The hunt for a lost species
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Recommendations can be great. Maybe someone recommended this podcast, and here you are. But home projects are a little different. If the podcast isn't your thing, you might lose a few minutes from your day. But if you hire your cousin's neighbor to mount your TV, you might end up with a lopsided screen and wall damage. I know a guy isn't a good strategy for your home. That's why Thumbtack works so well. It matches you with top-rated local pros with photos, reviews, and credentials all in one convenient place. For your next home project, try Thumbtack. Hire the right pro today. What's up, y'all? I'm Skylar Diggins, seven-time WNBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years, covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom.
And this is AmMom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Right now, species are going extinct at the fastest rate since when the dinosaurs went extinct 66 million years ago. It's a crisis. But what about the species that slip through the cracks? The ones where we aren't sure whether they're extinct? The ones that have gone missing? A few years ago, our reporter Manding Nguyen flew down to Texas to look for one of these missing species. She ended up making one of our favorite episodes. So we wanted to share it again with you because Mandy actually went cave diving and she found this mysterious underwater world hiding beneath one of the biggest cities in the country.
Here's Mandy.
Andy Glusenkamp is kind of like a detective for animals.
So basically, if it's creepy, crawly, slimy, or has scales, especially if it lives underground, yeah, I'm kind of interested.
Andy's a herpetologist, which means he studies reptiles and amphibians. He works at the San Antonio Zoo, and for the last 20 years, he's been working on a case, searching for a missing creature.
It's my white whale.
It's actually a white salamander, a blind one called the blanco-blind salamander.
If you asked herpetologists, most of them have heard of it. It's one of the most famous amphibians that no one's ever seen.
Except for one time, 71 years ago, and then never again.
During the early 1950s, Texas suffered the worst drought in Texas history. It was called the drought of record. And it's the drought that we compare all other droughts to. And a lot of major springs went dry.
A gravel company was looking for water, and so they tore up some ground near a natural spring in San Marcos, a city between San Antonio and Austin.
They basically dug a big trench along this water-filled crevice, hoping that they could get to some pocket of water.
And at the bottom of the trench were some of the weirdest creatures these workers had ever seen. These four pale white salamanders with no eyes. They looked like they were from another world.
And so the foreman at the time had the foresight to gather up a few in a bucket. The crew went to lunch, but while they were gone... A heron, which was super common there, ate almost all the salamanders.
So there were two left.
One salamander went to Texas State University and it was immediately lost.
And then there was one.
And the other specimen actually rolled around in my predecessor's trunk for a number of years before he was finally convinced to deposit it in the University of Texas at Austin's collections.
No one has seen another live one since. The salamander that was sent to UT Austin is the only specimen on the planet. It's not alive, but it's preserved.
And they have this warehouse that's just filled with all kinds of specimens, all kinds of reptiles and amphibians. And then there is this jar with the salamander in it.
Vox Science reporter Benji Jones.
It was in a, it looked, I mean, it could have been a pickle jar. It was in just like a glass jar with a label on it. And the jar is 70% ethanol. You open the lid, it smells a little bit like vodka, and then it's just kind of floating on the bottom.
A dead preserved salamander isn't exactly glamorous.
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