Kill 'Em While You Can Trivia Quiz

Answer: museums and collectors

The great auk was a flightless, aquatic bird, similar to a puffin or penguin, that at one point ranged through most of the North Atlantic Ocean. It was fearless and clumsy on land, and known to have been a source of food for tens of thousands of years. Massive exploitation for their feathers and meat diminished their numbers, and they became extinct around Europe despite being beneficiaries of some of the earliest environmental laws ever written.

By the 1800s, great auks had become rare; that in turn brought unwelcome attention from museums and collectors, who just had to get a hold of their eggs while they still could. In 1835, the last known colony of about fifty great auks were discovered on Eldey Island, Iceland. They were killed in the name of preservation, and it was there that the last known pair of great auks was killed for specimens, in July 1844.

Answer: Javan rhinoceros

Smaller than its African cousins, the Javan rhino was once widespread in southeast Asia. It has been hunted for its horn for thousands of years, and with further attention from big game hunters, has become one of the rarest animals in the world. The Javan rhino has no natural predators, so it is only hunted by people -- and they've done a great job of it. Its extreme rarity has made its horn worth tens of thousands of dollars, thus making it a tempting target for poverty-stricken poachers.

Javan rhinos were long thought dead in Vietnam after the Vietnam War, which had a devastating impact on Vietnam's environment. However, a handful managed to survive, and the area they inhabited became a part of Cat Tien National Park in 1992. Unfortunately, by 2009, an analysis showed that a single rhino was left in the park. That lone animal was killed in 2010, and its body was discovered with its horn removed.

Answer: about 6% of the population within four months

After being exterminated in most of the United States, gray wolves were given federal protection in 1973, and decades of hard work rebounded the population in parts of the western US. The result was a delisting in March 2008, which lasted for four months before they were relisted as endangered. During that brief time, about 6% of the population (which had been fostered for decades) was legally killed. After that incident, gray wolves had an on-again, off-again relationship with the Endangered Species List, being repeatedly delisted, killed relentlessly, hastily relisted, and rebounding in population in comically depressing cycles.

Wolves have regularly been classified as vermin in the western US, and can be killed without question in such instances. Conservationists argue that wolves are a good thing -- they keep animals like elk from exhausting vegetation, and are the only known effective check on coyotes. Ranchers contend that they kill livestock, and they do have a point. For example, in Wyoming in 2010, wolves managed to kill a whopping 26 of the state's 1.3 million cattle. Please, think of the ranchers!

Answer: dinner

The Worcester's buttonquail is endemic to the island of Luzon in the Philippines. IUCN lists the species as data deficient, and it is unknown if its rare encounters are due to genuine scarcity or its propensity to avoid people. A birdwatching group discovered one in a market on Luzon in 2009, and shortly after the elusive bird was photographed for the first time ever, it was killed, eaten, and presumably delicious.

While we can gawk at the crassness of turning such rare/elusive animals into meals, it touches on another issue that deeply impacts endangered species: poverty. In many parts of the world, endangered animals are hunted as bushmeat because there's simply no other source of meat available. The issue is a bleak one in many, many ways.

Answer: ivory-billed woodpecker

The ivory-billed woodpecker, endemic to the southeastern US, was a large and once-abundant woodpecker. Ornithologist John Audubon once kept one for some time, and described it in great detail. They lived in old growth forests in the US, and heavy logging during the 1800s destroyed their population. Their declining numbers were further exacerbated by people who hunted them for specimens.

By 1938, only about twenty of these woodpeckers were thought to exist, and a large percentage of those lived in the Singer Tract, a swath of old-growth forest that the Singer Sewing Company owned in Louisiana. Conservation groups and state governors attempted to buy the land, but Singer refused, preferring that it be clear-cut instead. A single female found in one of the few uncut trees in 1944 was the last confirmed sighting of the bird. Rumored sightings persisted afterwards, but no bird has conclusively been seen since then.

Answer: killed them for collections

Elephant seals can be found on the western coast of North America. They are absolutely massive, with some growing to over 14 ft (4 m) long, and weighing over 2.5 short tons (2.25 metric tons). Elephant seals were hunted ruthlessly during the 1700s and 1800s, as a single large male could yield hundreds of gallons of oil. By 1884, they were believed extinct.

In 1892, a Smithsonian expedition to Guadalupe Island (off the coast of Mexico) discovered eight elephant seals. Naturally, they did the most noble thing they possibly could -- shot seven of them as specimens for collections. Other elephant seals must have survived though, and after becoming a protected species, their numbers rebounded dramatically. The genetic bottleneck caused by their overexploitation is still cause for concern, though.

Answer: "How do you think the rhino feels, idiot?"

Like many of Africa's big game animals, the population of black rhinos plummeted dramatically during the 20th century. There were as many as 70,000 of them in the 1960s; by the start of the 21st century, there were around 4,000 -- about 95% less. A large percentage of the remaining rhinos live in Namibia, in southwest Africa. Namibia regularly issues permits (usually five per year) to hunt black rhinos.

Corey Knowlton became the first non-Namibian to win such a permit in 2014, paying $350,000 for it. For his efforts, he got numerous death threats, and a snide "How do you think the rhino feels, idiot?" when he made them public. Though extremely controversial, such permit hunting helps raise critical funding to hopefully conserve the species, and plans were made to hunt an older, infertile male so as to not impact the species' long-term survival.

Answer: scimitar oryx

The scimitar oryx is one of many antelope species that once upon a time inhabited Africa. Its demise started when major climate changes dried out the Sahara Desert (even more than it usually is). Hunting started becoming a serious issue when Europeans occupied the area during the North African Campaign of World War II. Trophy hunting for their large horns decimated populations further, and by 2000, the IUCN assessed it as extinct in the wild.

Before becoming extinct in the wild, many scimitar oryxes were captured, and today, thousands of them exist in captivity. Though these include breeding programs, private stocks are a major source of these animals. If you have a few thousand dollars to spare, you can go to places like Texas ranches and pay for the privilege of hunting a scimitar oryx, an animal classified as 'endangered' as recently as 2011. It's sad and counterintuitive, but hunting is now one of the few things that keeps these majestic animals alive.

Answer: Japan and Norway

Large animals have always been tempting hunting targets, and no animals exemplify this more than whales. Whales have been hunted for at least 5,000 years, but you know the drill: more effective hunting techniques destroyed their numbers so thoroughly that by the 20th century, all whales were in danger of becoming extinct. After repeated rejections, a moratorium on whaling took effect in 1986, except for the purpose of scientific research. Since then, countries like Japan and Norway have heroically contributed to 'scientific research' by continuing to kill whales.

Whales have historically provided a source of cheap protein for poor people, such as for the Japanese in the aftermath of World War II. Whales are killed for research purposes because non-lethal methods supposedly don't provide enough scientific information to sate the curiosity of the Japanese. Naturally, after being studied, the whales are not put to waste -- they are cut up and sent to supermarkets. The fact that whale meat is often saturated with toxic levels of mercury and DDT-class compounds apparently doesn't stop people from consuming it.

Answer: Al-Shabaab

Al-Shabaab (literally, "The Youth") is a terrorist group based in Somalia. In 2012, the group allied itself with Al-Qaeda. The unstable nature of Somalia allows Al-Shabaab to control large parts of the barely-existent country. And what better way of funding terrorist activities can there be than by endangered species trafficking?

In 2012, Al-Shabaab was accused of poaching thousands of elephants for their ivory. This ivory is sometimes called "blood ivory" and is believed to ultimately end up in China, a common destination for illegal animal parts. The extent to which this poaching occurs has been disputed, and it's not like Al-Shabaab's financial records are public, but it is likely that such poaching has occurred to at least some extent. The accusations were serious enough that in 2014, British troops were deployed to Kenya in a bid to reduce such trafficking.