah, they think there's maybe fewer than a
thousand of them in the wild, which is still not
terribly bad considering something was considered extinct for a little while,
(10:08):
but apparently it was. And this is kind of like um,
one of the definitions of a Lazarus species. It was
news to science that this thing was not extinct, but
to the local population in Peru who lived, you know,
in these in the area the same area as these monkeys,
they were well aware that these things were around. They
(10:29):
just hadn't heard the science didn't know we're else. I'm
sure they would have told somebody, that's right. What about
this is my second favorite, Chuck, what about you? I
can't believe we're gonna do five and shorty, But here
we go with a robust red horse. It's a pale
pink has pale pink fins, is sort of stout and
(10:51):
it's you know, it's not very remarkable looking. If you
look at a robust red horse You think that thing
is misnamed because it's just sort of plain looking. It's
an ug fish as what they should call it. Yeah,
it's not the best look. It's got a great Latin name,
Maxostoma robust um. It's a good band name. Or maybe
an album title, yeah yeah, yeah, prog rock for sure,
(11:14):
or maybe like a like a Mastodon album, yeah, exactly. Um.
This was first described by uh Edward Drinker Cope naturalists
from Europe in eighteen seventy, based on just this one
fish that he found in a river in North Carolina. Uh.
And unfortunately that fish was destroyed because that was the
(11:35):
last one that anyone saw for a hundred and twenty
two years. Yeah, so everybody's like, well it's extinct. We're
not even sure it ever exactly lived. We gotta take
this Cope fellas word for it. And he's popped up before.
I can't put my finger on it. But we've talked
about them before. But then in nineteen eighty and then
I believe also in people started reporting this. It's somebody
(11:59):
who's like, know what I think that that is Cope's
robust red horse fish. Uh. They started finding them in
the Savannah and Pete rivers in Georgia and uh, South Carolina,
I think, and um so they they actually made a
deliberate effort. They launched an effort twenty years ago to
find some mating pairs of the robust red horse in
(12:22):
the Savannah River and um basically start breeding them in captivity,
and I read I think in two thousand fifteen, Chuck,
they released some and they recently identified the first wild
juveniles that had been born to this restored population of
robust red horses. A big comeback, huge comeback from the dead.
(12:47):
Basically same here. So uh, that's it for short Stuff, everybody,
if you want to look up some more lazarous Um species,
then they're out there and it's thrilling. Every single one
has a great story behind it, so go amuse yourself
with that. In the meantime, Short Stuff says goodbye. H
(13:08):
Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. H
Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh and
there's Chuck and this is short stuff and this is
a good one because we are squeezing it in five
Lazarus species animals starting now, right. If you're wondering what
a Lazarus species is, we've talked about it before with
the first entry that we'll talk about in a second,
(00:26):
but uh, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead in the Bible,
if you believe that stuff. And a Lazarus species is
a organism that has been brought back from extinction or
that we thought rather it was extinct, not one that's
like threatened, and we do a good job with it,
but people are like, well, there's no more of those.
(00:46):
And then years later so I's like, oh my gosh,
there's another one of those, right, And we actually did
a whole episode on one of these already, the Cela
canth That's right, That's what I was referring to. Number one. Yeah,
it has like an amazing story behind it, which will
briefly go over again because, um, it has four lobes,
meaning it had like kind of these proto limbs, um.
(01:08):
And when they found it first in the fossil record
in the nineteenth century. It was, you know, a four
hundred million year old fossil, and they're like, this is
the missing link between you know, animals in the sea
and animals on the ground. And we love the Cela
cant for this reason, but it's long dead. I think
the most recent fossil they'd found was from sixty six
(01:28):
million years ago, So we just thought it was another
very very interesting prehistoric fish, right, and it was very
sad to not be able to study those in modern times.
And then boom, not too modern. But in ninett they
caught one or they discovered one off the coast of
South Africa, and that was a big, big deal. And
(01:49):
then since then they've gotten quite a few more of
these live specimens on record. If I remember correctly, it
was a woman's scientist to who was the one who
recognized it for what it was and was like, the
this is a big deal. Yeah, aren't they like not
bottom dwellers, but they're pretty deep guys, right, yes, And
I remember they see I'm enough that now that we're like, okay,
(02:10):
these are definitely not extinct. They're still around. I think
they Yeah, they just don't inhabit areas we frequent very much,
and they're like, this is clearly not trying to grow
arms and legs, but nice effort, right, So we got
one under our belt, Chuck, What about the takahi. The
takahi is native to New Zealand, one of our favorite places.
(02:31):
Hello are Kiwi friends, And this is a flightless bird
that's a member of the rail family. It's very pretty,
about the size of a goose. They're kind of blue green,
they're they're really really nice looking, and even from the
beginning they were really rare. I think they were discovered
by European explorers in eighty seven and they were never abundant. No, apparently, UM.
(02:53):
After the second specimen was found, only four were found
in the nineteenth century. When the guy who found the
second one described it, um, he said that there's there
these are gone like this whatever I just found maybe
the last of it. He said, it's unlikely any further
living specimens will be found. Um and that was that.
That closed the book on it. But um, fifty years later,
(03:16):
there's another guy named Jeffrey Orbell who was like, I,
for some reason, I cannot accept that the taka he
taka he is just gone forever and set out searching
for him. Yeah. I mean it's amazing and I'm glad
people like Jeffrey Orbell are out there because, uh, Jeffrey
Orbell found one of these things on the South Island
(03:41):
in nine of New Zealand. And you know, this kind
of brings up something we did mention at the beginning,
like how can science be wrong about something being extinct?
And you know, it's it's fairly easy to happen. You know,
the world is a big place, the Earth is a
big place, and they do their best. But you know,
(04:01):
at a certain point, when something isn't around for a
certain amount of time, they get together and they feel
comfortable saying this thing is extinct, and you know, if
it comes back to life, is a lazarous species and
that's great. It's not like science hangs their head in shame,
like the can't is back. But um, it is sometimes
tough to see, especially if it's a rare thing to
(04:23):
begin with, that they're truly extinct. Yeah. The International Union
for Conservation of Nature is the ones responsible for declaring
something endangered or extinct in the wild, and their definition
of extinct is that when there's no reasonable doubt that
the last individual has died when exhaustive surveys and known
and or expected habitat at appropriate times diurnal, seasonal annual
(04:47):
throughout its historic range have failed to record an individual.
So it's not just like nobody's reported one of these
things for a while. It's like they go out and
really try to find it, and if they can't find it,
they're like, I guess it's extinct. Then they hang their
heads in shame. That's right. I saw a great meme
the other day. That's very appropriate for these times here
in the United States. Uh. Something about science is not truth.
(05:11):
Science is the search for truth. Uh. And basically, when
things it was much more scinct than this, but um,
when things change, science continues to search for that truth.
It's not flipping and flopping on the truth. Right. Let's
just leave it at that and take a commercial break. Okay, Chuck,
(05:52):
So we're back with I think my favorite it's my favorite,
too good. We're talking about the lord how island stick insect. Yeah,
not a great name. There's a better name for it,
don't you think. Yeah. Leave it to Australia to uh
have an insect called a tree lobster um. Lord Howe
(06:13):
Island is is off the coast of Australia, kind of
midway between Brisbane and Sydney, and these things, uh, were
very common on Lord Howe Island out there in the Pacific.
And this is a really interesting story. There was a
shipwreck off the actually kind of on the island, and
everybody knows that chips, especially back in the olden days.
(06:34):
I think it was six or nineteen eighteen. This is
nineteen twenties, but they're off by a few years. We're
just full of rats. And these rats descended upon the
island and really really overtook this island in a big way.
They were like tree lobsters deed lish. Yeah, so they
actually ate all the tree lobsters on the island, and
(06:55):
them all the rats did. The rats um had no
natural predators on the islands, so their population boomed, and
they also ate to extinction all sorts of bird species,
lizard species, a bunch of other ones, but in particular
this tree lobster, which you don't find elsewhere. And they
thought like this thing was just endemic only to Lord
Howe Island. So shortly after the twenties they were like
(07:17):
the Lord Howe Island stick insect is now extinct. But
then they were very surprised um in nineteen sixty when
they found a few corpses. There were corpses, but they
weren't like obviously forty year old descating corpses. They were fairly,
fairly recent corpses. So they're like, wait a minute, these
things are still around. And I guess somebody thought to
(07:37):
go look on another nearby island. It's like Pyramid Island,
I believe, something like that. And they found a new
population of these things, just a handful, but a few
of them perched in a tea tree on the highest
point of this island nearby, that's right, And so they
started breeding them in captivity and training them to be
(07:58):
able to raise their middle finger. Because they have undertaken
the Lord how Island rodent eradication project, where they are
spreading forty two tons poison cereal pellets and twenty eight
thousand bait stations across the island to rid this island
of those rats. And this was a couple of years ago,
(08:18):
in twenty nineteen, and the most recent article I read
said that sometime this year they were going to reintroduce
like all the rats should be gone, and if there
are any few rats left, these tree lobsters can go
back and give them the finger. Very nice. They're spreading
poison quisp on the islands. Irresistible, man, I'd have a
(08:41):
hard time but that. You'd feel like, I know it's poisonous,
but I just can't help myself. I know. If it
was Captain Crunch peanut butter, forget about it. I'm a
dead man. Um. So, uh, there's another one. Uh, hats
off to the Lord how islands tick insect. We're gonna
take our leave and wish it luck and head on
over to Peru, where the Peruvian yellow tailed wooly monkey
(09:05):
was thought to have been extinct. It was first described
in eighteen twelve just from a pelt um yeah I
think so, yeah, a little yellowish um. But then only
just a few times in the century that followed had
they actually been seen and described by travelers. Um, I
(09:26):
guess scientists in Peru. And then the last one was
seen until in six and by that point this science
was like, I think these things are are gonezo that's right,
But not so, because in they found one in Brazil
and this is being kept as a pet. And it
turns out these things were being kept as pets kind
(09:48):
of in different places all over the world. And this
is one really interesting case where the illegal pet trade
kind of brought, uh, in a roundabout way, something back
from extinction. Yeah, they think there's maybe fewer than a
thousand of them in the wild, which is still not
terribly bad considering something was considered extinct for a little while,
(10:08):
but apparently it was. And this is kind of like um,
one of the definitions of a Lazarus species. It was
news to science that this thing was not extinct, but
to the local population in Peru who lived, you know,
in these in the area the same area as these monkeys,
they were well aware that these things were around. They
(10:29):
just hadn't heard the science didn't know we're else. I'm
sure they would have told somebody, that's right. What about
this is my second favorite, Chuck, what about you? I
can't believe we're gonna do five and shorty, But here
we go with a robust red horse. It's a pale
pink has pale pink fins, is sort of stout and
(10:51):
it's you know, it's not very remarkable looking. If you
look at a robust red horse You think that thing
is misnamed because it's just sort of plain looking. It's
an ug fish as what they should call it. Yeah,
it's not the best look. It's got a great Latin name,
Maxostoma robust um. It's a good band name. Or maybe
an album title, yeah yeah, yeah, prog rock for sure,
(11:14):
or maybe like a like a Mastodon album, yeah, exactly. Um.
This was first described by uh Edward Drinker Cope naturalists
from Europe in eighteen seventy, based on just this one
fish that he found in a river in North Carolina. Uh.
And unfortunately that fish was destroyed because that was the
(11:35):
last one that anyone saw for a hundred and twenty
two years. Yeah, so everybody's like, well it's extinct. We're
not even sure it ever exactly lived. We gotta take
this Cope fellas word for it. And he's popped up before.
I can't put my finger on it. But we've talked
about them before. But then in nineteen eighty and then
I believe also in people started reporting this. It's somebody
(11:59):
who's like, know what I think that that is Cope's
robust red horse fish. Uh. They started finding them in
the Savannah and Pete rivers in Georgia and uh, South Carolina,
I think, and um so they they actually made a
deliberate effort. They launched an effort twenty years ago to
find some mating pairs of the robust red horse in
(12:22):
the Savannah River and um basically start breeding them in captivity,
and I read I think in two thousand fifteen, Chuck,
they released some and they recently identified the first wild
juveniles that had been born to this restored population of
robust red horses. A big comeback, huge comeback from the dead.
(12:47):
Basically same here. So uh, that's it for short Stuff, everybody,
if you want to look up some more lazarous Um species,
then they're out there and it's thrilling. Every single one
has a great story behind it, so go amuse yourself
with that. In the meantime, Short Stuff says goodbye. H
(13:08):
Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. H
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