By: Parker Lemke
Billions of passenger pigeons once darkened the skies above North America. Then, in only a few decades, they became extinct.
Now, a recent collaboration between researchers from Taiwan and the University of Minnesota’s Bell Museum of Natural History marking the 100th anniversary of the species’ extinction can better explain how humans hunted the birds out of existence.
The study highlights why passenger pigeons are still relevant a century after the last of their kind died in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo on Sept. 1, 1914.