We Like To Post Unusual,

or rare items on our blog,

and we have just come across this unusual item, Dryococelus australis, AKA The Lord Howe Island stick insect, it was thought to be extinct by 1920, due in some part to accidental introduction of ship rats to the island, only to be rediscovered in 2001 (this phenomenon is known as the Lazarus effect), on another island, it is extinct in its largest habitat, Lord Howe Island, and has been called 'the rarest insect in the world', as the rediscovered population consisted of 24 individuals living on the small islet of Ball's Pyramid, it almost makes us wonder what other animals are supposed to be extinct but could still be out there? take the Tasmanian tiger, or Thylacine as it is known, it was thought only to inhabit Tasmanian, but it appears the carnivorous marsupial isn't extinct after all, it is actually roaming across mainland Australia if this report of thylacine hunter Michael Moss is to be believed, he states that, 'research I have undertaken through government records shows there were shipments of Tasmanian native animals to Wilsons Promontory in Australia between 1910 and 1915, for conservation reasons, I believe these shipments may have included tigers and the sightings people now report are of their descendants', so who knows perhaps the Tasmanian tiger can come back from the dead?