Today I Found Out's video: Mermaids and the Bizarre Tale of One of the Fastest Extinctions in Modern History

If ever there was a poster child for human-caused extinction, it was the Dodo. This odd-looking flightless bird, native to the remote island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, was first encountered by Dutch sailors in 1598. Barely six decades later, the Dodo was all but extinct, wiped out by hungry sailors and invasive species like rats and pigs brought along. Indeed, so swift was the Dodo’s demise that for more than a hundred years many scientists refused to believe the bird had ever existed at all. But when it comes to modern extinctions, few can compare in sheer brutal swiftness to that of a large, docile marine mammal that once plied the cold northern waters of the Bering Strait. Discovered in 1741, the gentle giant was almost immediately hunted to oblivion. This is the tragic story of Steller’s Sea Cow. Host: Simon Whistler Author: Gilles Messier Editor: Daven Hiskey Producer: Samuel Avila