When will humans achieve the first recovery of an extinct animal species? Sorry to start off with a trick question: technically, when a cloned baby Pyrenean ibex was born in 2003, it became the first mammalian species to undergo “de-extinction.” When the infant died from lung defects a few minutes later, the Pyrenean ibex also became the first animal species of any kind known to have suffered extinction a second time. That’s Homo sapiens for ya.