Black Leopard Is Photographed for the First Time in a Century

you'd think that after 200,000 years on this planet humans would pretty much know all about the creatures we share this rock with well the recent sighting of an animal long thought to be extinct or at least almost only proves that mother nature always has some surprises in store I'll start with the big news a black leopard has been photographed in Africa for the first time in over a century hey this is really a bombshell because black leopards are extremely rare and live mostly in Southeast Asia the cat's black coat is the result of melanism this is a condition where the body has too much melanin the pigment that determines your hair skin and eye colour melanistic animals are basically the natural counterpart of albino creatures which have a lack of this pigment well about only 11% of leopards have melanism and considering the fact that these animals are categorized as vulnerable in the first place well you can imagine how rare it is to see a black one in the wild in Africa though no one has been able to prove its existence for over a hundred years the last time a published photograph was taken was in 1909 in Ethiopia there have been plenty of sightings reported but no actual footage provided Kenyans in particular have been saying for a while now that they've witnessed this creature out and about at night now just imagine seeing a spot of pure darkness separate itself from the black of night and disappear again I'd be pretty freaked out honestly and locals seem to share my sentiment because they dubbed the black clad kitty the calf killer so there were rumors and sightings for a long time but no real evidence that is until Wilbur ad Lucas a wildlife photographer from the UK managed to snap these shots thanks to him we finally know for sure that black leopards do exist in Africa hooray but the black leopard isn't the only creature people thought were pretty much non-existent and if these dark cats were at least rumored to roam the African plains some animals were considered extinct altogether until they were rediscovered much to everyone's amazement one of the most fantastic beasts who have been found this way is the coelacanth this prehistoric fish was believed to have been extinct for 65 million years until it was accidentally discovered among other fish caught by a trawler in South Africa in 1938 the most incredible thing about coelacanth is that they're considered a transitional step between actual fish and four-legged land creatures that means their mere existence can be proof that all life on this planet began in the ocean can you even imagine that a creature so ancient could have survived up to this day incredible today we know of two species of coelacanths one inhabits the coastal waters of East Africa and the other lives off the coast of Indonesia they like to hang out at a depth of up to 2,300 feet can grow up to six and a half feet long and weigh about 200 pounds so yeah you're gonna need a bigger boat and would you just look at those creepy eyes although it's good to know that it's still alive and well I don't think I'd ever want to come face-to-face with this big guy speaking of ocean dwellers there's another one that was considered extinct up until very recently oh moriss whale also known as the door fin whale before 2015 none of these whales had ever been found and up until 2003 they'd even been misclassified as a different whale species Bryde's whale since not too many of them have been found yet we really don't have a lot of information about them scientists only know that at almost 38 feet long they're quite small compared to other whales and that's pretty much it I mean sure it's no blue whale but still I wonder how such a huge thing could go undetected for so long maybe it took lessons from the sky on my list meet the giant Palouse earthworm hes a qtpie for sure these squirmy things have supposedly been extinct since the 1980s but scientists found one adult specimen in 2005 five years later dr. Jody Johnson Maynard and Carl umma Kerr from the University of Idaho found another one in the soil of the Gem State giant Palouse earthworms have a pretty specific taste in real estate they only live in the Prairie lands of Idaho and Washington in a region known as the Palouse these big white worms can grow up to 3 feet in length although they're usually only about one foot long yeah only now picture digging in your backyard in finding a worm the size of your leg of course I'm glad these things aren't extinct but come on a little detail that just might make you feel better about these humongous crawlers is that they smell like lilies so yeah if you want to be original and surprise your mom on Mother's Day with an unusual gift give her a bouquet of Palouse worms I'm kidding don't do that okay whales can hide in the vastness of the ocean and huge earthworms avoid detection in the soil so how can you hide an elephant I'm asking because in 2008 the World Wildlife Fund or WWF not the wrestling people made an astonishing discovery high up in the mountains of Borneo there lives a whole colony of pygmy elephants that were thought to be extinct for almost two centuries experts believe that elephants from neighboring Java were brought to the island of Borneo by the Sultan of Sulu well whether he meant to or not he ended up saving these elements from actual extinction because they were being hunted and killed off in their homeland during the 18th century there was no such practice on Borneo so the job an elephant's managed to stay alive although there aren't that many of them only about a thousand that we know of today it's still awesome that they're still around what's even more fascinating about this discovery though is that it's the first successful elephant translocation in history that may these little pachyderms are the first-ever survivors of moving house way to go there's another animal that deserves a pat on the back or shell for staying alive and it's the Fernandina giant tortoise this huge reptile was believed to have died out by 1906 and no signs of it were ever seen until February 17th 2019 a female was discovered in the Galapagos Islands by members of a nonprofit called the giant tortoise restoration initiative scientists didn't even believe it was the furred Andina giant tortoise at first but it was no mistake an animal thought to have been extinct for over a century is now officially categorized as critically endangered not extinct seems like a tiny step forward but it's actually a huge leap just think about it if there's a male out there then the tortoises could reproduce and bring their numbers back up fingers crossed turning back to the insect Kingdom there's one absolutely unique creature that was thought to be completely wiped out and that's no surprise since it only inhabits one quite small area Lord Howe Island off the coast of New South Wales Australia well I should say inhabited because they went extinct in the 1960s or so it was believed I'm talking about the Lord Howe Island stick insect also known as the tree lobster huh doesn't look like any lobster I've ever seen but hey that's just me anyway like I said in the middle of the 20th century these critters were considered extinct even though there had been quite a lot of them on the island just 100 years prior but people suspected the tree lobsters could somehow be hiding on balls pyramid a nearby island some twelve and a half miles from Lord Howe Island it's actually more of a volcanic rock formation and it's so steep that not too many people dared climate just to find out whether or not this bug was hiding up there plus in 1984 authorities made it illegal to explore the peak except for purely scientific purposes well in 2001 scientists did decide to brave the rock scour it one last time but if you think they did it to find the tree lobster you'd be wrong they went there to prove there weren't any of them left alive so imagine they're shot when they actually found a couple of these stick insects in a small bush on a sheer wall of volcanic rock the bush was home to an entire colony of tree lobsters 24 specimens to be exact once they were successfully rescued from ball's pyramid Australia took them under its wing and they now are no longer critically endangered well if there's one creature that clings to survival like crazy it's the Lord Howe Island stick insect kind of makes you teary so what other amazing animal discoveries do you know about share them in the comments down below don't forget to give this video a big thumbs up share it with your friends and hit that subscribe button to stay on the bright side of life
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