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Uncategorized Saturday, September 8th 2012 at 1:00 pm

Japanese River Otter Declared Extinct After Three Decades

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How do you know when an animal has actually become extinct? Environmental agencies throw out data about endangered species all the time, but it’s hard to imagine that the last member of a species dying wouldn’t be some kind of terribly tremendous event with a column of light shooting into the sky like the quickening… or, you know, something like that. Unfortunately, it seems that animal species’ leave the face of this world without a bang or a whimper. The Japanese Ministry of the Environment has declared the Japanese River Otter to be extinct, since no person has seen the species in the wild in over 30 years.

The Japanese River Otter, a subspecies of the Eurasian Otter, had a population numbering in the millions once upon a time. Prized for their fur, hunters drastically cut into the Japanese otter population in the name of foreign trade. Later, the species’ population suffered when their habitats became polluted.

Though there have been numerous searches to find evidence of the species’ continued existence, little proof of living Japanese River Otters has been found. The lack of evidence is itself an indication that there are no more Japanese River Otters. One professor, Yoshihiko Machida of Kochi University, believes that members of the species are still alive, citing animal droppings discovered in 1999.

The last sighting of a Japanese River Otter occurred in a river in the city of Susaki in 1979, where someone caught a single otter on film. The Japanese River Otter is the animal symbol of Ehime Prefecture in Japan.

(via Scientific American, image credit; Stampcommunity.org)

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  • Satan

    ”
    The lack of evidence is itself an indication that there are no more Japanese River Otters. ”
    Wonderful example of argumentum ad ignorantiam. Lack of evidence is not evidence. lrn2logic

  • idlethoughts

    So how do you propose we determine an animal or anything for that matter does not exist. I’ll be waiting for your answer on top of my totally existent unicorn while battling a completely not extinct T-rex.

  • Satan

    As unicorns are mythical creatures, I’m not sure why that is part of your comment. As to the T-Rex, it wouldn’t be the first time something thought to have died out 65 million years ago was found very much alive. E.g. Coelacanth

    You cannot prove something does not exist. It is an impossibility. You can say it is unlikely for something to exist, but it is impossible to prove that something does not exist. Which is why ‘God’ will never my ‘dis-proven’, merely the ‘Bible’ or any other religious text which is not supported by facts. That is, assuming we ever work out time travel.

  • japped whitey

    love them japs cause they always destroy the environment to be economically viable

  • Seri

    You can’t prove that unicorns and time travel don’t exist.

    By your own logic you must acknowledge his entire statement as fact, because you cannot prove that it’s false.

  • Anonymous

    Lack of evidence of existence is itself evidence that something doesn’t exist. Well, after a fashion at least. Things that aren’t around don’t leave any evidence that they are around, and thus from the null hypothesis, you can argue that they no longer exist or never existed.

    that’s why we discount the existence of mythological creatures: No one has any proof they exist.

  • Phil

    Wrong. By his own logic you have to have evidence for either to be true and without evidence you can’t say something exists or doesn’t exist. So in that respect no he does not have to acknowledge his statement as fact.

  • Phil

    That still isn’t the same as saying something doesn’t exist as a 100% fact. I can believe something doesn’t exist or something is extinct all I want to but it’s still best guess based on what little I can personally observe. It is by definition an opinion and not fact.

  • Anonymous

    No, that’s a judgement based on the data to a certain degree of confidence, not an opinion. An opinion is something like ‘river otters are awesome’. Science rarely states anything with absolute certainty, but rather, they give a judgement based off the evidence to 5 or so standard deviations.

    30 years with no sightings or hard evidence is a pretty good standard to go off. there is still a possibility one could be out there, but you can safely say there isn’t until such evidence is found.

  • Jerik

    Your argument is true, but the problem is that this isn’t a logical argument. Seeing no evidence of river otters for 30 years is a criteria established as a guide to indicate when something should be considered “extinct”, not a logical argument for the validity of the concept of extinction.
    If your friend is 45 minutes late meeting with you, you might decide to go do something else. You’re not making a logical assertion that your friend won’t show up, but rather a practical one.

  • pagurus

    If an otter poops in a riperian habitat and noone’s there to see it, is it there?

  • j

    you actually can prove if something has become extinct, if a species habitat is completely destroyed and no other suitable habitat exists on earth you can safely say something no longer exists on earth.

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