You Won"t Believe What Scientists Found On This Abandoned Island!

With over 20,000 species approaching extinction, our world is in the midst of a major biodiversity crisis. And while it may be true that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, it doesn’t really account for how chaotic our world can be.

Since there’s so many issues competing in the quest to raise awareness, it’s difficult to stay the center of popular attention unless we’re talking about a stark, immediate problem.

But nearing extinction is about as close as the animal world gets to staying in the forefront. For once something crosses that threshold, they’re gone forever, right?

Well, sometimes there’s a little more room for hope than that. And what this case from a remote Australian island will show you.    

Here’s the island, which is known as Ball’s Pyramid.

It’s a treacherous place, but it’s home to a very small, very important little bush.

And in neighboring Lord Howe Island, there used to be a lot of these.

This insect is commonly called a tree lobster due to its large size–about 4.7 inches–and hard outer shell. Local fishermen used to bait their hooks with it, but that’s not why it died out.

No, the real reason has to do with these fellas.

When a British ship wrecked on the island in 1918, black rats escaped from the ship and were able to survive on the island. With no predators and a steady supply of giant bugs to eat, the rat population ballooned and devoured the tree lobsters into extinction.

Or that’s what everyone thought since nobody saw another one for 80 years.

And yet, when two Australian scientists climbed Ball’s Pyramid in 2001, they happened upon that special bush I mentioned earlier. And there, they found some large insect droppings.But to find the bugs themselves, they had to do something dangerous.