Behind closed doors at Liverpool's World Museum resides the last earthly remains of an exotic speckled bird.
The spotted green pigeon went extinct in the 1820s due to over-hunting and the introduction of invasive predators on its native islands in India and Southeast Asia. First mentioned in writing by English physician and bird expert John Latham in 1783, the only physical evidence the bird existed at all can be found right here in Liverpool.
It is locked in special environmentally-controlled conditions, away from the public eye. The one-of-a-kind specimen was first seen in the collections of British army officer Thomas Davies and the naturalist Joseph Banks, though its exact origins remain unclear.
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When Davies died in 1812, the pigeon was bought by the, 13th Earl of Derby, Edward Smith-Stanley, who kept it in Knowsley Hall. The collection was transferred to the Derby Museum – later the World Museum – in 1851, where it remains to this day.
Dr John James, lead curator for Zoology at World Museum, said: "It's very special to have the only specimen in existence at World Museum. It’s a beautiful specimen that can inspire wonder in the natural world.
"But it is of course sad that the species has become extinct and we don’t fully know where the species and specimen were from. It can provoke feelings about the current human-caused biodiversity emergency that the planet is facing with thousands of species going extinct every year, many of which have never been recorded or named by scientists, or maybe never even seen by humans.
"It’s the only specimen of its species, which is now extinct, in existence. It’s also something of an enigma, the whole story of how the specimen came to be at World Museum is not known. We know it came with the museum’s founding collection bequeathed by the 13th Earl of Derby to the people of Liverpool, who had bought it from Thomas Davies, but before that the history of the specimen is unknown."
In 2014, a study found the spotted green pigeon – also known as the Liverpool Pigeon, despite its origins – was a distant relation of another famously extinct bird, the dodo.
Today, it's closest living relative is the Nicobar Pigeon, a striking grey, green and blue species found on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in India. It is the only surviving member of the Caloenas genus, which the spotted green pigeon belonged to.
Dr James said: "The specimen is kept in a locked cabinet in the bird skins store in the basement of World Museum together with the other approximately 44,000 bird skins in the collection. It’s kept in a special cabinet with the other especially important specimens such as other extinct birds, and birds which were used as the basis of the first scientific descriptions and are the name-bearers of scientific names.
"We monitor the store for pests which may damage the specimens such as beetles and try to maintain the environmental conditions in the store room at a stable temperature and humidity to prevent pest infestations and damp. When the pigeon is taken out for researchers or visitors to see, we handle it very carefully with gloves and try to limit exposure to light."
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