 Some of the threatened Lake Victoria cichlid species have captive "insurance" populations in zoos, public aquaria and among private aquarists, and a few species are extinct in the wild (only survive in captivity).Before the mass extinction that has occurred among the lake's cichlids in the last 50 years, about 90 percent of the native fish species in the lake were haplochromines.Disregarding the haplochromines, the only native Victoria cichlids are two critically endangered tilapia, the Singida tilapia or "ngege" ("Oreochromis esculentus") and Victoria tilapia ("O. variabilis").