25 Animals that Are Now Extinct Because of Humans

Humans are the most important creatures living on Earth at the moment and are also responsible for the biggest non-natural changes on the planet. Over the millions of years of evolution, humans have been responsible for the disappearance of various animal species.

And here’s something that will make you think twice, probably: Every human being on the planet, all eight billion of us, adds up to roughly one ten-thousandth of Earth’s total biomass (source here).

We are a rounding error in terms of mass, and yet we’ve reshaped the planet more than any other species in the history of life on it.

In today’s article, we are going to list 25 animals that are now extinct because of us humans.

Some of these extinctions happened centuries ago, before anyone had a word for what was going on. Others happened recently enough that I find it even scarier – we were supposed to get better, after all!

I am updating this article several years since originally publishing it, and since then, at least 5 more animal species have been lost!

So before we check out 25 of the most important species that have gone extinct because of humans, let’s talk some numbers!

Did you know that over 1,000 species have gone extinct over the past 500 years because of us, humans? Did you know that there are probably tens of thousands more species that have gone extinct because of us before scientists discovered them or started to keep track of them?

Did you know that just 70 years ago, there were over 400,000 lions in the wild and now there are just 25,000 left? These numbers are indeed scary and sad at the same time!

But now, let’s look at the sad reality: the animal species that no longer exist because of us!

Elephant Bird

This bird was found in Afica, mostly on the Madagascar region and, true to its name, it was huge. Up to 3 meters tall (10 feet), these birds used to lay eggs that weighted up to 10 kilos each.

These impressive creatures are extinct since the 1200s, although there have been reports of sightings up to the 17th century.

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Aurochs

They are the wild ancestor of today’s domesticated cows. The very last one, a female, died in Poland’s Jaktorów Forest in 1627.

The interesting part is that they went extinct even though people tried to keep them alive. Polish kings assigned gamekeepers to protect the dwindling herd and exempted them from taxes in exchange for keeping watch. It still wasn’t enough.

Hunting, habitat loss, and disease picked the population apart until one cow was all that remained, and then none.

Some historians call the aurochs the first extinction humans documented as it happened, which makes it feel less like distant history and more like an early warning nobody acted on.

Dodo

One of the best known extinct animals because of human activity, this impressive bird was mostly found in Mauritius and has gone extinct around the 1660s.

It was an impressive bird that could reach heights of 1 meter (3.3 ft) and weighted up to 17 kilograms (39 lbs). Due to the way it looked, it is now considered an iconic bird.

Also read: 18 Eerie Abandoned Places on Earth

Steller’s sea cow

One of the saddest stories of an extinct animal. This huge water creature was discovered in 1741 in the Bering sea and it took humans just 27 years to see it goes extinct.

This gentle monster weighted up to 10 tons and had lengths of up to 9 meters (30 ft), but was slow and non-violent. It was heavily hunted and became extinct almost instantly after being discovered.

Atlas Bear

The Atlas bear was the only bear species native to Africa. It has an unusually dark historical footnote too: the Romans reportedly captured them for gladiatorial games, setting them against prisoners and other animals in the arena.

Centuries of hunting and habitat loss after that finished the job, and the species was gone by the 1870s.

Falkland Islands Wolf aka the Warrah

This was the only native land mammal of the Falkland Islands, but has gone extinct in 1876. It was the first in an unfortunately ever-growing list of canidaes to go extinct in human history.

Quagga

Looking like a strange mixture between a zebra and a horse, with only the top half of its body showing the distinctive stripes of a zebra, the Quagga became extinct in 1883.

There’s just a photo of a live animal – in a zoo – and looking at it makes us even sadder that this beautiful creature no longer exists.

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Eastern Elk

Although many of its cousins have been successfully reintroduced into the wild since its extinction, the Eastern Elk went extinct in 1880.

The species was destroyed by hunting and by the loss of the forests it depended on as farmland spread across the eastern United States.

Sea Mink

Around the same time as the Eastern Elk went extinct, a smaller species living in the same geographical area disappeared as well.

The Sea Mink was hunted for its extremely soft and dense fur and excessive hunting led to its demise.

Passenger Pigeon

Another extremely sad story of an animal going extinct because of human activity: the Passenger Pigeon, an extremely migratory species, was once the most abundant bird in North America, with an estimated population between 3 and 5 BILLION. And not a single one exists today!

Although they were extremely fast flyers, reaching speeds of up to 100 km per hour (62 mph), due to excessive hunting (they were sold as cheap food) and deforestation, the entire species went extinct.

The last passenger pigeon, a hen named Martha, died at the Cincinnati Zoo on the first of September, 1914, just past the turn of the twentieth century.

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Laughing Owl

During the time when the Passenger Pigeon was going extinct in North America, the same was happening with this impressive owl in New Zealand.

Getting its name because of its distinctive vocalizations, the owl was plentiful until intense colonization began in New Zealand, going extinct in 1914.

Bubal Hartebeest

A majestic creature that lived in Northern Africa and even has a hieroglyph associated to it (showing that it was known to humans since ancient times) went extinct in 1925.

Caucasian Wisent

Another impressive wild beast – a Bison that lived in the Caucasian region – went extinct in 1927.

Its more famous relative, the lowland European bison, came dangerously close to the same fate around the same period and only survived because of a captive breeding program built from a small number of animals held in zoos.

Tasmanian Tiger

Also known as Thylacine, and probably the inspiration behind Disney’s Taz cartoon character, this species went extinct in 1936.

The last known individual died at Hobart Zoo in 1936, not from disease or habitat loss but as the tail end of a government-sponsored bounty scheme that had paid people to kill thylacines for decades on the belief that they threatened livestock.

Caribbean Monk Seal

Seals are not living only in Zoos and Antarctica. They used to live in the Caribbean too before humans helped them go extinct in 1952.

Caspian Tiger

Another majestic creature that is no more! It used to live in the wilderness of the Middle East and Central Asia, but due to excessive hunting, it became extinct in the 1970s.

Golden Toad

This is the first species in the human history to be officially verified to go extinct because of climate change. This happened back in 1989 and humans haven’t slowed down since…

Baiji

The baiji, a beautiful freshwater dolphin found only in China’s Yangtze River, was declared functionally extinct in December 2006, after an international team of scientists spent six weeks surveying the entire river without finding a single one.

However, there have been reported sightings of Baijis over the years (most recently in 2016), so there might still be hope here.

Western Black Rhinoceros

Some of us still remember seeing this majestic creature out in the wild, as it went extinct in 2011.

They were usually hunted for their horns only, which were considered to have extremely beneficial health effects and a kilo of their horns was sold at over $50,000.

None of that value comes from anything real. Rhino horn is made of keratin, the same protein in human hair and fingernails, and there’s no credible scientific evidence it cures anything it’s claimed to cure.

Pinta Island Tortoise

A huge tortoise that was only found in Ecuador’s Pinta Islands, the species went extinct in 2012 when Lonesome George – the last in its species, died in a zoo waiting for a mate.

Northern White Rhino

This one is functionally extinct rather than fully gone, but I’m including it because it might be the clearest warning sign we currently have.

The last male, named Sudan, died in Kenya in March 2018 under around-the-clock armed guard, having spent his final years protected from poachers who wanted his horn even though he was the last male alive.

Two females, his daughter and granddaughter, are still alive, but neither can carry a pregnancy to term.

Scientists are now attempting to save the subspecies using stored genetic material and IVF techniques, implanting northern white rhino embryos into surrogate southern white rhino mothers. Whether that works or not, in the wild, this species is already extinct.

Bramble Cay Melomys

This small rodent lived on a single sandy island in the Torres Strait, between Australia and Papua New Guinea.

Australian authorities officially confirmed its extinction in 2019, and it’s now widely cited as the first mammal species known to have gone extinct specifically because of human-caused climate change.

Rising seas repeatedly flooded its tiny habitat, destroying the vegetation it depended on and eventually drowning the population outright.

Chinese Paddlefish

This was one of the largest freshwater fish that ever lived, capable of growing beyond 3 meters long, with an elongated, paddle-shaped snout it used to sense prey in the murky water of the Yangtze River.

Scientists declared it extinct in 2022, largely because a dam built across the river in the 1980s blocked its migration route to its spawning grounds and severed the population from itself.

Java Stingaree

This small ray was known from a single specimen collected at a fish market on the Indonesian island of Java in the 19th century.

Unregulated fishing and the industrialization of Java’s northern coast are believed to have wiped it out before scientists ever had the chance to study a living one properly.

Slender-billed Curlew

This slim, long-legged shorebird once bred across parts of Siberia and wintered around the Mediterranean.

It was declared extinct in November 2024, after years of dedicated searching turned up nothing, and it holds a title I find hard to read without flinching: the first documented extinction of a bird species native to mainland Europe, North Africa, and Asia in modern history.

It was hunted for museum specimens and sport for decades, and by the time anyone tried to stop that, there weren’t enough birds left to recover.

Wrapping up

Twenty-five animals, and this still isn’t a complete account, not even close. It’s a sample, chosen because these are the stories documented well enough to tell properly.

For every elephant bird or aurochs here, there are almost certainly dozens, maybe hundreds, of species that disappeared without anyone ever describing them, extinct before science even learned they existed.

Some really sad stories as we see amazing animals being wiped off the face of earth because of us. It’s time to make a change, it’s time to change our ways and start giving back to this planet and not only take away.

Do you agree with this? If you do, then don’t hesitate to share this article with the world so that everyone is made aware!