The great auk's extinction is a case study in how markets can accelerate disaster even when everyone involved knows exactly what is happening. That particular dynamic has not gone out of fashion.
There is a particular kind of human logic that manages to be both rational and catastrophic. In the 1840s, everyone with a serious interest in natural history knew the great auk was nearly gone. The sensible response would have been to leave the remaining birds alone. Instead, the rarity made specimens more valuable, which made collectors more eager, which made the birds more dead.
On 3 June 1844, three Icelandic fishermen landed on Eldey, a remote volcanic island, and killed the last confirmed breeding pair of great auks. The birds were strangled, their skins sold to a museum collector. The egg was cracked in the process and abandoned.
The great auk had survived ice ages and geological upheaval. Centuries of sustained human contact finished them off.
A Market for Rarity
What makes the story genuinely unsettling is the absence of ignorance as an excuse. Naturalists and hunters alike were aware that the species was nearly gone. That awareness did not slow things down; it accelerated them. The rarer the bird, the higher the price a skin or egg would fetch, and so the market created a direct incentive to push the species over the edge.
This was not a tragedy of confusion. It was a tragedy of incentives, which is a different and considerably more uncomfortable thing.
Also on 3 June
The episode is not entirely bleak, though it does not get dramatically cheerful either. In 1839, Chinese official Lin Zexu oversaw the destruction of over a million kilograms of British opium, a confrontation that sits at the centre of the Opium Wars. In 1969, the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne collided with the American destroyer USS Frank E. Evans during exercises, killing 74 American sailors. And in 1700, Barcelona saw the founding of the Academy of the Distrustful, a scholarly society built on intellectual scepticism, which feels like the most quietly correct institution in this entire list.
The ten-minute episode covers all four, including why a bird that outlasted the ice ages could not outlast a collector’s catalogue. It is not comfortable listening, but it is honest, and the Academy of the Distrustful would probably approve.