8/29/2023 0 Comments Extinct passenger pigeon![]() ![]() ![]() The very last passenger pigeon - a female named Martha - died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. Scientists including Gemma Murray, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California Santa Cruz, knew that passenger pigeons were hunted extensively, but wondered why they didn't survive in small pockets given their huge population. To find out more, the researchers looked at museum specimens and recovered DNA to analyze. Hodge issued a final report on the search in 1912, and reported that the final result is: no nestings reported, and there are no undecided cases and no. east of the Rocky Mountains. Passenger pigeon flocks were so large, people noted the birds would block out the sun when they flew by, and would take several hours to pass. But over just a few decades, the population was driven to extinction, and scientists now believe that the enormous size of the flocks may have played a role in their demise. Extinction of the Passenger Pigeon came with stunning rapidity. Passenger pigeons once numbered between three billion and five billion in North America as recently as the 19th century. They were similar in size to pigeons we see today, but orange and brown in colour. ![]()
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