With the end of 2018 comes the near-certain reality that some critters, after millions of years of existence on Earth, are gone for good. 

There’s little question that humanity’s continued exploitation of wild animals and the depletion of their habitats have left many species either clinging to existence, or at worst, extinct. Today’s extinctions are happening 100 to 1000 times faster than the expected, natural rate of die-offs. It’s grim.

“The topic gets a hold of people in a way that few things do,” Sea McKeon, a biology professor at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and co-host of “The Naturalist Podcast,” said in an interview.  

2017 saw the extinctions of multiple lizard species and a bat. This year, scientists brought news that three bird species that were thought potentially extinct, have gone completely extinct. 

Using a novel analysis, biologists at the conservation group BirdLife International published research concluding that Hawaii’s insect-eating forest-bird, the poʻouli, is now extinct, along with two Brazilian songbirds: the Cryptic Treehunter and the Alagoas Foliage-gleaner.

A charismatic blue parrot, however, was perhaps the year’s most publicized extinction. The Spix’s Macaw — a notable character in Disney’s animated film Rio — is now believed to be extinct in the wild. Some 50 of the talkative birds, unable to persist in the wilderness, are kept alive in captivity. 

But it’s often the lesser known or rarely-heard-of species — like the Cryptic Treehunter — that bite the dust. 

“The reality of extinction is the disappearances that nobody notices,” said McKeon.

Famous or not, declaring any species extinct or likely extinct is a difficult endeavor. 

“It is very challenging to know whether a species has truly gone extinct,” Trond Larsen, an ecologist at the environmental organization Conservation International, said over email.

SEE ALSO: Judge halts grizzly hunting because Yellowstone bears need to find more diverse sex partners

“For example, if we spend weeks or even months searching for individuals in the last known location of a species, what does it mean if we don’t find any?” added Larsen, who spends considerable time assessing species in deep rainforest environments.

So when an extinction is finally declared, it’s not something scientists — who are typically hesitant to make such indisputable claims — do lightly.

“It butts against scientific conservatism,” said McKeon.

The bad news beyond extinction

2018 also saw species that may go extinct at any moment.  

Of note is the vaquita, the dolphin-like porpoise that lives in the Sea of Cortez. The vaquita, only discovered in the late 1950s, is the smallest marine mammal on Earth. 

And there are less than 30 wild vaquita left. 

“We’re about to lose it,” said McKeon.

At this point, he said, there’s not much conservationists can do, but watch. 

Catching such wild marine creatures and trying to keep them alive in a captive setting isn’t just hugely expensive, it might hasten the species’ demise.

“We’re about to lose it”

A total extinction — stoked by illegal fishing practices wherein the small vaquita are unintentionally caught in nets — may soon be this endearing critter’s fate.

“That could come next year [2019]. “It could be this year. At some point it becomes a dice roll,” said McKeon.

On land, the northern white rhino — a subspecies of the white rhinos — are similarly imperiled. The last male died at the heavily-guarded Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya this year. Now, just two females remain.

Progressive embryonic scientists, however, are developing experimental, unprecedented means of saving the rhino subspecies. 

This year, scientists successfully made a rhino embryo using the sperm from long-dead males. But achieving a live birth through a surrogate rhino mother is a whole other laudable, though ambitious, challenge. Resurrecting the northern white rhinos is an even greater leap.

Rhinos and other charismatic beasts, however significant, often overshadow today’s tiny, troubled critters, particularly those with exoskeletons. 

Insects populations, a foundation of the planet’s food chain, continue to plummet over vast swathes of the world’s forests.

They have been notably impacted by climate change. And as temperatures are expected to continue rising, they will become increasingly susceptible to widespread environmental change — changes too fast for species to naturally adapt to. 

“Over the past twenty years, I have observed rapid declines and local extinctions of insects in the Andes-Amazon region,” said Larson. “Many species are moving up mountains where temperatures are cooler, but eventually there is nowhere left for them to go.” 

The insects’ plight is compounded by the direct destruction of their homes.

“I will confidently say that the destruction of high-quality tropical forest is hurting our tropical insect population more than we know,” Robin Verble, associate professor of biological sciences at Missouri University of Science and Technology, said in an interview.  

“We’re seeing up to 75 percent declines in some places,” added McKeon, noting that insect declines are happening beyond the tropics, in places like Europe.

This makes spotting declining or nearly extinct species problematic because biologists aren’t nearly finished identifying the world’s critters.

“We’re still actively cataloging and describing species,” said Verble.

Amid the dark extinction news, though, there are encouraging developments.

Larson cites the new 2 million acre swath of Amazon rainforest in Peru’s Yaguas National Park, a place “where the world’s highest biodiversity is concentrated,” he said.

It’s in these vast, uninterrupted chunks of preserved land that many wild species can continue to thrive, largely free of human influence. 

“One 10 acre preserve is better than 10 one acre preserves,” noted Verble.

Critically endangered species have also shown signs of rebounding.

The great, black California condor — which was only saved by drastic conservation measures — showed gradual signs of resiliency in the wild this year. For the first time in decades, a wild-born condor left its nest and flew into the wide California sky. 

“That’s been a success story,” said McKeon.

In the world of conservation, little victories can mean a lot. But beyond heroic efforts to stymie the end of some species lies major population losses — the precursors to extinction. And unfortunately, it’s now hitting the bottom of the food web.

“Insects power the world in a real way — they make the world work,” said McKeon. “We’re dropping those numbers radically.”

“That should scare people.”

You can fire him from Facebook and remove him from working on the Oculus VR technology he helped pioneer, but you can’t stop him from letting his inner geek run wild.

Ousted Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey is still very much the same boy who’s obsessed with VR. Case in point: Despite being fired from Oculus, ostensibly for his pro-Trump political views, he’s still finding ways to improve Oculus’s VR headsets, namely the all-in-one Oculus Go.

SEE ALSO: The best tech of 2018

Since leaving Oculus, Luckey’s taken to his own blog to post reviews, mods, and general thoughts on advancements in current AR and VR technologies.

In his latest blog post, the Luckey shared a detailed look at several modifications he made to the Oculus Go.

While the Oculus Go was lauded for its clean design, simple setup, and high-res display, like many products it’s not without some shortcomings.

The three biggest cons for Luckey are battery life, light leakage, and input. So Luckey did what any tinkerer would do: he fixed them on his own.

To extend battery life from about two hours to over three, he added a custom battery that attaches magnetically via a pogo pin system. And it’s swappable! Removing the Go’s built-in battery from the headset itself also helped re-balance the headset, distributing weight from being front-heavy to the rest of your head.

Solving the light leakage (particularly from the soft mask) was also another easy mod: just dye it black so the lenses reflect less light into your eyes.

Another mod adds connectivity for a physical keyboard, which can be used in VR to type. (Of course, you’ll need to be a touch typist to benefit from this upgrade.)

Luckey dubs the entire Oculus Go mod the “Oculus GoBlack” edition and we have to admit it’s spiffy, especially the see-through front that exposes all the circuitry.

On the surface it’s just Luckey being his regular ol’ self: a boy modding things together. But read between the lines and he’s clearly trying to show Facebook’s deficiency with hardware. Sure, Mark Zuckerberg may be a huge believer in VR, but he doesn’t get it the way Luckey does. 

Oculus is still on track to release its more advanced standalone VR headset, the Oculus Quest, in early 2019, but I’m now a little worried they might drop the ball on the details — details Luckey maybe could’ve helped spot and improve if he were still with the company.

Firing Luckey was one thing, but most recently Oculus co-founder and former company CEO Brian Iribe also left Facebook.

“So much has happened since the day we founded Oculus in July 2012,” Iribe wrote in a goodbye post on his Facebook page. “I never could have imagined how much we would accomplish and how far we would come. And now, after six incredible years, I am moving on.”

For now, anyone can go and follow Luckey’s instructions to improve their own Oculus Go (warning: it’ll void your headset warranty). But you have to wonder: If Luckey can’t stay away from Oculus and VR, maybe it’s time he started a new VR company.

If you despise slasher films, hate any scene that’ll make you toss your popcorn, and flee spooky previews let alone full-length fright fests, then here’s something really terrifying: Hollywood’s horror industry is coming for you. 

Whether you’ve heard it called a resurgence, a renaissance, or (ugh) scary movies “getting good,” anyone within spitting distance of a box office knows something is up with the horror genre. In the past few years, a storm of scary films with big name stars and high art aspirations has swept over theaters with support from major studios, awards committees, and mainstream audiences. 

SEE ALSO: The winners and losers of Trump comedy in 2018

From Halloween’s victorious (and lucrative) return to a batch of original nightmares we didn’t know we needed, here’s how 2018 made the elusive, modern-day horror renaissance 100% official.

Looking back on horror history

Let’s set one thing straight right now. Horror did not—I repeat did not—“get good” in 2018. Horror has always been good, but many people are just now getting to the party. (If that’s you, totally cool. Hope you brought chips.) 

In very broad strokes, horror, maybe more than any other genre, has tracked our societal anxieties like a culturally keyed in Freddy Krueger. From George Albert Smith’s 1897 short The X-Ray Fiend, depicting the unsettling abilities of then newly-invented technology, all the way to Jordan Peele’s take on racial tension in 2017’s Get Out, year after year we have seen the horror industry bottle our most prominent fears for cinematic success.

Of course, 2018 audiences think contemporary horror is the best—it’s what they’re living. But more than being topical, 2018’s horror lineup has been special because of the innovative, nuanced approaches we have seen creators take towards universal fears.

2018’s horror lineup in a nutshell

Scary movie creators took a lot of big swings this year, but two major themes stood out: mental health and feminism.

Ari Aster’s Hereditary rightfully tops many outlets’ 2018 horror lists. Starring the incomparable Toni Collette (who is receiving tons of Oscar buzz for her role, by the way), this meditation on trauma captured what it is like for a family to be hijacked by grief. David Bruckner’s The Ritual and Susanne Bier’s Bird Box similarly lament the psychological terror that comes with loss. Notably, The Haunting of Hill House, a series reimagining Shirley Jackson’s novel of the same name, caused a torrent of mental health discussion amongst Netflix streamers—and that’s no surprise considering the rise of mental health conditions in the United States.

On the feminist front, films like CAM and Suspiria went to extremes to reflect on female sexuality and loss of agency, boring in on some central themes of the #MeToo movement. Both films did well with audiences, but no one took back the night quite like Jamie Lee Curtis with her return to the Halloween franchise.

Smashing box office records with a lifetime gross of over $253 million, 2018’s Halloween had old and new fans flocking to see the genre’s most infamous final girl take on Michael Myers one last time. And while the nostalgia was indeed phenomenal fun, the film’s feminist undertones and modern takes on femaleness played no small part in allowing it to take a bite out of audiences.

Hitting on a smattering of less impactful but still ridiculously fun tropes, we had A Quiet Place, Overlord, The Predator, Mandy, The Nun, and Slender Man. Collectively, those six films—a mixture of speciality indies and mainstream releases that make up just a small slice of the overall horror pie—earned a little under a billion dollars at the box office and explored dozens of new, thrilling ways to terrify us.

2019 and beyond

All of that is to say, the horror industry is doing unmistakably well right now. That should be exciting for even the biggest of scaredy cats. 

Horror allows audiences and creators to talk openly about some of the most uncomfortable, shameful, and disquieting parts of the human experience. As more horror enthusiasts emerge from the woodworks and join that conversation, the overall quality of the scary stories we obsess over will likely continue to improve, providing a needed outlet for the culture of tense conflict we currently inhabit.

Looking towards 2019 and 2020, we can already anticipate some major opportunities for success—including sequels to A Quiet Place and It, another installment in the Conjuring franchise, Jordan Peele’s Us, plus remakes of Pet Sematary and Child’s Play. 

But while we wait for those new things that go bump in the night, I highly encourage horror fans to look into the haunted archives and find scary stories of the past. If nothing else, it’s a way of learning to grapple with our fears—and God knows we have plenty of those—as we head deeper into the unknown cavern of nightmares yet to come.