A Population of Billions May Have Contributed to This Bird’s Extinction

How did they taste? Perhaps that sped their demise. I imagine that Pleistocene megafauna must have been slow and tasty. Moreover, I suspect that the American bison only began to dominate the Great Plains after all of the competing plains megafauna had been killed off (e.g.: horses, camels, giant sloths, mastadons, wooly mammoths, etc.). It would be nice to see if science can bring back some species from preserved DNA in museum collections.

This looks a bit like a "too big to fail" evolution scenario.

Lemme see if I've got this straight. There were billions of passenger pigeons. They were a very successful species. Europeans show up and and in decades they are extinct. And it was their DNA??!! Sorry, but I find it difficult to believe that being mercilessly hunted , having their environment altered etc by short sighted, greedy, stupid humans didn't play a bigger role. Virtually every species we've encountered that we either feared or wanted to exploit has faired much better. Grizzlies, bison, wolves, whales, you name it, nothing has survived our insane will and ability to kill unless we decide to let them live. No genetic material, with the exception of a gene that produces body armor, ever will. Now, of course, our numbers alone, even without overt hunting, will likely doom most other species on earth (and us in the end) due to our need to over populate and destroy every environment we encounter. Evolution can never prepare a species for this kind of environmental disruption.

It seems utterly preposterous that a bird that existed in such quantities that resided on an continent as large and as sparsely populated as North America in the early twentieth century could have been hunted to extinction. Surely there is another reason.

This only reinforces the imperative that space exploration by humans be defunded and stopped - this genocidal species must remain quarantined on this one planet and not allowed to spread and infect the rest of the universe. Let it eventually turn upon itself and self-immolate without doing further damage to other worlds.

Lyme disease is theorized to have become more prevalent with the absence of passenger pigeons. Acorns were a major part of the diet of those pigeons, and after they vanished, rodents and deer, who carry the ticks that causes lyme disease, filled the dietary ecological niche of the pigeons. We may have harmed ourselves in destroying this species. https://www.fws.gov/asheville/htmls/podcast_transcripts/Unforeseen_conse...

Interesting, thanks NYT. That being said, all that this study shows is 1. a gigantic passenger pigeon population until half of the 19th century, followed by its total disappearance in less than 5 decades, and 2. low genetic diversity in passenger pigeon population. The study also reminds us of the fact that "passenger pigeon population had been enormous for at least 20,000 years", including the last ice age. That means that there cannot possibly be a direct cause-effect relationship between their extinction and their low genetic diversity, as they've clearly been able to adapt to very different climates. So you have to find the direct cause for extinction elsewhere. Unfortunately, this article doesn't discuss that aspect of the problem. In the meanwhile, we can only observe that less than a century after the beginning of the industrial revolution that changed the climate AND the planet's habitats, a species with an "enormous population" became extinct. Is this an isolated phenomenon, as one might think reading this article? No, shows E. Kolbert in her famous book "The Sixth Extinction". Never before a huge amount of species disappearing has been caused by the increase of one single species, but this time, that's exactly what's happening, and that species called itself "homo sapiens". As the current White House shows, many Americans are still completely ignorant when it comes to the 6th Extinction, so I hope the NYT will start informing us better and more often!!

Please read the haunting and brilliant book PILGRIMS OF THE AIR, written by John Wilson Foster. It is essential reading not only on the extinction of the passenger pigeon, but on how society destroys both the earth and its creatures in its relentless need to master. Alas we have a President who thinks nothing of reversing a ban on the importing trophies of lions and elephants. Mr. Wilson Foster might have much to say about this subject.

Interesting article but it does not address a key factor in the extinction of the passenger pigeon. In Bruce Catton's memoir, "Waiting for the Morning Train: An American Boyhood," he tells how improvement in logging technology made it possible to clear-cut great forests of Michigan. Small-gauge railroad tracks laid perpendicular to the rivers allowed loggers to transport logs far further from the river than they would when limited to dragging logs to the river for transport to the sawmill. When the forests were gone the migratory passenger pigeons returned to find no place to roost. Take away habitat vital to any species and it will perish.

This is fascinating and alarming at the same time. I understand the scientific principles behind the theory, but I wonder whether it’s worth looking at this from another perspective. It has been shown that animals do get depressed. Some simply give up when conditions get too dire. Sows existing (don’t call it living) in gestation crates in factory farms are perfect examples of “learned helplessness” and despair in intelligent animals. Stressed animals (including humans) are more susceptible to illness. They do not thrive. It has also been shown (and I have read this here in the Times) that birds are much smarter and complex than we have long assumed. So isn’t it possible that these hyper-social pigeons, upon seeing their social groups literally blown apart, grew so confused and stressed that breeding and chick raising suffered? Stressed birds may abandon nests or fail to incubate the eggs adequately. If these bird massacres (don’t call it hunting) happened at nesting time, entire colonies might have lost that season’s chicks. Even if a nesting pair survived the carnage, they might be so unsettled that they would abandon their nest. I have seen this happen with other bird species. It’s just another perspective. Sometimes I get the impression that scientist get so deeply entwined with data that they forget the living, breathing, thinking, emotional animals they are studying.

If it's true that a passenger pigeon would be shot and the others would not fly off, that may be due to their genetics not accounting for the advent of humans and their efficient machinery. Who knew? What about other species' near misses of extinction? Buffalo and white tail deer would also be extinct were it not for hunting regulations. Environmental, deforestation and consumerism are taking toll on virtually every species. The common rabbit is endangered. And when we look at Indonesia, Asia S. America, their plight is horrific. Most due to relentless hunting. Sounds familiar. Fashionable feathers, furs, skins, trinkets of ivory, false aphrodisiacs, hubris ... You name it. Does anyone really need a polar bear skin rug or turtle soup? Genetic studies are fine to unearth mysteries and history, but us Humans are responsible just the same for destroying what's left.

The headline of this article is pure speculation, as is the title of the original paper. There isn't a shred of evidence that population size, or accompanying strong selection led to the demise of this bird. This is doubly disappointing because the real results (Passenger Pigeons were amazingly abundant up until their slaughter) goes ignored until one digs into the actual text. Why isn't reality enough? Why, as a scientist, should I feel compelled to make fanciful speculation the focus of research just to get popular press?

I read that when one passenger pigeon was shot by a hunter, the other birds would remain in place rather than fly away. Seems consistent with these findings.

From reading history, I understand there were railroad boxcars filled with dead passenger pigeons. They were hunted as vigorously and viciously as were buffalo. This story from Audubon offers what I think is a good explanation: http://www.audubon.org/magazine/may-june-2014/why-passenger-pigeon-went-...

Interesting. I wonder what other creatures are spread about the planet in the billions that may find themselves suddenly collapsing to extinction due to environmental changes.

John Audubon has been credited with being the most gifted avian artist that ever lived. He shot and killed every bird he painted and much of the money he made during his lifetime was from selling animal skins that in part helped to fund the printing of "Birds of America." Humans will always be responsible in some way, shape, form or degree in the extinction of Earth's beautiful creatures.

Researchers might try a similar genetic analysis on codfish, which existed in vast numbers throughout historic times but plunged dramatically in population size during the 1970s-80s. Irrespective of their genetic makeup, the ultimate cause of decline in both passenger pigeons and cod was overhunting and habitat destruction.

I have also heard the theory that the wide spread de-forestation of eastern hardwood forests also contributed to this birds demise. It was a one/two of commercial exploitation and massive habitat loss that fragmented populations below a sustainable level.

Perhaps the title should have something to do with allopatric speciation as well as just the numbers of the pigeons. Allopatric speciation is what happens when populations of a species become separated by a barrier and the changes in alleles accumulate between species - one population diverges and eventually a new species arises if enough changes occur. I have also heard that hunting coupled with the felling of forests where the pigeons lived had as much to do with the extinction of the birds and in a very short time too. Wipe out the forests where they thrive probably killed off more than just the pigeon but in a species that's rather homogeneous, well, that's a lesson for another species I know.

Wow, "science" can make a mistake? You mean all the theories they hold as dogma might actually not be correct? amazing.....