Current Events > The passenger pigeon going extinct is a wild story.

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon

Most abundant bird in America going from insanely huge flocks that blackened the skies to being completely wiped out within a few decades.

Their flocks were so huge that people made a game of hunting them and the body count was such that 30,000 dead pigeons were required for 1st place in one contest.

The last wild one was shot by some kid in an Ohio barn in 1900. Damn kid. I'd kick his ass, but he's probably an adult by now.

Humans suck

Pow_Pow_Punishment posted...

I'd kick his ass, but he's probably an adult by now.

Pretty confident they are no longer an adult if the bird was shot in 1900.

Pow_Pow_Punishment posted...

I'd kick his ass, but he's probably an adult by now.

. . . Your understanding of the passage of time needs more refinement.

The last thylacine literally died from exposure in a zoo in the US, humans do suck

I remember reading about this when I was a kid and feeling a sense of loss.

ellis123 posted...

Pretty confident they are no longer an adult if the bird was shot in 1900.

__starsnostars posted...

. . . Your understanding of the passage of time needs more refinement.

What are you guys, his relatives or something? I'm sure he's fine without you defending his actions.

Weirdly the first time I heard this story in detail was in a side chapter in Witch on the Holy Night. A Japanese visual novel about mages fighting each other. It did a great job selling how tragic it was.

Humans disgust me.

So what happened? Was it because of hunting they became extinct

It's nice to hear that some on here are familiar with this. I can't say I'm in a lot of conversations where I bring this topic up, but the few times I have been with people into zoology, they'd never even heard of the passenger pigeon.

That's crazy to think about considering it was ubiquitous with American life before the 1900s and now hardly anyone knows about it. The kid who shot the last one, for example, showed his parents the dead bird and they knew what it was from THEIR childhood, but he did not. It's like a piece of classic American culture was wiped out with the species itself.

AsucaHayashi posted...

So what happened? Was it because of hunting they became extinct

As usual, habitat destruction did most of the work, but hunting was #2 on the list.

AsucaHayashi posted...

So what happened? Was it because of hunting they became extinct

The species had an unusually extreme flocking behavior, which made them prime targets for mass competitive hunting and trapping. People didn't even have to aim, they just had to point their shotgun at the air and multiple dead birds would drop.

By comparison, another classic American bird, the mourning dove, is more solitary and coalesces in pairs or small groups so they couldn't be killed in such large numbers at once and they are common to this day as a result.

Pow_Pow_Punishment posted...

It's nice to hear that some on here are familiar with this. I can't say I'm in a lot of conversations where I bring this topic up, but the few times I have been with people into zoology, they're never even heard of the passenger pigeon.

I'm like this but with the Sea Mink.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_mink

Hunted to extinction by the fur trade.

pokedude900 posted...

Weirdly the first time I heard this story in detail was in a side chapter in Witch on the Holy Night. A Japanese visual novel about mages fighting each other. It did a great job selling how tragic it was.

That's really interesting, I looked it up. Thanks for sharing the reference and your experience.

Tyranthraxus posted...

I'm like this but with the Sea Mink.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_mink

Hunted to extinction by the fur trade.

Really interesting, never heard of this one. Wish we had more information about it.

I remember reading about that a while ago in an article about a weird set of mistakes in Charlie's Angels, which I'll link below. Basically at the time it was debated whether or not humans even could cause a species to go extinct. And then we did with the passenger pigeon. And that was part of the reason for the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, which amongst other things limits what kind of birds can be kept as pets in the USA, and thus what can be used in a movie (in the sense of a trained animal, obviously you can film any bird just doing whatever in the wild, but then you're limited to them just doing whatever they are doing).

https://slate.com/culture/2025/05/birds-movies-charlies-angels-2000-pygmy-nuthatch.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo

:/

I went to trivia night on Wednesday and one of the questions was 'what caused passengers pigeons to go extinct'. I wanted to put humans but was overruled in favor of house cats.

We still got second, but that six point question would have tied us for first.

JlM posted...

I went to trivia night on Wednesday and one of the questions was 'what caused passengers pigeons to go extinct'. I wanted to put humans but was overruled in favor of house cats.

We still got second, but that six point question would have tied us for first.

Is that like a pub quiz?

JlM posted...

I went to trivia night on Wednesday and one of the questions was 'what caused passengers pigeons to go extinct'. I wanted to put humans but was overruled in favor of house cats.

We still got second, but that six point question would have tied us for first.

Hah, what the hell? As bad as cats are for native species, who would think they'd do more damage than humans?

I'm reading a book right now that describes how people would light sulfur under the pigeons' roosts at night and then come in the morning to collect the bodies or devise huge sky nets to catch and kill the swarm of birds. Mass torture of passenger pigeons in new ways seemed to become its own sport.

It is mind boggling there are no known photos of a wild passenger pigeon. The only photos of living passenger pigeons are of a stool pigeon and birds living in captivity. Such a shame we don't have a photo of their massive flocks.

125 isn't too far fetched from reality. The oldest living person was born in 1906. The kid could have been alive 10 years ago.

Pow_Pow_Punishment posted...

It's nice to hear that some on here are familiar with this. I can't say I'm in a lot of conversations where I bring this topic up, but the few times I have been with people into zoology, they'd never even heard of the passenger pigeon.

That's crazy to think about considering it was ubiquitous with American life before the 1900s and now hardly anyone knows about it. The kid who shot the last one, for example, showed his parents the dead bird and they knew what it was from THEIR childhood, but he did not. It's like a piece of classic American culture was wiped out with the species itself.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/a/a2170f53.jpg

Sad. Eat pigeons are everywhere though and just shit ok everything, including my car

Tyranthraxus posted...

As usual, habitat destruction did most of the work, but hunting was #2 on the list.

Hunting was the main reason passenger pigeons died off. Essentially the telegraph and railroad killed them. The telegraph allowed hunters to have super precise and up to date knowledge of where masses of birds where nesting. Railroads allowed for cheap transportation of them across the country so any killed passenger pigeon would bring in at least some money.

It's so sad when a species goes extinct, especially when it could've been prevented.

Pow_Pow_Punishment posted...

I'm reading a book right now that describes how people would light sulfur under the pigeons' roosts at night and then come in the morning to collect the bodies or devise huge sky nets to catch and kill the swarm of birds. Mass torture of passenger pigeons in new ways seemed to become its own sport.

Is it A Feathered River Across the Sky by chance? I highly recommend the book if you interested in passenger pigeons, it is insanely detailed. Probably boring and too much for an average reader, but perfect for someone who can't enough about passenger pigeons.

Also, the author discovered there were at least 2 more wild birds that lived on past the 1900 Ohio passenger pigeon. One was killed in 1901 in Illinois, and the body still exists in local college. Another was shot in Indiana in 1902. The is no true conclusive proof for this one, but is likely true since a few decades after he shot the bird there is correspondence between him and another person about the the bird and the shooter regrets that the bird rotted away in his attic and he threw it out. Very unlikely someone was be lying when writing such a letter like that.

It indeed shows how horrible humans have been. This was also before women literally got rights and genocide was considered morally fine (the idea, since the term wasnt invented yet)

I remember reading that the passenger pigeon likely would have gone extinct even without overhunting because the very concept of American expansion, industrialization and city building was too destructive to their evolutionary adaptation

No clue if that's actually true. Seems kind of farfetched considering the sheer number of them and the size of Amerikaland.

it's not true, they would have been fine in north america. it was the telegraph railroad combo, as YellowSUV articulated

DodogamaRayBrst posted...

I remember reading that the passenger pigeon likely would have gone extinct even without overhunting because the very concept of American expansion, industrialization and city building was too destructive to their evolutionary adaptation

No clue if that's actually true. Seems kind of farfetched considering the sheer number of them and the size of Amerikaland.

The passenger would very likely be around if it was never hunted on a mass scale. The population would likely be much lower though than its peak however.

https://youtube.com/shorts/L4GT-U1qhfk

HighSeraph posted...

The last thylacine literally died from exposure in a zoo in the US, humans do suck

Most scientists believe there were still some alive in the wild after this one died, although the one in question was the last documented one.

Pow_Pow_Punishment posted...

Most abundant bird in America going from insanely huge flocks that blackened the skies to being completely wiped out within a few decades.

I don't think people understand what this statement shows. They LITERALLY blocked out the sun for MILES and it would be raining shit wherever they flew. That's how many there were.

Can you imagine seeing that in person?

Murmurations are insane in videos, but those don't BLOCK THE SUN, you can still see through them and I don't think it rains shit.

These birds would flock so fucking hard they'd perch on top of each other and demolish tree branches with how many would be perched on them. The number of them can't ever be really visualized but through descriptions like that, and it still blows my mind.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/a/afb0359e.jpg

I think this picture is at a declining point for them, but as you can see it's still A LOT.

I dismounted, seated myself on an eminence, and began to mark with my pencil, making a dot for every flock that passed. In a short time finding the task which I had undertaken impracticable, as the birds poured in in countless multitudes, I rose and, counting the dots then put down, found that 163 had been made in twenty-one minutes. I traveled on, and still met more the farther I proceeded. The air was literally filled with Pigeons; the light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse; the dung fell in spots, not unlike melting flakes of snow, and the continued buzz of wings had a tendency to lull my senses to repose ... I cannot describe to you the extreme beauty of their aerial evolutions, when a hawk chanced to press upon the rear of the flock. At once, like a torrent, and with a noise like thunder, they rushed into a compact mass, pressing upon each other towards the center. In these almost solid masses, they darted forward in undulating and angular lines, descended and swept close over the earth with inconceivable velocity, mounted perpendicularly so as to resemble a vast column, and, when high, were seen wheeling and twisting within their continued lines, which then resembled the coils of a gigantic serpent ... Before sunset I reached Louisville, distant from Hardensburgh fifty-five miles. The Pigeons were still passing in undiminished numbers and continued to do so for three days in succession.[50]

-John James Audubon https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/animals/watching-devastation

This passage is breathtaking IMO.

EpicMickeyDrew posted...

Is that like a pub quiz?

Yeah, it was at a local brewey.

Pow_Pow_Punishment posted...

Hah, what the hell? As bad as cats are for native species, who would think they'd do more damage than humans?

To be fair, I did some research later and domestic cats HAVE caused dozens of extinctions, but the passenger pigeon wasn't one of them.

Get rekt pigeons

Pow_Pow_Punishment posted...

What are you guys, his relatives or something? I'm sure he's fine without you defending his actions.

I'm more concerned that you wanted to kick his ass until you realized he was an adult, instead of the other way around.

Pow_Pow_Punishment posted...

Hah, what the hell? As bad as cats are for native species, who would think they'd do more damage than humans?

pet cats kill by far more birds than any other human-related direct source. so I don't think it's a totally unreasonable guess. thing is usually I don't think "oh we killed a lot of X animal" leads to extinction that often, it's a lot more likely to be some sort of generalized large-scale cause like loss of habitat

YellowSUV posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/a/a2170f53.jpg

Hey, they aren't forgotten. I joked about passenger pigeons just this month!

We didn't receive any messages, and we definitely did not shoot this delicious, plump-breasted pigeon.

YellowSUV posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/a/a2170f53.jpg

This reminds me of a theory I read that Lyme disease flourished when the pigeons, who ate a lot of acorns, went extinct because there were many more acorns to sustain a particular type of mouse that served as a host for ticks.