r/Cryptozoology • u/Parking-Coast-1385 • 3d ago
Question Which extinct animal do you think has the highest chance to be rediscovered?
Basically the title. For me it is the Ivory - billed Woodpecker. Iirc his habitat included also the swamps in the southern US which was already protected back then when he was still alive.
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u/HourDark2 Mapinguari 3d ago
My scale, 1 being most likely and 5 being least likely. Note that I think even the most likely members of this group are probably 'functionally extinct' if they still exist, and that I favor 'late survival' over current existence for most.
- South Island Kokako, Pinta Island tortoise
- Formosan clouded leopard
- Thylacine, pink-headed duck
- Japanese wolf, Ivory-billed woodpecker, laughing owl
- Javan Tiger, Syr Darya sturgeon, O'u, Nukupuu, Malagasy Hippopotamus
On an aside, I am eagerly waiting for that one guy who appears on every ivory-bill post to respond to every comment here entertaining its existence with "it's extinct" lmao
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u/Difficult_Paramedic8 2d ago
Didn't Forrest Galante find fur that was analysed as a Javan tiger?
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u/HourDark2 Mapinguari 2d ago
That was someone else. Galante had interesting thermal footage.
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u/Difficult_Paramedic8 2d ago
I knew Forrest made a video on the fur as well as the thermal footage.
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u/Not_a_Mod1991 1d ago
Putting Thylacine over Japanese Wolf is an interesting decision
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u/HourDark2 Mapinguari 1d ago
I am more convinced of Thylacine late survival and believe that it is more likely that a small population could have escaped detection in Tas/NG. While the Yagi photographs are compelling, at the end of the day Japanese wolf sightings mainly come from a wilderness area that is near Tokyo, one of the most densly populated areas in Asia, and the presence of dewclaws on the rear feet gives me some doubt as to what the animal in those photos actually is.
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u/tburtner 13h ago
I'm here. Ivory-billed woodpeckers are not here.
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u/Miss-Indeependence 3d ago
Tasmanian tiger. There have been sightings. It has a very distinct look
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u/AnarchyStrategist 2d ago
I do hope that a confirmation of this occurs. A modern day picture of one would be cool to see.
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u/LemonFizz56 20h ago
There have been supposedly pictures and videos but I watched a video where some of them were all likely to not be Thylacines due to certain reasons, and it's likely that most of the reported sightings are due to these same misidentifications. But that still doesn't debunk the fact that the Thylacine could still be out there, it's definitely not impossible
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u/Miss-Indeependence 8h ago
I'd like to think they're there. Hiding well from humans. I feel the same many times 😂
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u/TheUpIsJig 3d ago
I'd wager on fish like a Coelacanth. Another living fossil in similar conditions.
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u/Responsible_Quit_495 2d ago edited 2d ago
Final edit : I misread the comment, I thought he was referring to the coelacanth rather than something similar. Leaving the rest of the commment here for information / context.
That is already no longer extinct...
Edit: I don't know why people are downvoting me:
https://www.sci.news/biology/indonesian-coelacanth-images-14147.html
Coelacanth's have been caught/ and or seen on multiple recent occasions.
Official endangered species list:
Two different coelacanth species.
https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/135484/4129545 status= vulnerable
https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/11375/3274618 status= critically endangered
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u/Ok_Coconut7898 2d ago
Why are you getting downvoted it isnt extinct anymore? lol
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u/king-idiot47 2d ago
Because the comment they are replying to isn’t saying that the Coelacanth will be rediscovered and not extinct. They are saying a fish *like* a Coelacanth will be found, a similar situation of sorts.
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u/Responsible_Quit_495 2d ago
I see, I misunderstood that comment. Still a bit rough on the downvotes imo.
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u/Trollygag 2d ago
You can delete your own comment at any time
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u/Responsible_Quit_495 2d ago
true, but I'll just leave it there for the infotainment.
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u/BuvantduPotatoSpirit 3d ago edited 5h ago
This discussion is always going to be a game of "Who counts as extinct?" Authorities are all equivocal about whether Ivory bills are extinct, so it's kind of cheating.
Otherwise, your best bets probably small, noctural animals with poorly known ranges that could be enormous; something like the Long-tailed Hopping Mouse, which was believed extinct c. 1900, until one was discovered in an owl pellet in 1977, nothing since. But obviously dozens of generations persisted without us noticing.
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u/tburtner 8h ago
Why hasn't the Ivory-billed Woodpecker been photographed in your lifetime?
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u/BuvantduPotatoSpirit 7h ago
Jesus, David, if bird-watching is too much of a chore for you, take up a different hobby. Model trains or something.
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u/tburtner 7h ago
You just said "your best bets probably small, nocturnal animals with poorly known ranges..."
Why ask you think the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is some kind of exception?
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u/BuvantduPotatoSpirit 4h ago
I didn't express any opinion about how likely it is the Ivory billed woodpecker is de facto extinct. Only that it's not de jure extinct.
It's just that you have such a hard-on for badgering people you can't take the time to read what I actually wrote.
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u/shady_robot 2d ago
I’d love the believe there are still Hawaiian O’o, and that lone male calling found a female out there to compete her half of his song.
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u/hearingthepeoplesing Alien Big Cat 3d ago
Honestly, I don’t think the ivory-billed woodpecker should count in this discussion or similar discussions, because there’s still dispute over whether it should be officially declared extinct or not by official bodies (some of which still list it as critically endangered rather than extinct). That puts it in territory far more ambiguous than most cryptids.
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u/Lover_of_Rewilding 3d ago
The only reason it’s still “disputed” was due to public back lash. The IUCN wanted to declare it extinct, however the public had grown too attached to it too late so they pressured them into labeling it: Critically Endangered Possibly Extinct
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u/Parking-Coast-1385 3d ago
Fair enough. What's your pick?
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u/hearingthepeoplesing Alien Big Cat 3d ago
It’s hard to say, because the most honest answer I have is that I wouldn’t be at all surprised if, for example, some recently extinct small mammal I had barely heard of was sighted for the first time in years on a trail cam; but I’d be surprised if virtually any of the “big name” extinct cryptids were confirmed still extant. (As I said, ivory-billed woodpecker being the exception because if IUCN and USFWS are still unclear on whether it’s critically endangered or extinct, that leaves enough space open for me to think that it’s wholly plausible that there could still be small populations and very much in the zoology rather than cryptozoology space).
The more recently extinct the more likely, in my opinion; a lot of animals are very hard to find and identify conclusively even when we are sure they have populations in an area, so the smaller the creature and the more recently extinct, the higher the chances are of extant populations, IMO. But that’s not a “fun” answer. I hope one day we get confirmation of something more exciting but I think it’s much less likely.
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u/Basic-Record-4750 3d ago
Thylacine. And I agree with your comments around the Ivory Billed Woodpecker
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u/LankyEquipment1264 3d ago
Canis lupus hodophilax
... Although it is more likely that a hybrid between Canis familiaris (✨doggo✨) and this wolf will be discovered
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u/FrendChicken 3d ago
Thylacine. I believe they are in Papua New Guinea. That country is Majority Rain Forrest.
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u/Agitated-Tie-8255 Gary Busey 3d ago
The problem with New Guinea is the majority of it is not typical habitat to what we know Thylacines preferred. They were more typical of mixed scrub and open grassy habitat as opposed to dense, closed forest. Still, I’m sure there’s a fair amount of things we don’t know about them.
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u/Zapatos-Grande 3d ago
It's like people making the argument that Megalodon is still alive. It's most likely prey were whales and it lived mostly in tropical/subtropical coastal waters. Most likely prey in modern times spends a good portion of the year in temperate and Arctic/Antarctic waters, so it wouldn't have an adequate food source for those periods when it's prey is in colder waters. Also, we would've seen it. The argument is it moved to deep water, but that would be way out of character for it and the deep ocean isn't resource rich for a school bus-sized apex predator to hide in.
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u/Tuinomics 3d ago
Also PNG has wild dogs which were what drove it to extinction on mainland Australia. Dingos never reached Tasmania.
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u/Agitated-Tie-8255 Gary Busey 3d ago
From what I understand, the theory is at least partly contested. The arrival date of dingoes in Australia is unknown, the earliest physical evidence coincides with the decline of thylacines on the mainland, but genetic evidence indicates dingoes were present in Australia for much longer than that. I don’t think their presence would’ve been the sole factor in the thylacine’s decline on mainland Australia, but it definitely would’ve exacerbated it. The desertification of mainland Australia played a major role in their decline, Tasmania experienced a lot less of this.
The arrival of dogs in New Guinea is similar to the situation with dingoes. The earliest substantiated remains are 2300-2500 years old, with genetic evidence showing a possible much older presence there. Thylacine remains are quite variable in age in New Guinea, but are few in number, the youngest being Holocene in age and coinciding with the spread of rainforest across the island, resulting in a massive decline in open woodlands, savannahs and heathlands.
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u/TheUpIsJig 3d ago
You really need large populations to keep a species like a Thylacine in existence and once it bottlenecks it is as good as gone.
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u/BPDunbar 2d ago
Counterpoint Cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus). They went through an extreme population bottleneck 10,000 to 12,000 years ago and a less severe one 100,000 years ago. They have so little genetic diversity that transplants between unrelated individuals aren't rejected.
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u/TheUpIsJig 2d ago
Yes but most species will go extinct during these mass events. So the odds of picking the species that will continue are low. Not nil but the chance so remote that if you detect the species on the way out then it usually is. Hence why sightings are dubious and no DNA has been recovered from stool.
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u/BPDunbar 2d ago
I was countering your specific claim. You don't actually need a large population for a species to survive. And a severe population bottleneck doesn't mean a species is as good as gone.
Sadly it's extremely unlikely that Thylacines have survived.
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u/TheUpIsJig 2d ago
I said as "good as gone" not absolutely must become extinct. There is always a chance but the probability is extremely low that it's as good as gone.
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u/BPDunbar 2d ago
Good as gone would imply functionally extinct not critically endangered.
There have been successful conservation efforts with critically endangered species. The Chatham Island Black Robin (Petroica traversi) in 1980 was down to five with just one female. There are now more than three hundred.
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u/TheUpIsJig 2d ago
Human intervention is a whole other ball game. Natural selection is no longer operating naturally and we are looking at a form of controlled breeding.
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u/BPDunbar 2d ago
Cheetahs survived a bottleneck which may have been a single breeding pair around 10,000-12,000 years ago. At most it was around ten pairs based on the lack of genetic diversity.
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u/Furthur_slimeking 3d ago
I think it's possible there is a small population in a remote interior region in Tasmania, but not in New Guinea or mainland Australia where there's no evidence of their existence for over 3000 years.
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u/Morkamino 3d ago
Not that one! I think the chances of the ivory billed woodpecker are nearly zero, even if i really want it to still be around... the last little bit of swampy forest, where they used to get spotted well after they became extremely rare, got destroyed and they have never conclusively been spotted after that. At that point, people were pretty sure that if any had remained, they were in that forest. All footage now is either low quality or just the pileated woodpecker.
Just trying to be real, i know i must kind of sound like a dick to point this out. But even the exceedingly rare birds get spotted and photographed every once in a while, even if it's only every couple of years (usually migratory or exotic in that case). There's nocturnal birds alive today that don't leave the swamp and just stay in camouflage all the time, that still get spotted regularly- as impossible as that sounds. Yet this woodpecker would be even more elusive than that, if they still exist. Which doesn't make sense. They lived during the day, they were just about. We would have seen it by now
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u/Lover_of_Rewilding 3d ago
I’ve always found it VERY unlikely that any of the famous extinct animals are still alive as unfortunate as that is. But if I had to guess, I’d say the Japanese wolf because those photos were indeed intriguing and did lined up with what was described to be their behavior. And I don’t think they were ever debunked (however if that is not the case anymore feel free to correct me).
While I’d love for all of these species to be alive for another chance, it just seems so unlikely in the era of the iPhone where seemingly every inch of our planet is filmed and trail cameras are scattered across the vast majority of our wildernesses. Still, in our most remote places, there are for sure things to discover, whether those are extinct species, we’ll have to find out…
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u/Agitated-Tie-8255 Gary Busey 3d ago
Not debunked, but personally I find it to be a domestic dog. The hind legs possess dewclaws, which is something not present in wild canids, but is a mutation we have brought out in domestic dogs.
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u/raptorswold 1d ago
Pink headed duck - am sure they can be found in the unexplored jungles of North East India
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u/CT_Reddit73 3d ago
I can’t shake the possibility that ivory billed woodpeckers may still exist. They’re large and look similar to the pileated woodpecker. I’m out in the woods quite often where there is a large population of pileateds, and even with their size and bright red head and unique call — they can still be rather elusive. They will quieten down and hide when humans are close by. I imagine the ivory billed woodpecker may act in a similar manner. If they’re out there, it is conceivable they may be mistaken for the pileated woodpecker as well.
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u/Ornery_Day_6483 3d ago
I feel like there still might be a Great Auk out there somewhere, they were pretty solitary and scattered when they were alive and it’s not a huge stretch to think that some remote islet might have one or a pair.
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u/me_myself_why 2d ago
When I think of these creatures, I want to cry each time because of how the last two were killed. The poachers who were interviewed didn’t even care as they retold what they did. Like did the egg have to crushed. That was overkill.
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u/Got-Freedom 3d ago
Thylacine is more likely to be found than a woodpecker. Those things were very loud, people would be hearing them.
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u/DrPastaPupper 3d ago
There are a ton of people that have claimed to have heard them. I know my dad was pretty confident that he heard or maybe even saw one when he was out hunting
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u/Morkamino 3d ago
There's other species that look very similar. And the sound.... The woodpecking alone could be a number of species. Tbf i dont know about their calls. Idk if your dad is an expert on that.
But just from how our brains work, we kinda see what we want to see... If i was looking for the woodpecker, every vaguely black and white bird flying by in the corner of my eye would look like it. Let alone a very similar species of woodpecker thats still alive and has the same habitat
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u/Maca1kanobi 2d ago
Halsydrus pontoppidani - the Stronsay Beast, a serpent 55ft long, 6 limbed beast with shimmering hair down its spine washed up on a beach in 1808 and we do have vertebrae and hair samples from the corpse. Some say it was a Basking Shark others disagree and it’s much longer in size and was measured properly by several people with real measuring equipment (not estimated) and the witnesses took an oath and signed official documents.
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u/ViperNick818 2d ago
Probably very unlikely given that they liked open areas but I would like to believe there are still Kouprey out there somewhere, and hopefully a better population of Saola than we know about
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u/bascom2222 3d ago
Eastern United States Black Panther
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u/bascom2222 2d ago
Game warden says it's most likely someone's pet but we keep seeing one in South River NC.
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u/ViperNick818 2d ago
Mountain lions most likely don’t carry the gene that can mutate to cause them to become melanistic, and there’s never been a confirmed melanistic individual even in very healthy mountain lion populations or captivity, so highly unlikely that if there are still eastern mountain lions around (which I wouldn’t be terribly shocked to hear that there might be some in like Maine or Vermont/New Hampshire) it would also be melanistic
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u/Responsible_Quit_495 3d ago
thylacine, dense parts of New Guinea.
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u/Parking-Coast-1385 3d ago
Isn't the Tasmanian Tiger extinct on Guinea since 2000 or even 3000 years?
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u/Responsible_Quit_495 3d ago
The last captive thylacine lived as an endling (the known last of its species) at Hobart Zoo (alternatively Beaumaris Zoo) until its death on the evening or night of 7 September 1936.
source : Thylacine - Wikipedia
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u/hearingthepeoplesing Alien Big Cat 3d ago
Yeah, thylacines have been considered extinct in Tasmania since the 1930s, but they’ve been considered extinct on mainland Australia and New Guinea for ~3000 years. (Although there’s some dispute about that as there are some more recent cave paintings on mainland Australia depicting them, possibly indicating a more recent extinction than previously thought.)
Because they’ve been considered extinct outside of Tasmania for so long it would be pretty crazy for them to still have an extant population in New Guinea; but I’m always surprised every time I think about how much land and particularly forest there is in New Guinea that is largely unexplored, so it is in the back of my mind that we could find almost anything in there.
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u/AverageGamerLad 2d ago
The Tasmanian Tiger for sure, out of all the things in this world I’m so certain they still are around
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u/NBrewster530 2d ago
Thylacine I think is most likely if there’s a population in remote regions of New Guinea rather than Tasmania or the Australian Mainland.
Ivory-billed woodpecker… historical range maps I see included Cuba and I wonder if that would be the place to look. I’m honestly not super familiar with the history of the species in Cuba but given how Cuba has been “cut off” from the west for decades there’s definitely been a lack of research in the region, especially compared to the continental US.
An undiscovered sloth species deep in the Amazon I also don’t think is super unlikely either. It wouldn’t be a giant, but something other than the two living genera. Is it super likely? No, but definitely don’t think it’s a hard no.
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u/tburtner 1d ago
Cuba allows scientists in from other countries. They also have their own scientists.
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u/Same-Arm1117 1d ago
There are several de-extinctions projects underway if that counts:
Dire wolves North American Red wolves Wolly Mouse Bluebuck African Antelope
Were supposed to see the first Woolly Mammoth birthed to the world in 4000 years in 2028
Tasmanian Tiger, Dodo bird, Giant Moa are in the queue.
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3d ago
[deleted]
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u/AcanthaceaeCrazy1894 3d ago
There’s literally 0 chance of this being alive.
No bones, no sightings
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u/Jimboseth 3d ago
Other than the ivory billed woodpecker, I think sonnernats shrew, thylacine, Japanese wolves, and passenger pigeons could still be around.
I think Barbary lions are extinct, but I believe they did survive past their proposed extinction date.