10 'Extinct' Animals Found Alive... But Is the Proof Real?

In December 1938, a museum curator in South Africa looked down at a fish that should not exist. Since then, animals that were thought extinct, or simply lost to science, have kept turning up: in fishing nets, in a market, in a handful of sand, and in the mouth of a farm dog.

We count down ten of them and check each one with the same three questions: who checked it, did anyone find it again, and is there a living population today? Some proofs hold. One was partly withdrawn. And one animal was found, and then lost again.

CHAPTERS
0:00 A fish that should not exist
1:25 10. The coelacanth
5:01 9. The Laotian rock rat
6:26 8. The Somali sengi
7:45 7. De Winton's golden mole
9:30 6. The night parrot
11:08 5. The black-footed ferret
14:10 4. The takahe
15:03 3. The Bermuda petrel (cahow)
16:13 2. The Lord Howe Island stick insect
19:19 Not in our ten: the ivory-billed woodpecker
20:29 1. The Christmas Island shrew
22:48 Is the proof real?

HOW TO READ THIS VIDEO
Real photographs, specimens and footage are credited on screen. Scenes marked RECONSTRUCTION or ILLUSTRATIVE are AI-generated or artistic illustrations, not records of the events. This video uses AI narration, AI-generated images and video, stock footage and Wikimedia Commons records.

KEY SOURCES
Coelacanth: Smith 1939, Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/143455a0
Laotian rock rat: Dawson et al. 2006, Science https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1124187
Somali sengi: Heritage et al. 2020, PeerJ https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.9652
Takahe: NZ Department of Conservation https://www.doc.govt.nz/our-work/takahe-recovery-programme/the-takahe-story/
Black-footed ferret: US Fish and Wildlife Service https://www.fws.gov/story/cloned-black-footed-ferret-kits-offer-hope-species
De Winton's golden mole: Mynhardt et al. 2023, Biodiversity and Conservation https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-023-02728-2
Lord Howe Island stick insect: Mikheyev et al. 2017, Current Biology https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2017.08.058
Bermuda petrel: https://nonsuchisland.com/cahow-history
Christmas Island shrew: https://news.mongabay.com/2025/10/in-memory-of-the-christmas-island-shrew/
Ivory-billed woodpecker: https://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2006/03/ivory-bill-video-disputed-science-lab-responds

IMAGE CREDITS (Wikimedia Commons; each photo is credited on screen while shown)
CC BY 2.0: patrickkavanagh, sybarite48, Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, David Elliott, EarlRShumaker, Felix Stahlberg, Geoff McKay, Auckland Museum Collections
CC BY 2.5: Jean-Pierre Hugot
CC BY 3.0: Amelia Guo, Rdfr
CC BY 4.0: Bruce A.S. Henderson, Steven Heritage, Hussein Rayaleh
CC BY-SA 2.5: SeanMD80, Wing-Chi Poon
CC BY-SA 3.0: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen, Pwieland, Laurent Marivaux, Penyulap, Sarazeidan
CC BY-SA 4.0: Jonathan Chen, Clovis conchou, Jp le Roux, Tim Burgess, Acroterion, Miroslav Bobek, Zoo Praha
CC0: steve b, Vassil, Daderot, Bernard Spragg
Public domain: USAAF, USFWS Mountain-Prairie, John James Audubon, Balon Greyjoy, Elizabeth Gould, John Obadiah Westwood, John Gerrard Keulemans
Map: NASA SRTM relief (public domain). Stock video: Pixabay.

Signal Number 42: extraordinary true stories, mysterious places and the unknown, graded by evidence.

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