History Main / ExtinctInTheFuture

* In ''Literature/BreakfastOfChampions'', Kilgore Trout, whose earlier stories were published in pornographic magazines with covers luridly advertising "wide-open beavers," mentions in a FlashForward to 1979 that he "mourned especially when the last beaver died."

%%This list of examples has been alphabetized by work name; please follow this when adding new ones.

* ''ComicBook/YTheLastMan'': A year and a half after the plague that wipes out [[{{Gendercide}} all but two male mammals, embryos, and even sperm]], Dr. Allison Mann has a realization that, due to their short lifespans, Pygmy Shrews have gone most likely extinct. Opossums and rats won't be far behind. [[spoiler: Rats are seen long after they should have gone extinct, though, suggesting that life found a way to continue after all.]]

* In ''Fanfic/RocketshipVoyager'' this is implied to be the result of factory-farms using [[AgriWorld every scrap of arable land to grow food]] to cope with an OverpopulationCrisis.
** A SpaceMarine gives the "[[Franchise/StarshipTroopers Come on, you apes!]]" line, then has to explain what an ape is. "An extinct animal--like you will be if you don't watch your six!"
** Voyager's vid library includes documentaries on long-vanished species like African lions.
** Chakotay has an eagle feather in his medicine bundle, a memento of a failed attempt while a teenager to set free the last bald eagle on Earth from its aviary.
* ''Fanfic/NierAutomataREBirth''

** A {{Subver|tedTrope}}sion of a canon example [[spoiler:where A2's discovery of baby Alexander and eventually [=YoRHa=] using DNA from both him and the moon storage system to clone more humans undoes the twist of ''VideoGame/NierAutomata'' that humanity has become extinct thanks to the events of [[VideoGame/{{Nier}} the previous game]]]].

* ''Film/BladeRunner2049'': The film indicates that ''every non-human species'' has gone extinct on Earth. Or at least, anything bigger than a few insects. The protagonist runs into a single stray dog in the desolate wilderness, but its owner isn't even sure it it's artificial or not.
* ''Film/BabylonAD'': Aurora is saddened to learn from Toorop that tigers have gone extinct in the wild when she observes a tiger pen next to a Russian train station. He explains that they're not "real" tigers, but second-generation clones: copies of copies.

* ''Film/{{Cthulhu}}''. The characters observe polar bears at the zoo, but a radio report implies that all wild polar bears have died out. Given [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt what happens at the end of the movie]], humanity may well end up in a [[VichyEarth similar situation]].
* The BadFuture featured in the ''Series/SesameStreet'' [[ChristmasSpecial Christmas special]] ''Film/ElmoSavesChristmas'', involves a downplayed example with ''Christmas trees''. According to Grover, Christmas trees have become an endangered species after a whole year of non-stop Christmas. Although he then states that [[ImmediateSelfContradiction they are all gone, as if they are extinct]], which could've presumedly mean the Christmas trees would've been functionally extinct.
* ''Film/EverythingEverywhereAllAtOnce'' features an Extinct In A Futuristic ''AlternateUniverse'' variant. Alpha Waymond is overjoyed to taste cream cheese and half-and-half milk in "our" Evelyn's universe because cows were wiped out in his world during the war against Jobu Tupaki.

* ''Film/SoylentGreen'': This becomes PlayedForDrama. [[spoiler: By 2022, the environmental situation has gotten so bad, the ''entire'' ocean's plankton, which the Soylent made its foodstuffs from, is dead. They're making food out of corpses because the situation is ''that'' desperate]].
* ''Film/StarTrekIVTheVoyageHome'': While ''Star Trek'''s Earth is generally positive, humpback whales went extinct sometime in the 21st century. Which becomes a problem for Earth when an alien probe arrives wanting to talk to them.
* ''Film/TerminalCityRicochet'': In the CrapsackWorld the film is set in, birds are nearly extinct. The mere sighting of a starling outside of town is a newsworthy event, and the trees outside Glimore's vacation home in the woods are fitted with speakers that play recordings of birds.

* Creator/IsaacAsimov's "Literature/TwoFourThreeZeroAD": The premise of this story takes species extinction up a notch, as the last zoo on Earth is shut down. This leaves humanity as the sole animal species on Earth, with the only other life forms being the plankton used for food.

* A BadFuture variation appears in the ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' novel "The Message". Ax reveals that all species of life on Earth will be wiped out by the Yeerks, except for those required to feed their human hosts, if they succeed in taking over Earth. Fortunately, the Animorphs manage to stop the Yeerk invasion before it succeeds at the end of the series.

* In the 30th century depicted in the ''Literature/DoctorWhoNewAdventures'' novel "So Vile a Sin", many iconic animal species are extinct. Specific mention is made of a project to resurrect the African elephant through genetic engineering.
* Louise Searl's short story ''Sharazad'', appearing in ''Literature/TheDreamEatersAndOtherStories'', is set in a future Africa where humans are extinct and social carnivores have developed intelligence and bipedalism.

** In ''Rail Station Attendant'', thanks to man-made climate change, overfishing, but also the economic collapse that made shipping food globally impossible, a great deal of animal species - including the majority of farm animals and fish species that normally can be easily bred on fish farms - are gone, to highlight just how bad things went within Michiko's life.

* In ''Literature/TheHistoryOfBees'' by Maja Lunde, bees have been obliterated in 2098. As a result, humans are now pollinating crops ''by hand''.
* ''In the Barn'', a short story by ''Creator/PiersAnthony'', is set in a world where a plague caused the extinction of all non-human mammals, leading to society creating PeopleFarms for milk production.

* ''Literature/OryxAndCrake'': the titular species along with many others, such as polar bears, are extinct.

* In the 24th century of ''Literature/PostSelf'' many species have gone extinct in the physical world, such as fennec foxes, though the 200-year old [[BrainUploading uploaded]] [[UsefulNotes/FurryFandom furry]] Dear still depicts itself as an anthropomorphized fennec.

* ''Literature/TheTimeMachine'': In the tropical world of 802,701 AD, horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, pest animals and plants, predators, most insects, fungi, and diseases have all gone extinct. The Time Traveler considers the eradication of the latter groups to be a positive achievement for humanity's engineering of the environment, [[ScienceMarchesOn rather than the ecological disaster it would be.]]
* In Creator/DavidBrin's ''Literature/{{Uplift}}'' series chimpanzees and dolphins are being [[UpliftedAnimal uplifted]] by humanity, but orangutans and a number of whale species are extinct, a fact that humans try not to mention around highly conservationist aliens.

* ''Literature/WorldWarZ'': The ecosystem was badly damaged during the war and marine species were subject to exploitation. All species of sub-arctic baleen whales were wiped out before the end of the war. Additionally, slow-moving land species like turtles are now a rare sight.

* The ''Series/BlackMirror'' episode "[[Recap/BlackMirrorHatedInTheNation Hated in the Nation]]".
** By [[TwentyMinutesInTheFuture the time of]] the episode, most of the bees have been wiped out by a colony collapse disorder, forcing humanity to rely on robotic replacements called Automated Drone Insects to do the bees' ecosystem services. The plot is about someone hacking these [=ADIs=] to great consequence.
** A news broadcast also reveals that the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_crane Siberian crane]] (critically endangered at the time of the episode's release) was just declared extinct.
* ''Series/CowboyBebop2021''. When Spike and Jet first lay eyes on Ein, they stare at the Welsh corgi in fascination because dogs are incredibly rare, as only the rich could afford to bring their pets with them during the HomeworldEvacuation.

* ''Series/GameOfThrones'' is the future to ''Series/HouseOfTheDragon'', and dragons went extinct in-between the two time periods, at least until Daenerys Targaryen magically revived and hatched three dragon eggs.
* On ''Series/TheLastManOnEarth'', a virus wipes out not only most of humanity but almost all animal life as well. This is really brought home when Phil and Carol go to Malibu and find dozens of dead whales washed up on the beach.

* In ''Series/{{Fringe}}'', the AlternateUniverse has suffered serious ecological deterioration as a result of [[NegativeSpaceWedgie tears.]] Several animal species, such as sheep and wallabies, have died out, while a blight is killing off plant life in huge quantities; coffee and avocados are rare commodities.
* In the ''Series/{{Sliders}}'' episode "[[Recap/SlidersS03E02DoubleCross Double Cross]]", Congress in Logan's World has recently placed horses on the endangered species list.
* Cows go extinct ''during'' the second episode of ''Series/{{Snowpiercer}}'', when an avalanche breaks the windows of the train's cattle car, freezing the animals and humans on board in seconds. It's unclear if ''all'' the cattle in ''Snowpiercer'''s agricultural section were on that one car, or if the disaster merely reduced their numbers below the point of genetic recovery; either way, it's described as an "extinction-level event".

* "Robots" by Music/FlightOfTheConchords takes place in the distant future of 2000, where all elephants and humans are dead.

* "No such thing" by [[FilkSong Kathy Mar (composed by Zanda Myrande)]] is entirely built on this trope: in a distant future, a kid is admonished by her parent for making up silly fantasy creatures when she says she sees dolphins, whales and seals in the clouds. In the second verse it's revealed that her parent lied to her out of shame, because they couldn't bear to tell her that the previous generations drived all sea creatures to extinction, while polluting the air [[CrapsackWorld to the point that humanity is now forced to live under crystal domes.]]

* It's implied by a bit of shadowtalk in ''[[TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}} The Neo-Anarchist's Guide To North America]]'' that the gray wolf ''had'' gone extinct, but was brought back (probably via cloning) to populate the forests of Tir Tairngire.

* ''Franchise/BlazBlue'': due to [[WorldSundering the calamity caused by]] [[BeastOfTheApocalypse the Black Beast]] [[GreatOffscreenWar and the Dark War]], the lower elevations of the world (including the seas) have been heavily polluted by [[ToxicPhlebotinum Seithr]], causing the sea life and several other animals to go extinct.

* ''VideoGame/HorizonZeroDawn'': the game is set several centuries in the future and MechanicalLifeforms have become especially prominent, replacing many larger animals and being hunted by humans both for practical reasons and for sport. [[spoiler: It turns out that it's not just some animals that became extinct but ''all'' of them, including humans--a GreyGoo apocalypse took place c. 2064 which humans of the time couldn't stop, only slow down long enough to develop an AI that would devise a way to stop the hostile machines and then clone humans and other animals back into existence. Even so, many are still gone such as wolves, deer, bears, and moose. It's implied that the AI and its support programs intentionally designed many of the machines to resemble now-extinct animals because they were sad that they were gone.]]

* In ''VideoGame/{{XCOM 2}}'', after taking over Earth, the aliens exterminated most animals. Lily Shen raises the question of [[TheSecretOfLongPorkPies where Advent Burgers come from if cows don't exist anymore]].
* In ''VideoGame/{{Technobabylon}}'', tigers are mentioned to have gone extinct by 2087. One possible reason is that India is a radioactive hellhole.
* In ''VideoGame/TerraGenesis'', it is mentioned coral reefs died out by mid-21st century.

-->'''Traveler:''' What's that thing it's sitting in?
-->'''Woman:''' You mean its web? Oh, right, fossils, you wouldn't have known about... Oh my God. Dinosaurs must have been '''''so weird.'''''

[[folder:Web Original]]

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'': Pine trees, poodles, cows, white rhinos, wheels, ''human'' ghosts, the French language, and anchovies are all extinct by the year 3000. The last becomes a plot point when a recently rich Fry buys the last can of anchovies in existence and Mom schemes to get the can from him because anchovy oil is a threat to her oil empire. [[spoiler: When Fry announces his intention of ''eating'' the can (because anchovy pizza is his favorite), she happily lets him do so.]] It was Zoidberg's race who ate the anchovies to extinction in the first place [[spoiler: and Zoidberg goes into a frenzy after he eats the rest of Fry's anchovy pizza]].

* This happens to be the case in ''WesternAnimation/MiloMurphysLaw''. While the series seems to take place in the present day, the time travelling syndicate that operates in the background reveals that pistachios are extinct by the year 2085. Dakota and Cavendish are tasked with trying to remedy this but given what happened when they succeeded, they end up believing that they're better off extinct.

* ''WesternAnimation/KipoAndTheAgeOfWonderbeasts'' takes place in a distant future wherein non-human animals have mutated into either sapient mutes (typically around human-sized) or non-sapient mega-mutes (typically building-sized with extra body parts). Season 3 reveals that the animals that ''didn't'' mutate are extinct. They ''are'' able to clone non-mutated animals from fossils, but they only do so once, in an attempt to recreate the mutation so they'll know how to cure it.

* ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'': Thousands of plant and animal species were wiped out by [[CataclysmBackstory Second Impact]], which also rendered the oceans completely barren of life. Shinji’s reaction to meeting Pen-Pen all but confirms it’s the first time he’s even ''heard'' of a penguin, much less ''seen'' one.

* A great many animals in ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd'' are long extinct, what with the [[AfterTheEnd post-apocalyptic]] state of the world. One story dealt with the death of the last whale.

* ''Literature/AfterManAZoologyOfTheFuture'' covers the world in HumanitysWake, but before they went extinct they managed to cause the extinction of many familiar species. A tree of life in the back of the book (mostly covering mammals) shows that cetaceans went extinct during the Age of Man, and elephants, perissodactyls (horses and rhinos), and tuataras shortly afterwards. Monotremes and pinnipeds go extinct between 10 and 20 million years in the future. Additionally, canines (and indeed all non-mustelid and non-felid carnivorans) are extinct by 50 million years in the future.

* In the ''Literature/SprawlTrilogy'', horses are extinct from an equine plague, and even attempts to revive them via cloning have failed.

** In a dialogue with Rose of Sharon Cassidy, the Courier says that he doesn't know what a fish is. Fishes are not extinct in the ''Fallout'' universe (in-game, some can even be found in Lake Mead), but considering that someone would not know what a fish is, it implies that they are at least at risk of extinction.

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'':
** In ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'', Mr. House mentions that cats are extinct, although it conflicts with previous and future lore--in ''VideoGame/Fallout2'' cats are mentioned as being hunted for their meat, while ''VideoGame/Fallout4'' shows cats in person. Considering that Mr. House only sees the outside world through his Securitrons, it's possible that he assumed cats are extinct because there's none in the Mojave wasteland.
** In a dialogue with Rose of Sharon Cassidy, the Courier says that he doesn't know what a fish is. Fishes are not extinct in the Fallout universe (in game, some can even be found in Lake Mead), but considering that someone would not know what a fish is, it implies that they are at least at risk of extinction.

* The introduction ''Literature/{{Expedition}}'' notes that pretty much ''all'' megafauna is at the brink of extinction, claiming that, barring humans, nothing larger than the Norway rat exists outside of zoos, and even the animals in zoos are badly mutated.

* In the ''Series/Sliders'' episode “[[Recap/SlidersS03E02DoubleCross Double Cross]]”, Congress in Logan’s World has recently placed horses on the endangered species list.

* ''Comic/FirstKnife'' is set in a distant future (the 33rd Century to be exact) where an event called the Anthropocene Thermal Maximum killed off a lot of animals. Many of the remaining animals (such as cows and horses) were purged into oblivion by the Devas.