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There are 60 species of flightless birds walking the Earth today, but a new study reveals that there would be at least four times the number if it weren’t for human influences.
These findings were discovered by a team from University College London who compiled a list of all bird species known to have gone extinct since humans appeared on the planet.
A total of 581 bird species have disappeared since the late Pleistocene, 126,000 years ago, and 166 of them lacked the ability to fly.
The study determined that flightless birds thrived on most island groups around the world, with particular hotspots in New Zealand and Hawaii.
The researchers also determined that flightless birds were more likely to go extinct than those that flew, as they were an easy kill for humans.
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There are 60 species of flightless birds walking the Earth today, but a new study reveals that there would be at least four times the amount if it weren’t for human influences. This image shows a group of Moari that became extinct due to the humans who hunted them
The lead author, Dr. Ferran Sayol (UCL Center for Research on Biodiversity and the Environment and the University of Gothenburg, Sweden) said: “Human impacts have substantially altered most ecosystems around the world and caused the extinction of hundreds of animal species “.
‘This can distort evolutionary patterns, especially if the characteristics studied, such as the absence of flight in birds, make species more vulnerable to extinction. We have a partial picture of how evolution actually happens.’
For the study, the team created a long list of all known birds that have lived and gone extinct over the past 126,000 years.
Then they sifted through each one, calculating how many of them were unable to soar in the sky.
For the study, the team created a long list of all known birds that have lived and become extinct over the past 126,000 years. Then they sifted through each, calculating how many of them were unable to soar into the sky
Of the 581 bird species, the team narrowed the field of non-flyers to 166, who could still roam the Earth if not humans.
Birds that can’t fly were much more different than previous studies had assumed, the study shows.
The results also confirm that flightless species were also much more likely to become extinct than species that could fly.
Co-author Professor Tim Blackburn (UCL Center for Biodiversity and Environmental Research and the Institute of Zoology, ZSL) said, “Many bird species can become unable to fly in environments without their usual predators, for example. example on the islands “.
“Flying requires a lot of energy that birds can use for other purposes if they don’t need to take them into the air. Unfortunately, however, this makes them easier to prey if humans, and their associated rats and cats, suddenly show up.
Birds that can’t fly were much more different than previous studies had assumed, the study shows. The results also confirm that flightless species were also much more likely to go extinct than flightless species.
“Extinction has all too often been the result and is likely to continue as flightless birds are over-represented in global lists of threatened animals relative to avian species.”
Researchers report that most of the world’s island groups had flightless birds before humans arrived, occupying ecological niches that would otherwise have been filled by mammals, with particular hotspots in New Zealand (26 species such as the extinct moa) and Hawaii (23 species, all of which are extinct, such as the flightless goose).
The addition of extinct birds to the global picture of bird diversity reveals that flightlessness has evolved in birds at least four times more often than we would expect if we only looked at live birds.
Dr Sayol said: ‘Our study shows that the evolution of flightlessness in birds is a widespread phenomenon.
“Today, most flightless species are penguins, rails or ostriches and their relatives.”
“Now, only 12 bird families have flightless species, but before humans caused extinctions, the number was at least 40.”
“Without these extinctions we would share the planet with flightless owls, woodpeckers and ibises, but all of these are sadly gone now.”
WHICH SPECIES ARE SCIENTISTS WORKING TO GET OUT OF EXTINCTION?
De-extinction, or the process of reviving missing species, is becoming increasingly common among researchers.
Cloning is the most common form of de-extinction, but scientists can also insert ancient DNA sequences into eggs of living species.
Harvard researchers believe they may be able to bring the small moa bush back from extinction using this method.
Scientists are also close to bringing the dodo out of extinction.
A scientist shows a reconstructed model of the dodo (right) next to a skeleton of the extinct bird in 1938. The flightless bird became extinct in the late 1600s
The dodo is an extinct flightless bird from Mauritius, an island east of Madagascar, in the late 1600s.
Aside from the dodo, scientists are also trying to revive the passenger pigeon, a wild pigeon that became extinct in the early 1900s.
The passenger pigeon mainly resided in North America, mainly around the Great Lakes.
Scientists also reconstructed the genome of the Tasmanian tiger, native to Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea.
It is believed to have become extinct in the 20th century and is known for its striped lower back.
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