6 Extinct Animals Found in 2025

Every single year, thousands of animals are declared extinct, but many of them aren't. I've proven that myself eight times over, and in 2025 alone, scientists have rediscovered almost a thousand new species. And get this, around two dozen were animals we thought had vanished forever, from the world's tiniest snake to a shark that looks like an alien with a sail on its back. Here are six of the wildest extinct animals found in 2025, starting with the Philippine cave tarantula. This species of tarantula was thought to be native to the cave systems in the Philippines, and the species is a true troglodyte, an animal so specialized for life in total darkness that it literally can't survive outside of it. It lives deep in the Libmanan Caves Natural Park, tucked into the dark zones of the deep cave systems where sunlight literally never reaches. One of the most bizarre things that makes these cave ecosystems so intense, even deep into the systems, is that the humidity stays high enough for these spiders to thrive. They're not massive as far as tarantula standards go, but their body shape is immediately different once you know what you're looking at. A pale body and eyes so small you could probably almost miss them completely. The crazy part is how this species was discovered in the first place. In 1892, when the French naturalist Eugene Simon traveled to the Philippines, he got what researchers described as basically a quick observation. He saw the spider, made a quick note in his journal, and described it. Bizarrely, that was it. For over a century, nobody ever saw it again. Then, 133 years later, in June of 2025, a research team from the University of Santo Tomas decided to investigate the cave systems around Libmanan. There, inside the deepest sections of three interconnected caves, they found not one, but multiple individuals of the Philippine cave tarantula. And the craziest thing, the researchers found that this species had evolved. The rediscovered specimens show classic adaptations, reduced, almost non-existent eyes, elongated limbs, and a softer coloration. The researchers also said that these tarantulas would bolt into their burrows when a And their hunting behavior was described as striking instantly. Juvenile spiders were even observed taking down insects three times their size. But here's the part that makes this rediscovery even cooler, and perhaps a little concerning. In the forests outside the caves, the same team found two new species of tarantulas in the same genus, which tells us the cave system and surrounding area might be a hotspot for species of arachnids that we've barely ever seen. It also means the whole ecosystem is incredibly fragile. Development, pollution, or even a whole bunch of tourism for people looking at these spiders could threaten the only known population of this cave-dependent species. So, could we ever see one again? Technically, yes, but only if you're willing to crawl into the deepest parts of the cave system, where no life, bad oxygen levels, and tarantulas that can sense you from a foot away. A proper cave expedition with researchers is the safest bet, because no random person or villager is casually stumbling into these things by accident. And think about this, this type of creature hiding in the dark for 133 years that really makes you wonder what else might be down there, tucked away in the shadows. The next rediscovery came out of nowhere. A fish species so rare and tucked away in the foothills of the eastern Himalayas that even seasoned ichthyologists had written it off as a ghost story, the Chell snakehead. This species is native exclusively to the Chell River system in northern Bengal, right near the Bhutan foothills. It's a compact, muscular fish which tops out around 10 inches, and like all snakeheads, it is adapted to life in insane conditions. It is said to thrive in warm fresh water up to 82 degrees, and like our tarantula from before, is able to tolerate low oxygen environments, thriving in the swamps that it calls home. This ability also stems from an insane adaptation that they have, which lets them gulp atmospheric oxygen. It gives them the ability to survive in drying streams, puddles, or even in flooded rice fields during the monsoon season. Locals in northern Bengal know the species by the various locale names, and the fish has been part of their landscape for generations, even while scientists thought it was long gone. Something that we see happen very often with lost species, and that confusion goes all the way back to the early 1900s. The Chell snakehead was originally discovered from specimens collected between 1918 and 1933 from the Himalayan region of India, and then after the early 30s, the species seemingly disappeared from the scientific record. Repeated surveys in later years turned up nothing, and for decades every attempt to rediscover this fish ended in nothing but frustration, and just a few years later, it was considered effectively extinct. Then, within the last year, everything changed. Researchers got a tip that a local tribe near the town of Kalimpong had been catching and eating a strange green-yellow striped fish from the Chell River, and that story alone was enough to spark a frenzy among the tiny group of scientists who'd been chasing this exact species for decades. It still took months of targeted searching, but eventually on the riverbanks of the Chell itself, the team landed not one, but three living specimens. Those specimens, along with solid photographic evidence, finally confirmed what nobody had ever thought would happen. The Chell snakehead was not extinct, and something really cool that researchers were able to find out is that this species has the highest number of lateral line scales of any snakehead species. That sensory line down the side of this fish helps it detect movement and pressure changes in the of its home range. The rediscovery team even described it as mythical, which gives you a sense of just how legendary this species had become across India's wildlife community. Look, for the most part, snakeheads are hardy and adaptable, which means they become invasive nightmares when released outside of their native habitat, and that is the story for so many places right here in the Luckily, the Chell snakehead has never suffered that fate, mostly because it's so rare. Instead, the biggest risks are right there at home. Habitat loss, pollution, and of course potential overfishing by local communities who'd been harvesting it long before anyone realized just how rare it was, and while western science even knew it was still alive. So, how do you see one Honestly, you need to head straight to the Chell river system, link up with researchers or local guides, and hope you're there during the right season. These fish show up in flooded paddy fields during heavy rains and hide in shrinking stream pools gulping for air during the dry periods. They're incredibly hard to spot and they blend perfectly into the greenish-brown water of the foothills, but if we realize that a brightly colored predator like this can stay hidden for almost a hundred years in one of the most populated regions of India, it really makes you think about how much of the natural world still slips under our radar. This Chell snakehead has now actually been collected and brought into captivity to be bred to help keep an insurance colony alive, so no matter what happens in the Chell river system, a species that we thought was gone forever will hopefully always be around. Before we get into the next extinct animal that's come back from the dead, check out the awesome Forrest Galante merch that we've launched. Now, this isn't actually merch. It's not your standard YouTuber junk that's printed on cheap Chinese garbage. This is high-quality outdoor gear. You can see the leather patches. This is the FG River Team. This is the FG Safari Team. I'm wearing one of my personal favorites, the Forrest Galante Desert Team, which it says on the back with the iconic roadrunner. This is high-quality outdoor gear. This is a long-sleeve hooded thing so that you can go out, spend time in the sun all day, not get sunburned. It's breathable. It's lightweight. We've launched a whole line of these. Check it out below this video. I hope you guys pick one up. You're going to love it. I'm a big fan of this gear. It's what I'm wearing out on expeditions and also sitting in my office because it feels and looks so good. Let's get back to the video. Every now and then, a species disappears so cleanly that even the people who discovered it start wondering if the animal's disappearance was just a fluke. The Blyde rundobble flat gecko, only reaching a total length of about 2.2 inches long. This species of gecko is only found in one place on earth, the Blyde River Canyon in Mapubalanga, South Africa, specifically around a rock formation known as the Three Rundobbles, hence its namesake. This gecko has adapted perfectly to living on the rocky savanna rim slopes around 4,000 foot elevation, sliding into cracks and crevices and cliff faces with the kind of ease that only a nocturnal flat-bodied lizard can pull off. This species was initially discovered in 1991 when South African herpetologist Dr. Nels Jacobson discovered it during what might be one of the most bizarre field trips ever recorded. The helicopter he was flying in actually crashed on top of one of the rundobbles while stranded for two days waiting to be rescued. He noticed this strange looking gecko and as any normal herpetologist back then would do, he collected it and soon they were scientifically described as a new species. No one saw another one for another 34 years. Darren Peterson and John Davies from a South African-based conservation NGO managed to secure a helicopter drop on top of the same rundobble where the species was first found. That was the only realistic way to reach the habitat and something I have said time and time again, if you're looking for a lost species go to the last known location of it, start from there and spread out. After three long days of being stuck on top of this rundobble, on the third night they finally found them. The blight rundobble flat gecko was still there and they found several of them. They seemed to be healthy, active and clearly thriving in numbers that suggested the species wasn't on the brink of extinction. If these geckos survived unseen for 34 years, what else is out there that we've overlooked simply because we haven't climbed high enough or looked into the right cracks? This gecko's habitat is so remote and rugged the human impact is low. Animals like this can slip through the cracks and disappear from scientific records simply because no one is studying them or going out to look for them. That lost species tag we often give to animals we can't find says more about our lack of data than the gecko's actual rarity. But the rediscovery proves that they're still out there, tucked into the ancient stone towers of the Blyde River Canyon. And it opens the door to discovering even more hidden species across this wild and rugged inaccessible landscape. Our next animal is one of the wildest shark species you will ever hear about, the sailback hound shark. This bizarre looking shark was once only known from northern Papua New Guinea living way out on the continental shelf in Astrolabe Bay. It only grows up to two and a half feet long but what it lacks in size it makes up for in pure weirdness. It's got huge wide eyes and then this long dorsal fin that sticks straight up off its back like the mast of a tiny sailboat, hence its namesake. It doesn't look like any other hound shark on the planet, not even weird ones like the leopard sharks that we have here in California. And it's the only member of its entire genus Gogolia. That's how strange and isolated this species really is. The original discovery goes all the way back to 1970 when a fisherman in Astrolabe Bay hauled up a pregnant female that measured about two and a half feet long. Nobody had ever seen anything like it and researchers eventually realized that this was an entirely new branch of the hound shark family tree. That specimen became the holotype, the one and only confirmed sailback hound shark anyone had ever recorded. And then it disappeared for 50 years. And keep in mind Papua New Guinea has had multiple deep water surveys, shark studies, and various expeditions like the one I myself had been on and not one of these sailback hound sharks had ever turned up. Then in the beginning of 2020 when the WWF was doing fishery surveys around the Gogol River mouth which drained into the Astrolabe Bay, local fishers started mentioning this weird shark with a sail on its back that sometimes shows up when they're targeting jewfish for the fish and sure enough over just two days in March 2020 five adult females were caught at depths of around 262 feet and not only were these the first verified sailback hound sharks in half a century but some were fully mature with developing eggs. So clearly a population still existed. Then in 2022 another fisherman caught a male with that same long fin and this was historic because it was the first male sailback hound shark ever recorded. Think about that, a species discovered in 1970 and scientists didn't even know what the males looked like until 52 years later. These findings were then officially released and scientifically published just a couple of months ago. All of this tells us that this shark is almost certainly micro endemic, restricted to a tiny little slice of northern PNG around Astrolabe Bay. It's never been found anywhere else despite massive deep sea surveys across the region and when an animal only lives in one tiny place any big shift in water quality, coastal development, habitat loss or even changes in fishing pressure can hit the entire species at once and right now there's a growing demand for the swimming bladder of fish across Papua New Guinea. Fishermen targeting these jewfish in deeper trenches often haul up sailback hound sharks as bycatch. The flesh isn't considered great and the fins aren't worth much so they're usually given away but that doesn't stop the fact that they're being caught. This species is listed as data deficient by the IUCN but realistically it should probably be put on the endangered species list. When you only see six individuals in over half a century and they're all coming from the same tiny river mouth on the same micro habitat that's a major red flag for the ongoing survival of the species. This is a species that vanished for 50 years quietly hanging on in one tiny stretch of ocean and only revealed itself because people finally started listening to the fishermen who fish those waters every single day. Next up the smallest snake on the planet that was feared extinct but rediscovered in March of last year the Barbados thread snake. This species when fully grown is about three maybe four inches long and that's it and to put that into context for you one of the most famous pictures of this rediscovery is if you took that snake and curled it up it doesn't even cover a quarter and the first one ever weighed was 0.6 grams that is just nuts. This snake has only had a handful of confirmed scientific sightings since its discovery in 1889 and that kind of makes sense because it's almost impossible to find. To make things worse its babies are only roughly half the size of what the adults are and they only lay one egg at a time. The snake wasn't even properly recognized as its own species until 2008 since in Barbados they also have the invasive bromine blind snake and unless you know exactly what scale to count or what tiny line to look for on the head you're going to miss it or misidentify it and when you add all of this into the fact that Barbados has lost 98 percent of its native forest you start to see why this tiny species sort of slipped into the extinct species category and think about it for a second when you've got insane habitat loss invasive species and competition from other blind snakes it introduces a lot of problems but let's rewind back to March of last year when during a little ecological survey in central Barbados two researchers named Justin Springer and Connor Blades were flipping rocks when all of a sudden they spotted something looking awfully like an earthworm. They didn't even try to identify it in the field because they were literally unable to. They took it straight to the University of the West Indies put it under the microscope and boom all the tiny very specific features line up. It's the first confirmed Barbados thread snake in almost two decades. They photographed it then put it right back where they found it and for Barbados this is a big deal. To find something this tiny this fragile still hanging on in one of the last scraps of forest they've got left it really matters. Now if you're wondering how anyone finds another one honestly it's not really rocket science the only method is exactly what worked. Flipping a whole lot of rocks and things like that looking through leaf litter and of course patience but now that they know the exact habitat type moisture levels time of year all of that scientists finally have a starting point. Still the species still remains on a knife's edge however this species is definitely not gone yet and that's something Barbados hasn't gotten to say about one of its native species in a long long time. All right the next animal on our list is way bigger than people realize mainly because of just how mysterious it was the Turkostani long-eared bat. This is arguably an animal that most people have never even heard of and honestly that's part of what makes it so interesting. It grows to about five inches long with these long forward facing ears and a surprisingly robust skull built for crunching through scorpions beetles and camel spiders. This species actually goes way back in the scientific record it was first described in 1873 by a Russian naturalist who collected it but after that in the 1920s it was thought to be conspecific with the desert long-eared bat and in fact for decades it was treated as just another population of that species. It wasn't until 2010 that researchers properly examined the genetics and the skull structure and found out that it was in fact its own species but here's the problem even once it was recognized again nobody could find it and the last confirmed sighting was in 1970 and because it lives in remote desert caves and deep cracks in sandstone cliffs people were genuinely worried it might have become extinct without anyone ever noticing. Then at the end of 2025 a joint team launched a proper expedition into the Karakum desert the only place this bat species had ever known to live. Finally they found a young female bat tucked into a crevice. A few days later they located an adult male almost 56 miles away near the Uzbekistan border and finally for the first time ever the species was photographed and videoed. This is a desert specialist living in a region that's getting hotter, drier and more and more unstable each and every year. The surrounding vegetation is drying up which means fewer insects and of course this means fewer places for these bats to feed. It doesn't take much to put a bat like this that is already in trouble over the edge but the rediscovery actually sparked something huge since the local government immediately started planning a 50,000 hectare protected area to safeguard not just the bats but the wild horses, gazelles and everything else that survives out there and because one of the bats was found so close to Uzbekistan there may be an entire population that no one has surveyed yet and if you're wanting to find more again well these bats hide deep in caves and desert cliff systems and now that those scientists were able to record the bats calls you could probably use acoustic detectors to search much wider areas in a much shorter amount of time and this of course would be how you would find a new one and with proper protection coming there's finally a real chance to study a species that basically disappeared for half a century. I love these stories you guys of animals that we had given up on coming back it instills hope it makes you care about the planet and the animals that are fighting so hard to be here I hope you guys enjoyed this video please subscribe to get more of these see on the next one