Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but I spent an hour of my life listening to Ms. Sarah Suta and friend discuss – among other things, but primarily that – the life and the extinction of the passenger pigeon. (It happened in 1914 – spoiler alert!) Therefore, let us talk about this bird.
The passenger pigeon, Ectopistes migratorius, evolved about 5.33 MYA – that is a couple
of million years before the appearance of the Australopithecus primates in
Africa, and unlike them, the pigeon lived only in North America. Despite being,
well, a pigeon, it did not look much like the feral pigeon/rock dove that is
found in the cities worldwide – rather it looked more like a mourning dove, for
example: it was relatively slick, streamlined, and with a long tail. A body
shape adapted for long distance travel, put otherwise.
Off topic: the doves and pigeons are more varied
than people realize it, but they can be sorted into two baseline groups:
slender and bulky. The dodo was an extreme case, but the other members of its’ ‘tribe’,
the Raphini, are also big and bulky, as far as flying birds go; on the other
hand, the passenger pigeon was a member of the Columbini tribe, and just its’
relatives, it flew just fine; in fact…
…In fact, the life and the ecology of the passenger
pigeon was defined by flight: it was a migratory bird, travelling the North
American continent to avoid winter and to find food. Like the other pigeons and
doves, this bird was primarily herbivorous, and ate fruits and berries, as well
as grains, cereals, and seeds: food that is easily digestible and found mostly
on the trees. That is important, again, because unlike the homebody dodos, the
passenger pigeons were migrants. What next?
The passenger pigeon’s migratory lifestyle was its’
defining feature: for centuries, the native North Americans had the humongous
flocks of those birds as a part of life. Did they eat the pigeon? Yes, obviously,
but their hunting weapons were… simple enough for the natives to be incapable
to dent the great flocks, plus the passenger pigeons were rather adapted to
co-existing with the non-too-friendly native North American humans, so they
were able to handle it. Then the European settlers arrived. Everything changed.
Native North Americans lived in a homeostasis with
nature, they conceived themselves to be a part of it, and adjusted their
attitudes, and lifestyles, accordingly. The Europeans never had this idea, and
adjusted the natural world to suit their needs. In case of the passenger pigeon,
it meant that the European settlers began to kill and eat them in bulk; in a
matter of decades, (say, from 1850s to 1900s), the great flocks of the passenger
pigeons were gone.
Could the settlers and their American descendants have
co-existed with the passenger pigeons? Not how, say, Colossal Biosciences would
deliver this idea: the great flocks of those migratory birds did decimate the
crops of fruits, and grain fields, and the like, and they would return time and
again, making farming, such as it was, hardly possible. Instead, the passenger
pigeons would have to be managed, (think modern forestry), maybe domesticated,
maybe not. People have domesticated pigeons, obviously¸ but they were the ‘Old
World pigeons’ that belonged to an entirely different genus from the passenger
pigeon, (it had no immediate relatives, BTW), plus those pigeons were
domesticated to be served as messengers and mail carriers – at first; the
elaborate domestic breeds that don’t look like pigeons and certainly don’t
appear to be able to function in the wild came later, when the need in carrier
pigeons began to decrease. (However, some still exist even today). Whether the
passenger pigeon could have been domesticated and managed as the modern ‘domestic’
pigeon was, is unknown.
The modern ‘domestic’ pigeon has a stable feral population,
but unlike the extinct passenger pigeon, it has a broader diet and much smaller
flocks, and it has larger egg clutches and/or reproductive rates: the passenger
pigeon’s population was so huge and so stable, at first, that the passenger
pigeons managed their population growth slowly: they could afford to take ‘hits’
that would hurt the populations of their less numerous cousins. The passenger
pigeons were even able to survive the depredations of the colonists and their
descendants – at first, and then they did not.
The Americans did try to preserve and/or to manage
the last passenger pigeon populations in the U.S., for various reasons – but they
failed. In the 1890s-1900s the concept of nature conservation was too new to be
successful, plus the perpetually migrating, (ok, almost perpetually migrating,
but still), were not the easiest birds to manage. Now, in the modern times, the
situation is different, (technically speaking), but the idea of bringing back
the passenger pigeon is not being discussed, at least not in public.
Why? Aside from the practical point of view – the passenger
pigeon was perfectly edible to humans – the birds were more colorful,
beautiful, and natural than the modern RL feral pigeon/rock dove is. They can
fit into the modern world more easily than the dire wolf and the moa birds. They
are also easier to manage than the dire wolf and the moa birds, and – easier to
create, perhaps? Colossal Biosciences are ‘recreating’ the moa by modifying the
tinamou with emu genes, or vice versa. Whatever hybrid will emerge, if it is viable and non-sterile, it still will not be a moa.
…Of course, with a ‘recreated’ passenger pigeon it
will be the same situation: it will not be the original passenger pigeon
species that died out by WWI; it will be something entirely new. However, it
will be easier to pass the bird as the ‘recreated passenger pigeon’ and it will
be easier to manage. However, no – CB has focused itself on the moa and the
dire wolf (and whatever else it is doing behind the scenes). Sad, really.
…But not as sad as me watching a pair of young women
painting miniature plastic figurines of apparent passenger pigeons for an hour,
(that’s how long they painted, not how long I watched), while quietly
discussing the abovementioned info about the bird. They have read the Wikipedia
article about it and that is it. They had a private conversation about it,
painted some plastic, and put it into the livestream. Oh, and there was a
Kickstarter involved that had people send Sarah, Aimee, and friends money for
Sarah and Aimee to do the above. Suddenly, Lindsey Nikole does not seem to be
so mercenary anymore, and the CB – not such frauds.
That, however, is a story for another time. See you
all soon!
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