3 delicious meats you will never be able to taste

And it’s all because of us, humans. We’ve driven all three to extinction.

By Lina Luo

Extinction is a major problem that is ongoing in our lives. While it tends to be pushed to the back of our minds and ignored, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s happening. Nevertheless, welcome to three delicious animals we will never get to eat (until time machines are invented) and why we should give future generations the chance to taste the food we enjoy. 

The Dodo

“As dead as a dodo” -British idiom 

You may have heard of the dodo, after all, the knowledge of its reputable stupidity is exceptionally widespread. This mouthwatering bird resembles something between a turkey and a duck but it is related to modern-day pigeons. They were first discovered in the sixteenth century on the island of Mauritius and were extinct by the seventeenth century.

How?

Dodo birds, just like chickens, can’t fly. These birds are so fat, they can weigh up to two and a half turkeys (25kg). They were ancient pigeons who had flown onto the island around 8 million years before the arrival of the sailors. As a result of not confronting any predators for millions of years, they evolved into the plump, lazy and unabashed dodos the sailors were greeted with after setting foot onto the island. They had absolutely no sense of fear. While the Dutch hunted their kind and feasted on dodo meat, they didn’t feel threatened at all. They sat and watched, unfazed as humans ate their fellow kind. Some even ran towards the sailors while squawking.

As the number of settlers who arrived on the island multiplied, the number of monkeys, pigs, dogs and rats rose with them. The safety of their island was invaded and their eggs were eaten. The dodos were undaunted. They weren’t distressed as the Dutch deforested Mauritius for the ebony wood. Sailors reckon that they didn’t even realize as their safe, protective habitat became sugar cane fields. They were used to their illusion of safety and having nothing to be afraid of.

 

Great Auk

Great auks were flightless and defenceless birds that had fat, tender meat, beautiful feathers and nutritious eggs. They dated back to 1000 BC and their remains have been found in areas surrounding the Atlantic Ocean like New England and southern Spain and Florida. Although they had been hunted by local humans since prehistoric times, they were rediscovered by Scottish sailors in the summer of 1840. From then, it took only four years for humans to hunt these millennium-old birds to extinction. 

Why? 

The great auk was the penguin of the north. They were docile, defenceless birds that lived on the cliffs in the North Atlantic with only cliffs and icebergs protecting them from predators. Great auks are the only auks that were flightless. However, they had short wings that allowed them to swim underwater with ease. Soon after Europeans discover them, great auk meat and feathers became exceptionally valuable and were highly sought after. There is documentation that a thousand great auk were slaughtered within half an hour by merely two fishing boats. These auks weren’t just used for food and their skin either. Fishermen killed many for pure leisure, and while some were preserved into trophies displayed in modern-day museums, others were casually discarded with their priceless feathers flying away with the wind and their cracked eggs getting soaked up by the snow. 

The last pair of the great auks were killed in 1844 on Eldey Island, Iceland and their egg was accidentally crushed under the boot by a fisherman while chasing after their parents. With modern-day science, it’s estimated that in the 1600s, hundreds of thousands of great auks could be found from Newfoundland all the way to Norway during the breeding season. Studies have revealed that great auks were doing very well and were nowhere near extinction before the hunts began. 

 

Steller’s Sea Cow 

Within a mere 27 years after European discovery, these delicious fat, juicy steaks were gone forever and we will never get to eat them in our lives. Steller sea cows were discovered in 1741 in the Bering Sea, between Alaska and Russia. Despite dating back to the Pleistocene period, they were annihilated by humans by 1768. 

How?

Although they were a part of the same family as the dugongs (Sirenians), what differentiated them was that they were the largest sirenians that ever existed and the only ones that ever inhabited cold water. They were around 10 meters long and could weigh up to two male African bush elephants. Their size ensured that Steller’s sea cows were easy targets as they just floated on the surface along shores and nibbled on kelp. They moved slowly and took eons to submerge underwater. Soon enough, Russian and European sailors targeted these helpless giants for their delicious, fatty meat and their thick hides. Steller’s sea cows were relentlessly murdered. Of the meagre two thousand that existed, numerous were killed only to be wasted as they were too big for hunters to transport on long journeys. Those two thousand would’ve weighed more than twenty-five thousand cows. 

 

Prevention

All animals are part of the food chain. Every extinct animal equates to a broken link, and if the food chain was as simple as a single chain, it would be in tatters by now. Instead, imagine the food chain as chainmail; removing one link won’t dismantle the whole chain. Nonetheless, there are only so many links. Once there are too many missing links, the chainmail will be imbalanced and fall apart. It won’t just disturb countless other animals, it could even spell the end for humanity.

Even today we are still causing species to go extinct at an unprecedented rate. Most legal systems do not have laws that protect animals., so it’s up to us to care for and give back to the world that is sustaining us. Animals aren’t property that we should trade and kill at will, they are just like us. They have lives, families and histories. Never forget, you are an animal too. 

The scientific world wasn’t aware of extinction until 1796 and it took even longer for the world to accept that animals can disappear from the earth completely. We can not make the same ignorant mistakes. It’s 2021, wake up children.