How are scientists able to say that a random species is extinct? Did they have to look everywhere?
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It’s not that complicated. It means we can’t find them anymore.
They know that certain animal lives in certain areas and when they are unable to find any after some time. They will declare them as extinct.
As you might imagine it’s easier to find some animals than others, which means we got it wrong from time to time.
Luckily it’s very easy to prove, when they were wrong. If you find any members of the species than they are not extinct.
To complement other answers, pandas have been declared extinct because no one found any for a century.
They can refer to the species as “extinct” when no living members of the species are known to remain anywhere. That doesn’t mean the species actually and truly is extinct, it just means that there is no available evidence to provide that it is not. Sometimes that’s easy – for example, large land-based animals like rhinos are easy to spot and count – and sometimes that’s hard because the creature is small such as an insect, or widespread, or living in a still-very-wild area.
Sometimes species that were thought to be extinct are rediscovered later on. Probably the best known example is the coelacanth, a large fish from the time of the dinosaurs that we found in the fossil record. It was thought to have been wiped out when the dinosaurs left… until they caught one in the 1930’s. Crazy looking fish too.
Others have their last remaining members captured and moved to zoos. Tasmanian wolves are an example here, there’s black-and-white footage of the last known one in captivity before the species was lost.
Its more they check for long enough and find nothing.
The fact that we know about them in the first place, and can track declining numbers for some, makes their absence the basis for that decision.
That said, some species turn into hide and seek champions, showing up long after they are “presumed extinct”
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