Rediscovered on the grill: the Laotian rock rat and other ‘extinct’ animal species

The list of endangered species grows every year due to climate change, shrinking habitat or diseases. There are currently more than 42,000 endangered species on the so-called Red List published annually by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

However, it occasionally happens that species that were once thought extinct suddenly reappear. For example, the Attenborough echidna recently appeared in Indonesia, or the mountain frost moth – a butterfly – in Bosnia.

The return of animal species once thought extinct has a name in conservation biology: the Lazarus effect. The name is based on the Bible story of Lazarus, who was brought back to life by Jesus four days after his death. The Lazarus Effect in the animal world can refer to a specific species or, in a broader sense, to subspecies or genera.

An overview:

One of the most fascinating rediscoveries in the animal world concerns the coelacanth. The bony fish is a prehistoric animal that populated the world’s oceans 360 million years ago – making it 290 million years older than the famous Tyrannosaurus Rex. The coelacanth was thought to be extinct since the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago. It was known to modern humanity only as a fossil – until he ended up in a fishing net off the South African coast in 1938. Because the animal lives at depths of 150 to 400 meters, it did not survive the pressure drop when the nets were pulled to the surface. A short time later, the special fish was identified by experts as a descendant of the coelacanth.

It wasn’t until 1987 that a German research group managed to observe a living coelacanth in its natural habitat off the Comoros, an archipelago on the east coast of Africa.

There are two known extant species of coelacanth. One lives between the Comoros and Madagascar and the second in Indonesian maritime areas in Southeast Asia. The animal is considered critically endangered and is on the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Before 2006, the Laotian rock rat was also only known as a fossil. The species was thought to have been extinct for eleven million years until scientists came across it in a market in Laos in 2005 – on a grill. The local population had known about the animal for some time as a delicacy known, while scientists initially wrongly thought they had discovered a new rodent species. Only after further research it turned out that the animal was a representative of the so-called Diatomyidae family, which was already thought to be extinct.

The animal visually resembles a mix of a large, dark rat with a bushy tail similar to that of a squirrel. Its waddling gait and good-natured, trusting nature are also notable, as some researchers have discovered.

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the animal is not considered endangered.

Although the little mountain bandicoot looks like a mouse, it has nothing to do with it. As the name suggests, it belongs to the marsupial family. Like the coelacanth and the Laotian rock rat, the bandicoot was initially known only as a traditional fossil. The fossils were discovered in Australia in 1894 by physician and paleontologist Robert Broom, who incorrectly described the animal as a stone mouse. In August 1966, an unknown species of marsupial was finally discovered in the mountains of Victoria and attributed to the fossil finds.

Because the animal is only active at night and is very shy, it went unnoticed for a long time. Mountain bandicoots live in a cold habitat that is often covered with snow in winter. To stay warm, they sleep in rock crevices, where they huddle close together as a group.

According to the University of New South Wales, fewer than 3,000 specimens remain in the wild. Their small habitat is threatened by rising temperatures. Because: The small animals hibernate every year. But if it gets too hot, they wake up and starve. This is partly because the population of the most important food sources – such as the Bogong butterfly – is declining.

In an effort to better protect the rodents, a population of mountain bandicoots was moved to a newly built facility in the lowlands. There, an attempt is made to get the animals used to a new environment where they no longer have to hibernate and have better access to food.

The Voeltzkow chameleon, which lives only in Madagascar, was first described in 1893 and never seen again – although some sources cite 1913 as the last year it was seen. It was only in 2018 that an expedition from the Munich State Zoological Collection (ZSM) was able to locate the animal again thanks to a targeted search. For the first time they discovered females.

Not much is known about the colorful vertebrates, as they probably only live for a few weeks during the rainy season. Frank Glaw, curator of reptiles and amphibians at the ZSM, explained to “Spiegel”:

Whether and to what extent the animal is in danger is difficult to estimate due to the limited data available. However, given the shrinking habitat due to deforestation in Madagascar, the Voeltzkow chameleon can be assumed to be endangered.

A second ‘lost’ chameleon species, Furcifer Monoceras, could not be rediscovered during the expedition.

It has been scientifically confirmed since 2021: a giant tortoise discovered in 2019 on the Galapagos island of Fernandina belongs to a species long considered extinct. “The species was thought to be extinct more than a hundred years ago,” Ecuador’s Environment Minister Gustavo Marique said two years ago. “We have confirmed their existence. The turtle of the species Chelonoidis phantasticus was found in the Galapagos.»

Geneticists from America’s elite Yale University had compared the female turtle’s DNA with a sample taken in 1906 from a male of the species and confirmed the genetic match. The sample, kept in a museum, was taken during an expedition by the California Academy of Sciences.

Chelonoidis phantasticus is one of fifteen species of giant tortoises found on the remote Galapagos Islands. The species of giant tortoises typical of the Galapagos Islands of Santa Fe and Pinta are already extinct. The fact that a specimen of the Fernandina Island species still exists “renews our hope for the recovery of this species to save it from a fate similar to that of Lonesome George,” said Danny Rueda, director of the Galapagos National Park .

The Somali elephant shrew is not only called that, it is actually distantly related to the elephant. The small, insect-eating mammal with its proboscis-like nose was last seen in the 1970s. Afterwards, it was not seen again for decades in the region’s dry, rocky landscape.

For this reason, it was included on the re:wild (formerly Global Wildlife Conservation Group) list of the 25 Most Wanted Lost Species. After more than 50 years, the mouse was rediscovered in 2019. The researchers discovered that she lives not only in Somalia, but also in neighboring Djibouti.

Little is known about the animals and no data are available on the population of the species.

The Megachile pluto (“Wallace giant bee”), the largest known bee species in the world, was rediscovered in the Indonesian rainforest in 2019. Before that, the species had not been observed since 1981.

The large bee was rediscovered during an expedition by photographer Clay Bolt, who was traveling with a team of researchers in the Indonesian rainforest in the Moluccan Utara province. The female Wallace giant bee he saw reached an impressive length of 6.35 centimeters, making it four times as long as a European honey bee.

The species is named after its first discoverer, Alfred Russel Wallace. A British naturalist who, along with Charles Darwin, is considered one of the founders of the theory of evolution. He went to Indonesia in 1858 and discovered a single female giant bee.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature classifies the animal as endangered.

In November, researchers saw a Vietnamese kangaroo, also known as the Vietnamese mouse deer, for the first time in thirty years. The ungulate from the deer piglet family fell into a camera trap in eastern Vietnam. The animal had not been seen since 1990, when the animal’s last known conspecific was shot by a hunter.

The Vietnam Lace Shell was first described in 1910 by British zoologist Oldfield Thomas. The adult animal he documented, with a head and torso length of 40 cm, was smaller than a brown hare, which is between 50 and 57 cm long.

To date, there is hardly any data on the lifestyle and population of the animals. Therefore, the International Union for Conservation of Nature cannot provide information about the animal’s endangerment.