Tibbles

Tibbles is remembered as one of the most consequential — and most misunderstood — cats in history. In 1894 she belonged to David Lyall, an assistant lighthouse keeper on tiny Stephens Island, off the coast of New Zealand. The cat began bringing him the bodies of a small, flightless bird found nowhere else on Earth. Lyall, who had an interest in natural history, sent specimens to scientists, who realised it was an entirely new and remarkable species: the Stephens Island wren (Lyall's wren), one of the very few flightless songbirds ever known. Within roughly a year the bird had vanished, and the tidy legend grew up that a single cat had personally hunted an entire species to extinction. The truth is more complicated: a whole population of feral cats descended from pregnant strays soon overran the island, and the wren was already confined to one tiny refuge — but Tibbles' name became forever attached to the story. Her tale is now a famous cautionary lesson in how devastating introduced predators can be to island wildlife.