12 Animals The Human Race Tragically Killed Off
Quite literally as dead as a dodo.
Everyone knows that the dinosaurs have been extinct for 65million years, and the woolly mammoth for a good 4,500 years - but in the years in between there have also been many other animals which have gone completely out of existence.
The phrase "dead as a dodo" didn't just magic itself up out of nowhere - it was coined after the flightless bird became extinct during the 1660s.
What's most disturbing, however, is that the rate at which animals become extinct has increased massively in the last 1,000 years - primarily as a result of the human race. Unsustainable levels of hunting, deforestation, disease, pollution and general maltreatment have all contributed to the - in some cases - permanent decline of many different species of animal. And all of these things have been caused by human beings.
Thankfully, conservation efforts have increased in many areas, and this is helping some species to survive longer than was previously thought. Though, in many cases, the terminal damage has already been done - and these is no hope of a return for certain species. In fact, some species are declared as "extinct" even before the last animal has died out, due to the fact that numbers have declined to such an extent that they will be unable to ever recover.
So here are 12 animals who tragically became extinct, at the very least partially because of the human race.