There have been a number of species of animals that have long faced their end. And as society would have it, the only two that can be blamed are either humans or the changing climate. Who is the culprit?

When it comes to six large mammals that used to live 10,000 years ago - the woolly rhinoceros, woolly mammoth, wild horse, reindeer, bison, and musk ox - researchers have found that both climate change and humans are at fault.

Based on the study led by Eske Willerslev of the Center for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen, climate ups and downs were prevalent - from climate similar to today, to glacial periods such as the ice age. With these changing climates, the animals migrated to other locations, looking for warmer places to thrive.

During this ice age, the population of the 6 animals was fluctuating. From the ice age, climate went back to what it was before the glacial period, and the animals again sought for a place to survive.

However, with the boom of human population, places to thrive in became scarce. This increase in human population lead to the extinction of the woolly mammoth and rhinoceros, and the wild horse, while the other 3 were fortunate enough to avoid extinction.

With these findings, Eline Lorenzen, from the University of Copenhagen and the first author of the study, said that experts will now have a hard time predicting how existing mammals will respond to future global climate change. But Beth Shapiro, the Shaffer Associate Professor of Biology at Penn State University, noted that their study may still help predict the fate of populations threatened by climate change and habitat alteration.

Today though, similar findings were observed with endangered animals that we have at present. With climate change ever present, more so with the help of human activity, endangered animals could face a similar fate to that of those three unfortunate mammals.

According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, animals in places such as the Alps, mountains of Queensland in Australia, and the forests of Costa Rica may meet their doom.

With climate change affecting the temperature of the water around the world, Canada's polar bears who rely on melting sea ice and America's North Atlantic right whale whose food supply is dwindling because of warming waters are at risk of being extinct. South America's sea turtles may also die off because of rising sea levels.

Animals like China's giant panda or Indonessia's orangutan are also facing this risk because of climate change's effect on the forests where they live.