BY CLAUDIA MACKAY
Everyone knows about animals like the giant panda and the tiger, but there are a lot of other less-known animals as well, 8.7 million of them. These animals, like the mountain mist frog, are disappearing rapidly and going extinct, between 200 and 2,000 a year. At this rate, 27% of the Earth’s animals could be extinct by 2100. The animals I will list below are only a few that went extinct last year. However, there are ways to stop any more animals from going extinct.
The Mountain Mist Frog
To start us off this is the Mountain Mist Frog, a creature native to Australia also known as the Nyakala frog. The Mountain Mist frog lived in upland rainforests near North-East Queensland and was commonly found near small water bodies. It went extinct because of chytrid fungus, which affects many amphibians as it infects their skin, makes it hard for them to breathe and affects their behaviour as it also gets to their nervous system.
The Giant Atlas Barbel
The Giant Atlas Barbel was a species of fish native to Morocco. It lived in the Kasab and Tensift rivers and was a relatively large fish. The reason this fish went extinct is unknown, but it seems to be due to water pollution caused by a nearby city along with a dam that separated populations.
The Chinese Paddlefish
The Chinese Paddlefish was a huge fish that lived in and around the Yangtze River and ate some species of crustaceans and fish. The Chinese paddlefish was said to have gone extinct due to the Gezhouba Dam blocking migration routes and preventing common breeding cycles leading to the decline of the species.
The Dugong
The Dugong is a gentle seagrass-eating creature which has become extinct from the waters of China though it still exists in other areas. The reasons for the dugong going extinct are: Its food source (seagrass) was depleted, water pollution, and development from companies along the coastline threatened its habitat.
The Irrawaddy dolphin
The Irrawaddy dolphin is another example of an animal that went extinct in one area. Unfortunately, that area had the biggest population, and the species is rapidly declining. The cause for the Irrawaddy dolphin’s extinction is bycatch, an event that occurs when humans accidentally catch other animals in fishing nets and often these animals are killed by the resulting wounds.
These animals did not deserve to become extinct, but they did anyway. A lot of these animals, in fact, went extinct due to human problems. We should not let these animals go extinct as it will destroy the ecosystems in which they live.