The warrah, or Falkland Islands wolf, was a unique species of wolf that was once the only mammal species native to the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean. It’s thought that the species became trapped on the islands during the last Ice Age, when the Falklands were connected to the South American mainland by an ice bridge that left the animals isolated when it melted. After the Falkland Islands were first settled by humans in the 1760s, the wolves were seen as a threat to livestock and were quickly hunted into extinction. The warrah was already rare by the time Charles Darwin visited the Falklands in 1833, and he ominously predicted that, “within a very few years … this fox will be classed with the dodo as an animal which has perished from the face of the earth.” Like the dodo, the warrah had never had to learn to be fearful of humans, and with no trees or forests on the island in which to hide, the wolves proved easy targets. The last individual was killed in 1876.
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