The first time Ben Novak saw a passenger pigeon, he fell to his kneews and remained there, speechless, for twenty minutes. He was sixteen years old. At thirteen, Novak had vowed to devote his life to resurrecting extinct animals. ~ Page 159
The fact that we can pinpoint the death of the last passenger pigeon is one of many peculiarities that distinguish the species. Thousands of species go extinct every year, but we tend to be unaware of their passing, because we’re unaware of most species existence. Since the publication of Carl Linnaeus’ ‘Systema Nturae’ in 1735, approximately 1.3 million species have been identified, not counting microbes. A 2011 estimate of 8.7 million living species by the biologist Boris Worm was greeted with skepticism. But the actual number might be an order of magnitude higher. As Stewart Brand, whose Long Now Foundation failed to compile a database of all living species, has written. “We’re so ignorant, we don’t know how ignorant we are.”
In 1813, in Kentucky, the ornithologist Alexander Wilson observed a flock that he estimated to contain, 2,230,272,000 birds. In 1860, a Fort Mississauga, Ontario, the English naturalist .Ross King watched from dawn to dusk as a mass of pigeons a mile wide, and at least three hundred miles long, flew overhead; stagglers followed for days. The flock, he calculated, contained 3,717,120,000 pigeons. By comparison, there are currently two hundred and sixth million pigeons in existence; New Yorkers may be surprised to learn that there are but one million pigeons in New York city. A single passenger pigeon nesting ground once occuped an area as large as eight hundred and fifty square miles, or thirty seven Manhattans. ` Page 162
. . . . a pigeon dealer in Wisconsin shipping two million birds to market in one year. Even so, the species decline -- from approximately five billion to extinction within a generation -- baffled most Americans. Science published an article claiming that the pigeons had all fled to the Arixona desert. Others hypothesized that they had taken refuge in the Chilean pine forests, on an island east of Puget Sound, or in Australia. Another theory held that every passenger pigeon had joined a single megaflock and disappeared into Bermuda Triangle. ~ Page 163
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Dinesh said:
The first time Ben Novak saw a passenger pigeon, he fell to his kneews and remained there, speechless, for twenty minutes. He was sixteen years old. At thirteen, Novak had vowed to devote his life to resurrecting extinct animals. ~ Page 159
The fact that we can pinpoint the death of the last passenger pigeon is one of many peculiarities that distinguish the species. Thousands of species go extinct every year, but we tend to be unaware of their passing, because we’re unaware of most species existence. Since the publication of Carl Linnaeus’ ‘Systema Nturae’ in 1735, approximately 1.3 million species have been identified, not counting microbes. A 2011 estimate of 8.7 million living species by the biologist Boris Worm was greeted with skepticism. But the actual number might be an order of magnitude higher. As Stewart Brand, whose Long Now Foundation failed to compile a database of all living species, has written. “We’re so ignorant, we don’t know how ignorant we are.”
In 1813, in Kentucky, the ornithologist Alexander Wilson observed a flock that he estimated to contain, 2,230,272,000 birds. In 1860, a Fort Mississauga, Ontario, the English naturalist .Ross King watched from dawn to dusk as a mass of pigeons a mile wide, and at least three hundred miles long, flew overhead; stagglers followed for days. The flock, he calculated, contained 3,717,120,000 pigeons. By comparison, there are currently two hundred and sixth million pigeons in existence; New Yorkers may be surprised to learn that there are but one million pigeons in New York city. A single passenger pigeon nesting ground once occuped an area as large as eight hundred and fifty square miles, or thirty seven Manhattans. ` Page 162
. . . . a pigeon dealer in Wisconsin shipping two million birds to market in one year. Even so, the species decline -- from approximately five billion to extinction within a generation -- baffled most Americans. Science published an article claiming that the pigeons had all fled to the Arixona desert. Others hypothesized that they had taken refuge in the Chilean pine forests, on an island east of Puget Sound, or in Australia. Another theory held that every passenger pigeon had joined a single megaflock and disappeared into Bermuda Triangle. ~ Page 163