List of 160 species declared extinct this decade; What's behind this alarming rate?

Earth is home to thousands of species, including humans and animals. According to scientists, almost 1.3 million species, representing about 20% of the total species, live on this planet. But recent reports claim that species are going extinct 1,000 times faster than they should be and almost dozens go extinct each day.

It should be noted that the victims aren't made from stories about big, rare zoo attractions as most of them are likely invertebrates, plants and other beings that people usually do not think much about. While IUCN's Red List names a thousand extinct or extinct-in-the-wild species, a paper, "Mass extinction in poorly known taxa" estimated that seven percent of the known extant species might be extinct if you include estimates of invertebrate extinctions.

Causes of extinction

As per some scientists, there are five major causes behind animal extinction, which include habitat loss, an introduced species, pollution, population growth, and over-consumption. If you remember that almost 65 million years ago an asteroid impact caused the extinction of the giant species of the earth, dinosaurs.

Climate change

Now, climate change poses a constant danger to terrestrial animals. According to WWF, the planet is warming faster than at any time in the past 10,000 years and the animals are suffering to adapt to new climate patterns. Scientists claimed estimated that "Most species on this planet (including plants) will have to "move" faster than 1,000 meters per year if they are to keep within the climate zone which they need for survival. Many species will not be able to redistribute themselves fast enough to keep up with the coming changes."

However, other causes behind the extinction include lack of food, human predation, lack of genetic diversity and loss of habitats.

Species declared extinct in the past decade

Here we have compiled a list of species that went extinct according to IUCN data in the past decade but this list doesn't include those which are still around but declared extinct in the wild.