[Animals] 6 Animals We Ate Into Extinction

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Humans are not always great at self-moderation, especially when things seem both bountiful and tasty. While extinctions are always multi-faceted, the extermination of some species can be almost directly linked to the insatiable appetites of modern humans. Read on to discover a few of the animals we have lost to our unthinking exploitation.“Dead as a dodo.” Yep. These flightless, ground-nesting birds were once bountiful on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. Larger than turkeys, dodos weighed about 23 kg (about 50 pounds) and had blue-gray plumage and a large head. With no natural predators, the birds were unfazed by the Portuguese sailors that discovered them around 1507. These and subsequent sailors quickly decimated the dodo po[CENSORED]tion as an easy source of fresh meat for their voyages. The later introduction of monkeys, pigs, and rats to the island proved catastrophic to the languishing birds as the mammals feasted on their vulnerable eggs. The last dodo was killed in 1681. Sadly, very few scientific descriptions or museum specimens exist.Discovered in 1741 by German naturalist Georg W. Steller, Steller’s sea cows once inhabited the near-shore areas of the Komandor Islands in the Bering Sea. Much larger than present-day manatees and dugongs, Steller’s sea cows reached a length of 9–10 meters (over 30 feet) and weighed around 10 metric tons (22,000 pounds). These massive, docile animals floated at the surface of the coastal waters but unfortunately had little ability to submerge. This made them easy targets for the harpoons of Russian seal hunters, who prized them as a source of meat on long sea journeys. Killing was often wasteful and the species was exterminated by 1768, less than 30 years after it was first discovered. No preserved specimens exist today.

https://www.britannica.com/list/6-animals-we-ate-into-extinction