The 8-foot-long Japanese sea lion—an even larger cousin of the Californian sea lion—was once native to the Sea of Japan and bred in vast numbers along the beaches of the Japanese islands and the Korean mainland. Sadly, the animals were hunted in enormous numbers, but not for the reason you might think: their meat was poor quality and bad-tasting, so they weren’t hunted for food, but rather for their skins (which were used to make leather), their bones (which were used in traditional medicines), their fat (which was rendered to make oil for oil lamps), and even their whiskers (which were used to make brushes and pipe cleaners). As recently as the early 1900s, more than 3000 sea lions were being killed every year in Japan, until the population collapsed to less than 50 individuals in 1915. Numbers remained low until the 1940s, when the maritime battles of the Second World War destroyed the last remaining colonies and much of their natural habitat. The last recorded (but unconfirmed) sighting was in 1974.